A Noble Boke off Cookry

Kingdom Arts and Sciences 2018

Swearing in the competitors

This past weekend was Avacal’s Kingdom A&S Championship and The University of Avacal. It’s the first time the Championship has been done at its own event, and based on how many people I saw there, the event was a massive success. There were a ton of classes in 12 tracks, an A&S display area, and of course the Kingdom Arts & Sciences Championship.

Champion of Arts and Sciences

There were two full entrants for the Championship, Her Ladyship Niesa Abdelmessah, and myself. It’s a difficult and stressful competition, but at the end, I felt very accomplished just for getting through the creation, documentation, display, presentation, and questioning. HL Niessa had an amazing display, and entered bone carving and hide tanning and I am in awe of her skills in that area. I entered a research paper on the history of bacon, and a beef stew that could have been prepared on board a Tudor naval ship. At court that evening it was announced that I had won both the highest single entry and the championship, and I swore fealty to Their Royal Majesties Kvigr Ivarsson and Svava Suanhuita.

 

I never have a problem getting rid of the leftovers

Here are links to my documentation:

Pre 17th Century Bacon PDF: Pre-17c Bacon

Stew On Board Ship PDF: Stew on Ship

The rest of the post is fairly photo heavy.
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By Tomas de Courcy, ago

Daryoles

37.

Pi Night spread

Pi Night spread

As Culinary Night is on March 14th this year we’re celebrating Pi day. In honor of that I’m making Daryoles. There’s some debate about this with some saying it’s a type of proto-quiche and others that it’s a proto-custard. I’m in the proto-custard camp myself.

Daryoles show up in English culinary books early,  1390s early. But by the 17th century they are synonymous with small custards, and by the 19th century they refer to a specialized mould for making custards.

In favour of the proto-quiche side there is cheese and meat in several of the dishes. But as you will see the major factor seems to be the sweetness.

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By Tomas de Courcy, ago

Medieval Bacon

Update April 2018: I went back and reworked the entirety of this for Kingdom A&S. You can see the documentation here:Pre-17c Bacon and photos here.

35. 36.

A friend of mine jokes that I beat her in an A&S competition because I bribed the judges with bacon. Well I’m a fan of bacon (though not to the extent of the bacon craziness of two years ago) but I’ve always just used a thick cut good quality bacon from the butchers. When it was announced that February’s Montengarde Culinary Group meeting was going to be all about dishes with bacon or pork my wife suggested that I try making bacon.

So, medieval bacon.

This is an interesting one because we don’t have a whole lot of period info about how they made bacon.

Bacon

Because this is such a long post I’m giving a basic summary here.

Essentially I couldn’t find any proof for smoked bacon until the very end of the 16th century. Instead the defining feature was that it was salt cured and dried. Smoke was likely an option but the concerns around the heat from the smoke making the fat of
the bacon turn rancid seem to have kept it from being the main method as it is now. Cold-smoking could have been done but only if they were using nitrites as well.

I’m using a recipe based on combining what I found pre-1600 with the 18th century recipes. The end result is a very salty bacon that should taste very very similar to what Medieval and Renaissance bacon would taste like. The addition of sugar, though likely a post period innovation, is used to cut the saltiness. Nitrites are used because most of the secondary sources mention it, for the food safety, as well as because it is heavily used by the time the first actual recipes show up; combining that with its availability at the time and I’m going to call its use plausible.

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By Tomas de Courcy, ago