Waiter, there's something in my. . . Tudor Chicken & Barberry Pie with Sauce

This is for the Pie Challenge of the "Waiter, there's something in my..." Foodbloggers' Event - this time hosted by Jeanne of Cook Sister!.

Pies were a commonplace food in medieval times and a popular 'takeaway' food, sold by stalls in the market. Unlike today, ovens weren't actually common kitchen equipment - most households wouldn't own an oven, especially amongst the lower classes. Instead, the housewife would make their pie and then take it to the town baker to cook for them. During fairs and festivals, portable ovens were also sometimes available.

Pies were also a useful method of keeping food safely preserved - an essential in a time without refrigeration. Sometimes the pastry used would be nothing more than an inedible mixture of flour and salt, which would be discarded once the crust was broken into. Filling the pie with gelatine or pectin-rich ingredients was another useful method of preserving. Food was used as tax or tithe payment in medieval times, and pies were used as such.

In more wealthy households however, the job of pastry making for pies was specialised, with a cook whose job was doing only that. The cooks in the main kitchen would put together the pie filling, then take it to the pastry cook to place in a case and bake. Pies were also considered healthy according to humoral doctrine, the dietary theory of medieval times. A balance of the humors (fire, air, earth and water, and their appropriate qualities of hot, cold, dry and moist) was considered essential to preserving good health. Pies were an approved method of infusing ingredients and meats that were considered to be of 'dry' humor with warmth and moisture, and were therefore especially good for first courses - to open up the stomach - and for the autumn months.

As well as the mundane everyday cooking, the pastry cook got to have some fun too however. Pies presented at feasts could be elaborate and artistic affairs - endored with egg yolk or saffron to turn them golden, brushed with crushed herbs or flowers to turn them green or pink, or even layered with microscopically thin sheets of beaten gold or silver to impress the feast goers. They were decorated with sliced almonds, crystallised blooms and dragees (those little silver and gold balls our Mums stuck on our birthday cakes when we were little!), formed into fantastical shapes and covered with the hides of real animals and birds. As the nursery rhyme states, 'four and twenty black birds' could be baked into a pie (or rather, put in it just before serving) to burst into song and freedom when the pie was cut open. Another interesting medieval nursery rhyme refering to pies which has survived to this day (although first published in 1725) is 'Little Jack Horner'', which relates a case of sixteenth century stewardly corruption.

Medieval pastry recipes are rather like medieval meat roast recipes - non-existent. Probably because 'everybody knew how to do it' and it was therefore uncalled for to write them down. The first extant recipe for pastry written in English is from a mid-sixteenth century book called "A proper New Booke of Cokerye", which is where I have chosen today's recipe from.

Recipe: "To Bake Chekins in Like Paest"

Although this recipe specifies you can either use barberries, grapes or gooseberries for the pie, I was curious to find out what the former tasted like. Barberries used to be a popular fruit with English housewives, as they are extremely high in pectin and have pleasant tang to them which seems to bring out the flavour in other foods (useful for when you have no lemons).

Unfortunately they serve as a vector for wheat rust, so have been eradicated wholesale in the UK now and are difficult to find. Fortunately I managed to find some Lebanese Barberries in that ever-wonderful emporioum The Spice Shop near Portobello Road, and apparently they can also be found in Middle Eastern grocery stores. Fond as I am of gooseberries, I definitely recommend trying out the barberries for this recipe!

This recipe also includes a sauce of sorts, to be eaten with the pie. It seems to me to be somewhat like a very primitive mayonnaise, and it's definitely worth making this as well as the sauce offsets the tang of the barberry flavour. I didn't have any verjuice so I used white basalmic vinegar instead, which makes an acceptable substitute (alternately you can use unsweetened white grape juice).

As you can see from the text, pie cases were often called 'coffins', for somewhat obvious reasons. As a firm believer in sticking to one's strengths and knowing that pastry is not one of mine, the pie is a collaboration of myself and Mr Saxby pastry. I actually used a terracotta dish to bake the pie in - not through any great yen towards authenticity but because I realised just as I started to cook that I only actually owned flan cases. Not a pie case in sight! It worked fairly well however, merely requiring slightly longer cooking. The result is a tangy but sweet, moist chicken pie and accompaniment which is ideal for winter evenings and is also delicious as a cold lunch the next day.

To Bake Chekins in Like Paest
Take your chekins and ceason them with a lytle Ginger and salte, and so putte them into your coffin and so put in them barberies, grapes or goose beryes, and half a dyshe of butter, so cloose them up, and sett them in the ouen and when they are baken, take the yolkes of syxe eggs and a dyshfull of vergis and drawe them through a streyner and sett it upon a chafingdyshe, then drawe youre baken chekins and put therto this foresayde egges and verygys and thus serve them hoate.

Chicken & Barberry (or Grape or Gooseberry) Pie with Sauce
Shortcrust Pastry (I used commercial)
250 gm Chicken, diced
25 gm dried Lebanese Barberries (or Grapes or Gooseberries - probably 1/2 cup)
20gm Butter, in small cubes
1/2 tsp Ginger, ground
1-2 pinches Salt

Sauce:
3 Egg Yolks
1 -2 Tb verjuice (or white basalmic vinegar or white grape juice or mild white vinegar)

1. Preheat your oven to 400°F/200°C/GM6.
2. Mix together the chicken, ground ginger (try to use freshly ground/grated dried ginger - once you've tried it you'll realise the stuff you buy in the supermarket is nothing more than ginger-flavored sawdust), salt, barberries and the butter. The latter adds moisture to the pie - mine ended up with a slightly soggy bottom, so I've reduced the amount in this recipe.
3. Divide the pastry into two and roll one into a circle, about 3mm thick.
4. Lay in pie case and place the filling on top.
5. Roll out remaining pastry into a similar circle.
6. Dampen the edge of the pie with water, milk or egg yolk or a mixture thereof.
7. Lay the second pastry circle on top of the pie and crimp together.
8. Decorate the top of the pie with any remaining pastry if you want (or just save it for jam tartlets).
9. Cut a small hole (about 1cm diameter) in the pastry to allow steam to escape.
10. If you want, coat the pie with melted butter, milk or egg yolk or a mixture thereof.
11. Put the pie in the oven for 30 - 45 minute, until the pastry is cooked and golden.
12. While the pie is baking, mix the egg yolks together with a tablespoon of verjuice (or whatever you are using).
13. Heat very briefly in a saucepan. The sauce will thicken but you don't want it to get too solid, so add more verjuice to keep it liquid if necessary.
14. Serve the pie with the sauce.

---

Photographs
The photographs of the swan pie and the travelling oven were taken by myself at the Museum of London's exhibition "London Eats Out: 500 Years of Eating Out in London" in January 2000. Further photographs and commentary can be found here on my website.

Bibliography
BLACK, Maggie Food and Cooking in Medieval Britain1985. English Heritage Food Series, ISBN 185074081X Softback
HUGGET, Jane (transcription) ANONYMOUS A Proper Newe Booke of Cookery (orig. London 1545?) Stuart Press 1995 Softback
BREARS, Peter Food and Cooking in 16th Century Britain 1985. English Heritage Food Series, ISBN 1850740828
SCULLY, Terence The Art of Cookery in the Middle Ages August 1997 Boydell & Brewer; ISBN: 0851154301
WILSON, C.Anne (edit.) Waste Not, Want Not: food preservation from early times to the present day (Papers from the fourth Leeds Symposium on food history and traditions. April 1989) Edinburgh University Press 1991.

Comments

[D]

Great history lesson! Very interesting!

[Pille]

I recently bought a packet of barberries from the market, and now got a recipe where i can use them!!
Nice entry, Christina!

[Christina]

Thank you D!

Hi Pille. Thanks! They're rather tasty, aren't they? They're definitely going to be a staple in my dried fruits box now.

[Amien]

Wow! Great info. I wish, I could have such a writing skills.