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Spinach Tart

Recipe from Handout

1/3 pound spinach, chopped
1/2 cup fresh parsley, chopped
2 tablespoons dried chervil or 1/4 cup fresh
1 teaspoon fennel seed, ground in a mortar or 1 or 2 leaves fresh fennel
5 eggs
2/5 pound cheddar cheese
2/5 pound mozzarella cheese
1/2 teaspoon ginger
1/2 teaspoon salt
9" shortcrust pie shell

Chop or grate greens and cheese and mix filling in a bowl. Make pie crust and bake at 400deg. for about 10 minutes. Put filling in crust and bake about 40 minutes at 350deg. . We usually substitute spinach for beet leaves, dried chervil for fresh, and fennel seed for fresh fennel leaves because of availability.

Source for Recipe Presented

Le Menagier de Paris - Redaction Cariadoc's Miscellany
Cariadoc's Miscellany. The Miscellany is Copyright (c) by David Friedman and Elizabeth Cook, 1988, 1990, 1992.
Le Menagier de Paris Translated by Janet Hinson

Notes and additional versions

Le Menagier de Paris Translated by Janet Hinson
TO MAKE A TART, take four handfuls of beet-leaves, two handfuls of parsley, one handful of chervil, a bit of turnip-top [a sprig of fennel] and two handfuls of spinach, and clean them and wash them in cold water, then chop very small: then grate two kinds of cheese, that is one mild and one medium, and then put eggs with it, yolk and white, and grate them in with the cheese; then put the herbs in the mortar and grind them up together, and also add to that some powdered spices. Or in place of this have first ground up in the mortar two pieces of ginger, and over this grate your cheeses, eggs and herbs, and then throw in some grated old pressed cheese or some other such on to the herbs, and carry to the oven, and then make it into a tart and eat it hot.

Lady Elinor Fetiplace, 1604
A Tart of Spinage
Take the spinage & boile it in water till it bee soft, then straine it, & put to it the yelks of vi eggs, & some rosewater and corrance, & sugar, & some sinamon, & ginger & some butter. boile it on the fier, a good while, before you put it in the paste.

From Sallets, Humbles & Shrewsbery Cakes, which reproduces the recipe but doesn't identify which cookbook it came from
To make a Tart of Spinnage
Take some cast creame, and seeth some Spinnage in faire water till it be verie soft, then put it into a Collender, that the water may soake from it: then straine the Spinnage, and cast the creame together, let there be good plentie of Spinnage: set it upon a chafingdish of coales, and put to it Sugar and some Butter, and let it boyle a while. Then put it in the paste, and bake it, and caste blanche powder on it, and so serve it in.

From Sallets, Humbles & Shrewsbery Cakes, which reproduces the recipe but doesn't identify which cookbook it came from
To make a Tarte of Spennedge
Boyle your Egges and your Creame together, and then put them into a bowle, and then boyle your Spinnedge, and when they are boyled, take them out of the water and straine them into your stuffe before you straine your Creame, boyle your stuffe and then strain them all againe, and season them with sugar and salt.

Proper Newe Booke, p. 41/C11
To Make a Tarte of Spinage
Take Spynage and perboyle it tender, then take it up and wrynge oute the water cleane, and chop it very small, and set it uppon the fyre wyth swete butter in a frying panne and season it, and set it in a platter to coole then fyll your tart and so bake it.

To make a Tarte of Spinadge , The Good Huswife¹s Jewel, T. Dawson 1596
Take spinadge and seeth it stalk and all, and when it is tenderly sodden, take it off, and let it drayne in a Cullynder, and then swing it in a clowte, and stamp it and straine it with two or three yolkes of egges, and then set it on a chafin-dish of coales, and season it with butter and Suger, and when the paste is hardened in the Oven, put in this commode, strake it even.

p. 137 Odile Redon et al - Vegetable-Cheese Tourte from Le Menagier de Paris
Odile Redon, Francoise Sabban, and Silvano Serventi. The Medieval Kitchen: Recipes from France and Italy. Translated by Edward Schneider. 1998: The University of Chicago Press.

p. 44 Fetiplace
Hilary Spurling. Elinor Fettiplace's Receipt Book: Elizabethan Country House Cooking. 1986: Elisabeth Sifton Books, VIKING.

p. 38 (To make a Tart of Spinnage), 43 (To make a Tarte of Spennedge) Beebe
Ruth Anne Beebe. Sallets, Humbles & Shrewsbery Cakes: A Collection of Elizabethan Recipes Adapted for the Modern Kitchen. 1976: David R Godine, Publisher.
NOTE: Recipes coming from this book were taken from four cookbooks: The Good Huswife's Jewell (1596) The Good Huswife's Handmaide for the Kitchin (1594) The English Huswife (1615) Delightful Daily Exercise for ladies and gentlewomen (1621)

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Stefan's Florilegium Period sauces. Sauce recipes.
Stefan's Florilegium The recipes from Aethelmearc¹s First Crown Feast.
Stefan's Florilegium The feast menu and some recipes from the Midwinter Arts & Sciences Faire hosted by The Barony of the South Downs of Meridies on February 26-28, 1999.

NICCOLO'S RECIPE

Medieval food for vegetarians

To Make a Tarte of Spinage from Proper Newe Booke Cariadoc's Miscellany

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