I'll skip introductions - there isn't much noteworthy about me anyhow- and get right to the point; the very first challenge of the very first round of the Historical Food Fortnightly! If you don't know, the Food Fortnightly is a series of themed "challenges" revolving around historic food. The challenges are two weeks apart (thus, fortnightly). You can read more about the challenge themes here.
My choice for the first challenge is a warden pie. Warden pie refers to a pie made out of Warden Pears, which come from the English county of Bedfordshire and may actually refer to any number of pear breeds that don't ripen fully and have to be cooked in order to be edible. Where do Warden Pies appear in literature, you ask? Well, prepare to experience post-traumatic flashbacks to high school.... they're mentioned in Shakespeare. While apparently they appear in several of the Bard's plays, my source comes from The Winter's Tale.
IV, 3:
CLOWN: I cannot do't without counters. Let me see; what am I to buy for our sheep-shearing feast? Three pound of sugar, five pound of currants, rice,--what will this sister of mine do with rice? But my father hath made her mistress of the feast, and she lays it on. She hath made me four and twenty nose-gays for the shearers, three-man-song-men all, and very good ones; but they are most of them means and bases; but one puritan amongst them, and he sings psalms to horn-pipes. I must have saffron to colour the warden pies; mace; dates?--none, that's out of my note; nutmegs, seven; a race or two of ginger, but that I may beg; four pound of prunes, and as many of raisins o' the sun.
As I can't afford saffron and can't stand prunes, dates, or raisins, I'm going to use a recipe from Covntry Contentments, or, the English Housewife (1623).
Here's the recipe, in it's original wording and spelling.
Take of the fairest and best Wardens, and
pare them, and take out the hard chores on the top, and cut the sharp ends at
the bottome flat, then boyle them in White-wine and suger, vntill the sirrup
grow thick; then take the wardens from the sirrup into a clean dish, & let
them coole; then set them into the coffin, and prick cloues in the tops, with
whole sticks of cinnamon, and great store of Suger as for Pippins ; then couer
it, and onely reseue a vent-hole, so set it in the ouen and bake it. When it is
bak’t, draw it forth and taste it, and take the first sirrup in which the
Wardens were boyled, and taste it, and if it be not sweet enough, then put in
more suger and some rosewater, & boile it again a little, then power it
into the vent-hole, and shake the pie wel; then take sweet butter and
rose-water melted and with it anoint the pie-lid all ouer, and then strow vpon
it store of suger and so set it into the ouen againe a little space.
Join me in a few days, when I actually cook the pie and post it in preparation for the challenge!
