An Exercise in Culinary Reconstruction

In the rich tapestry of our medieval recreations, absolute authenticity
is an impossibility, and even improved authenticity can seem an
unobtainable dream.  SCA cooks in particular are plagued by a host of
impediments: ingredients that are expensive or obscure (or, in some
cases, extinct), cooking techniques that are impractical (or impossible
even to contemplate in an apartment with a prewar galley kitchen), and
recipes that are delightfully vague ("cook it til it be enogh"??
right...).  Add to this the very human impulse to cut corners, and the
result is a recipe for confusion.

For example, a dish that used to turn up at showier Middle Kingdom
feasts was Cockentrice.  The standard Midrealm interpretation of this
dainty was half a capon and half a suckling pig stitched together and
roasted.  Without documentation at hand, however, one has no way of
knowing whether this is a faithful redaction of the original, or merely
a Scadian expedient ("Yeah, well, if they'd had monofilament fishing
line, they would have used it in the kitchen...").  So it was that we
turned to our collection of cookery books to seek the grain of truth in
this riddle.

After examining several recipes, the one we chose to execute was from
an English manuscript (an assortment of leaves from Laud MS 3.14, now
in the Mercy College Manuscripts Div.)  The Laud-Mercy MS recipe reads
as follows:

"Cokentrice.  Capitulum dclxvi.--Nym a fayre cokentrice, and lat hit be
not olde, els it wil be somdel toghe and uvel for to ete.  Haue care in
the catchyng of the beest to auert thyn eyen, for if thu dost not, thu
mayst be astonied in sothe.  Whan that thu hast thi cokentrice, fle him
of his skyn and federes, and make hem clene:  then draw the whyte & the
yolkes of eyren, and cast ther-to, and suette of a schepe, and saffron,
& sal, and poudre of gyngeure, and grated brede; and medle all
to-gedere with thyn honde, and putte it in the cokentrice, and putt it
on a spite, and roste hem; and, if thu wilt, dress him in the self
skyn, and if thu wilt not, endore hem with yolkes of eyren, and poudre
of gyngeuere, and saffron, and endore hem all abowte in euery perty of
hym."

This would be just the dish to liven our next feast, so we decided to
give it a try.  Unfortunately, the local game butcher informed us that
he doesn't have much call for cockatrices in this neighborhood, and we
were at a loss for a source.  After consulting Pliny's Inventorum
Natura, sundry bestiaries, and the OED, we learned that, in the Middle
Ages, "cockatrice" and "basilisk" were used interchangeably, and Pliny
and his confreres have a wealth of information about the Basilisk.  A
native of South Africa, the basilisk can not only kill with a glance,
but its bodily fluids are so potent that one hapless adventurer killed
a basilisk with his spear, and the venom traveled up his spear, killing
not only him but his horse as well. Armed with this useful information,
we called a travel agent to book passage for our party to South Africa,
only to learn, to our dismay, that fares were between $500 and $1,000
apiece.  Undaunted, we drafted a grant proposal and dispatched it to
the National Endowment for the Humanities, Directorate of Mythical and
Imaginary Beasts.

Within a matter of months we received an endowment from MIB, and we
packed our bags with glee....

Once in the South African desert, we found the wily cockatrice, and met
up with some unforeseen setbacks.  Two of our party foolishly ignored
the warnings of our medieval betters, and were turned to stone, and a
third perished valiantly while plying his spear (fortunately, he had
the grace to fall off his steed, which escaped a venomous death
thereby).  With heavy hearts, we packed up the bodies of our fallen
comrades, and that of the cockatrice, and returned to civilization.

Upon returning to the States, we found that our fortunes took a turn
for the better; our two stony stalwarts now stand watch with the
gargoyles at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, which in return
funded our continued culinary efforts.

Back in the kitchen, we quickly went to work.  His venom spent, our
cockatrice soon lay stuffed, trussed, spitted and ready to roast.  We
could hardly stand the aromas wafting from our oven, so eager were we
to taste the result of our research and hard work.  At last the timer
rang, and we removed the small, wizened carcass with a flourish.
Diligently we carved a gobbet of flesh, tasted it, and concluded that
if this were not the worst thing we'd ever put in our mouths, it was
surely a close second.

On reflection, perhaps we should have chosen the recipe from Maitre
Chicquart's Du Fait de Cuisine which reads: "Pour faire Coquentrice
Rosti avec Son Peau et Plumes Entieres:  Presnez une coquentrice, et
pelez-la, et sauvez le peau, et rejectez la coquentrice et remplacez-la
avec une beste rosti, tel qu'un poulet ou porcelet, n'importe quoi, et
servez la beste dans le peau de la coquentrice, parce que tous le monde
sait que la coquentrice est une viande mauvaise et insalubre."

This would explain the capon/suckling pig gambit.  Ahh, the re-creative
process....

For Further Reading

Austin, Thomas, ed.  Two Fifteenth Century Cookery Books.  Krauss
Reprint, 1985 Hieatt, Constance, and Sharon Butler,  eds. Curye on
Inglysch.  Oxford University Press, 1985.

Pantagruel, G. E.  "Hack Hem into Gobbets" - Fabulous Beasts for
Fabulous Feasts.  Gotham Press, 1901.

Scully, Terence, ed.  Chiquart's "On Cookery":  A Fifteenth Century
Culinary Treatise.  New York, Berne & Frankfurt (Peter Lang), 1986

Woodruff, Una.  Inventorum Natura; The Expedition Journal of Pliny the
Elder.  Harper and Row, 1979.


from the April 1998 Seahorse (Move to cooking folder, with cross-ref?)