Another Meat Dinner

III. Another Meat Dinner.

First Course:

Beef pies
Rissoles
Black beet
Lampreys in cold sage soup
a German meat soup
White sauce of fish
Arbolettys
Coarse meat of beef and mutton

Second Course:

Roast meat
Fish
Meat cracklings
Little tarts
Roast rabbit and forcemeat in hot sauce
Lombard tarts

Third Course:

Tench soup
Decorated fricassee
Sugared milk with bread crusts
Boar's tail in hot sauce
Capons a la dodine
Salmon and bream pies
Plaice in water
Fried bread slices
Meat tarts

Fourth Course:

Frumenty
Venison
Roast fish
Cold sage soup
Jellied eels
Fish jellies
Capon pies with gravy

First Course - Possible Recipes

BEEF PASTIES. Have good young beef and remove all the fat, and the less good parts are cut in pieces to be used for stock, and then it is carried to the pastry-cook to be chopped up: and the grease with beef marrow.

RISSOLES ON A MEAT DAY are seasonable from St. Remy's Day (October 1). Take a pork thigh, and remove all the fat so that none is left, then put the lean meat in a pot with plenty of salt: and when it is almost cooked, take it out and have hard-cooked eggs, and chop the whites and yolks, and elsewhere chop up your meat very small, then mix eggs and meat together, and sprinkle powdered spices on it, then put in pastry and fry in its own grease. And note that this is a proper stuffing for pig; and any time the cooks shop at the butcher's for pig-stuffing : but always, when stuffing pigs, it is good to add old good cheese.

Item, at the courts of lords like Monseigneur de Berry, when they kill a beef, they make rissoles with the marrow.

BLACK BEET SOUP is made with bacon riblets; that is to say, the beet-leaves are cleaned, washed, then chopped and blanched in boiling water, then fried in bacon grease; and then hot simmering water is added to them (and some say who wash them with cold water, that they will be more ugly and black), then you should put on each bowl two strips of bacon.

German Soup. Take coney flesh, fowls or veal, and cut in pieces: then half cook in water, then fry in bacon fat; then have finely minced onion in a pot, on the coals, and some fat in the pot, and shake the pot often: then grind ginger, cinnamon, grain of Paradise, nutmegs, livers roasted on a spit on the grill, and saffron mixed with verjuice, and this is the yellow coloring and the liaison. And first bread browned on the grill, ground and sieved; and at serving, put three or four pieces of your meat in the bowl and the soup over, and sugar on the soup.

(Note that he is at fault; for no cooks say that German Soup should be yellow, yet this fellow says it should. And anyway, if it should be yellow, should not the saffron be put through a sieve, but it is to be ground and mixed and put thus into the soup; when it is sieved, it is to give color: when it is sprinkled on, it is called fringing.)

YELLOW MUTTON. Cut up the coarsest, and this is the flank; and cook it in water, then grind in a piece of ginger and some saffron, and add verjuice, wine and vinegar.

[Source: Menagier de Paris, J. Hinson (trans.)]

III. Another Meat Dinner.

First dish. Beef pies and rissoles, black beet, lampreys in cold sage soup, a German meat soup, a white sauce of fish and an abarlester [Arbolettys? herbelade?], and the coarse meat of beef and mutton.

Second dish. Roast meat, freshwater fish, saltwater fish, meat cracklings, little tarts, a roast of young rabbits and forcemeat in hot sauce, Pisan tarts of small birds--that is, from Pisa in Lombardy, and sometimes called Lombard tarts, and there are small birds amid the stuffing, and in several places hereafter they are called Lombard tarts.

Third dish. Tench soup, decorated fricassee, sugared milk with bread-crusts, boar's tail in hot sauce, capons a la dodine, salmon and bream pies, plaice in water and fried bread-slices and meat tarts.

Fourth dish. Frumenty, venison, roast fish, cold sage soup, jellied eels, fish jellies, capon pies with thick broth.