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Renaissance

Alimenti: vino bianco, dal Taccuino Sanitatis, Manoscritto Casanatense 4182

Lutendranck

Lutendranck was the first historic spiced wine I tasted. Lutendranck is a medieval sweetened and spiced white wine that was typically enjoyed cold. While Kasper thinks the name means lute drink – or he puts it “gitar wine”. It sadly isn’t the meaning, rather it means something like clarified wine – which makes sense since it has been put though a sive to remove the spices. But it is less of a good story. It is sweet and spiced and totally yummy. The batch I made last week started tasting kind of like good mead and now tastes very spiced but still totally delicious. The wine could be drunk for fun or as a medicinal drink that could cure mental problems such as: longing, cantankerous, misery and melancholy. It could also be used to clean the chest and against coughs.

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Historisk kogebog: kogekunst i Danmark 1616-1910

.Historisk kogebog: kogekunst i Danmark 1616-1910Title: Historisk kogebog: kogekunst i Danmark 1616-1910
Author: Else-Marie Boyhus
Genre: Historical cookbook, food history, renaissance, early modern, modern

If you have any interest in Danish food history between 1600 and 1900, then this is a must read! The book is both a book about food history and it is a cookbook in the sense that it is full of recipes from historic Danish cookbooks. I have already tried to cook already tried a few of the recipes and her translations are easy to work from. There is a huge number of illustrations that makes it book wonderful to look at and inviting. All of the illustrations are from the period they are accompanying.
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Hypocras

My boyfriend and I are talking about doing some reenactment markeds – at some point in the future. We are talking about the possibility of going as spiced wine merchants. In the past I have made a spiced white wine, lutendranck, which is really tasty. So when I had two liter of red wine sitting around and ran into a recipe for hypocras I of course had to try it. After making both I have started collecting different recipes for both wines.

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Historien om danskernes mad i 15.000 år

Historien om danskernes mad i 15.000 år af Bettina Buhl

Title: Historien om danskernes mad i 15.000 år
Author: Bettina Buhl
Genre: Food history, Denmark

The scope of this book is kind of impressive – it tries to cover Danish food history. Half of the book is however based around food after 1850 where there are of course more source material. For my purposes that is sadly where I find it least interesting. And I did find that the part of the book that covers pre-1660 is way better – in my opinion. The focus of the book everyday cooking rather than cooking by the elite.

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barley frumenty

Barley Frumenty

Frumenty is kind of a wheat pottage made from boiled wheat with the addition of eggs, broth or milk. My version substitutes wheat for barley, so this is a barley frumenty.

Lately I have been coking medieval dishes and I had wanted to try to make frumenty for quite some time. As we were having a beef steak, a good beer and kale and orange salad, this seemed fitting.

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What is a “Postej” or “pye”?

I use the Danish word postej to describe this dish but in the English medieval literature they are tend to be called “pye”. What we today would call a pie. Sometimes they are also called a Pâté.

A postej is meat, fish or fruit dish that is inside a container of dough, what in the English medieval kitchen would be called a “coffin” of dough. It was baked in the oven or in a postej-oven which is pretty much a Dutch oven. The dough can be edible or inedible as you please. The postejs I have baked so fare are baked with an edible dough – because anything else seems wasteful to me. Keep Reading