Our sugar-saturated society sees a clear divide between “sweet” and “savoury” dishes - and we wrinkle our noses in distaste, and puzzle over the odd taste preferences of our medieval ancestors when we read ancient recipes with sugar and fruit included in predominantly meat dishes. The crucial point of course is to do with quantity. A small amount of sugar, used in the way of an exotic, expensive, imported spice, was the medieval way. And we have not abandoned the idea of fruit with meat completely, have we? We have apple sauce (or prunes) with pork, cranberries with turkey, and pineapple in some of our interpretations of “Chinese” sweet-and-sour dishes for example.
A week or two ago, we looked at bananas in savoury dishes. A year or more ago we had William Ellis’ mid-eighteenth century Onion Pye made by labouring Mens Wives, - which was as much apple as onion, and was clearly meant to be a “sweet” (i.e “dessert”) dish to rival pumpkin pie. Today I have for you a recipe for a “savoury” pie with apple, to remind you of the almost infinite adaptability of the fruit. It is taken from The English Art of Cookery, by Richard Briggs (1788) - but plagiarism was rife in those times, and the exact same recipe appeared in a number of popular cookbooks of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. It is called “onion” pie, but has equal amounts of potato, apple, and onion.
Pare a pound of potatoes, slice them thin, peel about a pound of large onions, and slice them, pare the same quantity of apples, core and slice them likewise, boil six eggs hard, take off the shells,and cut them in slices; lay a thin sheet of puff-paste over the bottom of the dish, put on a quarter of a pound of fresh butter, mix a quarter of an ounce of beaten mace, a tea-spoonful of pepper, and three of salt, strew some over the butter, then lay in a layer of potatoes, a layer of onions, a layer of apples, and one of eggs, strew some seasoningon, and so on till all the ingredients are in; strew the remainder of the seasoning on top, put on a quarter of a pound of butter, and our in half a pint of white wine; put a thin puff-paste over it, and bake it one hour and a half.
Quotation for the Day.
The onion being eaten, yea though it be boyled, causeth head-ache, hurteth the eyes, and maketh a man dimme sighted, dulleth the senses, ingendreth windinesse, and provoketh overmuch sleepe, especially being eaten raw.
John Gerard (1545-1611)