Shakespeare's Kitchen (21 page)

My news shall be the fruit to that great feast.

HAMLET,
2.2

Citrus Tarts

SERVES 6

Here’s the challenge, read it: I warrant there’s vinegar and pepper in’t.

TWELFTH NIGHT,
3.4

 I
DOUBT YOUR GUESTS
will guess that these refreshing tarts contain both pepper and vinegar, two flavors not ordinarily associated with dessert. Peppercorns, popular since the time of ancient Greece and Rome, were often included in sweet dishes in Shakespeare’s day. In Medieval times this valuable spice was traded as money. “Peppercorn rent,” a legal term for a symbolic or nominal payment, is still used in England today.

4 large navel oranges

3 lemons

2 tablespoons butter

½ teaspoon freshly ground five-color peppercorns

3 teaspoons minced fresh ginger

3 tablespoons sugar

½ cup white wine

2 tablespoons verjuice

1 tablespoon honey

15 ready-made tiny phyllo tart shells (1-inch diameter)

1.
    Using a vegetable peeler, cut the peel from the oranges and lemons, removing any of the white pith. Soak the peels for 10 minutes in cold water. Drain and coarsely chop the peels.

2.
    Melt the butter in a medium nonreactive saucepan. Add the chopped peels, peppercorns, ginger, sugar, and wine, and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat and simmer for 30 minutes. Allow the mixture to cool to room temperature and stir in the verjuice and honey.

3.
    Spoon the filling into the tart shells and serve.

ORIGINAL RECIPE:

To bake a Citron pye

Take your Citrone, pare it and slice it in peeces, and boyle it with grose Pepper and Ginger, and so laye it in your Paste with Butter, and when it is almost baked, put thereto Vineger, Butter, and Sugar, and let it stande in the Oven a while and soke.

THE GOOD HUSWIFES JEWELL,
1587

“Orient Red” Quinces

SERVES 6

And that same dew, which sometime on the buds
Was wont to swell like round and orient pearls,
Stood now within the pretty flouriets’ eyes
Like tears that did their own disgrace bewail.

A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM,
4.1

 O
RIENT,” MEANING GLOWING,
was the apt description in the original recipe for this lovely dessert that can be made with quinces or apples. Slowly cooking the fruit whole in spiced wine produces slices that are bright red on the outside but still white in the center. The fruit was too pretty to put into a piecrust as suggested in 1631, so here it is simply sliced and served with the spiced wine syrup on the side. This syrup is also delicious served with fresh strawberries.

2 large quinces or tart apples, peeled and cored

2½ cups red wine

4 whole cloves

½ cup dark brown sugar

One 2-inch piece of cinnamon stick

1.
    Place the quinces, wine, cloves, brown sugar, and cinnamon in a small saucepan and simmer for 20 to 30 minutes, or until just tender. Remove the quinces from the pan and cook the liquid for 20 minutes, or until thick and syrupy.

2.
    Slice each quince in half and cut into ⅛-inch-thick slices. Spoon a little of the syrup in the center of each plate and arrange the quince slices around the syrup to form a flower.

Inside-Out Pie

SERVES 6

They call for dates and quinces in the pastry.

ROMEO AND JULIET,
4.4

 H
ERE’S AN APPLE PIE
with a twist! The fruit forms the crust, while the bread is the filling. The original recipe, entitled “A bakte Pudding after the Italian Fashion,” calls for suet and bone marrow, but since the dish originated in Italy, I felt reasonably justified in substituting Italian prosciutto for those ingredients. The original recipe’s charming baking instructions—“If the oven be too hot, it will burn, if it be too cold, it will be too heavy”—gave me a new appreciation for our modern oven thermostats.

9 slices of firm white bread, crusts removed

2 large eggs

1 large egg white

1 tablespoon butter, melted

¼ cup golden raisins

6 dates, pitted and chopped

Pinch of ground cloves

⅛ teaspoon ground mace

⅛ teaspoon freshly ground nutmeg

Pinch of salt

½ cup cream

½ cup milk

¼ cup minced prosciutto

1 tart apple, peeled, cored, and thinly sliced

1 tablespoon superfine sugar

1.
    Cut the bread into ½-inch cubes. Place the eggs and egg white in a large bowl and beat very well. Add the butter, raisins, dates, cloves, mace, nutmeg, salt, cream, milk, and prosciutto and mix well. Fold the bread into the mixture and let stand for 15 minutes, or until the liquid is absorbed. (If the mixture looks dry, add a bit more milk.)

2.
    Preheat the oven to 350°F. Grease a 9-inch springform pan. Starting in the center, shingle the apple slices in a spiral around the bottom and up the sides of the pan. Add the bread mixture, taking care not to disturb the apples. Bake for 30 minutes, or until light golden brown. Invert onto a large plate, sprinkle with superfine sugar, and serve immediately. If desired, the pie can be broiled for a few seconds to caramelize the sugar.

Groundlings, audience members with the least expensive tickets, had to stand on the ground in front of the stage while the most elite, expensive seats were those highest up. As Shakespeare refers to in this quote, the groundlings were all too happy to munch on any leftovers the rich tossed down.

These are the youths that thunder at a
playhouse, and fight for bitten apples …

KING HENRY VIII,
5.4

Renaissance Cookies

MAKES 36 COOKIES

The daintiest last, to make the end most sweet …

KING RICHARD II,
1.3

 I
N THE ORIGINAL
recipe the cookies were topped with either small red or white sugar-coated candies, called “muskedines,” or sugar-coated fennel and caraway seeds, a frequent “bisket” topping. The Elizabethans would also “scrape on fine sugar.” Sugar sold in hard bricks or cones had to be scraped loose in those days.

In this modern version the cookies are topped with a cutout from the dough, which keeps the almond-flavored spinach filling moist. Once you taste these delicate cookies you’ll know why this four-hundred-year-old recipe is still made today in many regions of Italy.

1 cup butter, softened

¾ cup granulated sugar

1 large egg, beaten

¼ cup white dessert wine (such as Muscat)

¼ teaspoon salt

2 cups whole-wheat pastry flour

2 cups white pastry flour

10 ounces fresh baby spinach, cooked and well drained

1 large egg yolk, beaten

4 ounces almond paste

3 teaspoons cream

3 tablespoons superfine sugar

1.
    Cream the butter and granulated sugar until light and fluffy. Add the egg, wine, and ⅛ teaspoon of the salt and mix well. Add the whole-wheat and white flours, a little at a time, and mix until completely incorporated.

2.
    Purée the spinach. Add the egg yolk, almond paste, cream, and remaining ⅛ teaspoon salt and purée for 1 minute, or until the almond paste has dissolved. Mix in up to 3 tablespoons of the superfine sugar to taste. (Some almond pastes already contain sugar.) Simmer the mixture over very low heat, stirring frequently, for 15 minutes, or until very thick.

3.
    Preheat the oven to 350°F. Roll out the cookie dough to ⅛ inch thick on a floured work surface and cut thirty-six 2-inch circles and thirty-six ¾- to 1-inch cutouts of the desired shape (such as cloverleaf or diamond). Spread about 1 tablespoon of the spinach mixture onto each circle and top with a cutout. Bake on a lightly greased cookie sheet for 20 minutes.

ORIGINAL RECIPE:

Other made Dish of spinach in Paste baked

Boil spinage as beforesaid, being tender boil’d, drain it in a cullender, chop it small, and strain it with half a pound of almond-paste, three or four yolks of eggs, half a grain of musk, three or four spoonfuls of cream, a quartern of fine sugar, and a little salt; then bake it on a sheet of paste on a dish without a cover, in a very soft oven, being fine and green baked, stick it with preserved barberries, or strow on red and white biskets, or red and white muskedines, and scrape on fine sugar.

THE ACCOMPLISHT COOK,
1660

Cheesecake “in the Italian Fashion”

SERVES 6 TO 8

 T
HIS ELIZABETHAN RECIPE,
adapted from Italy, calls for “morning milk cheese or better.” I was curious how an Elizabethan chef would have prepared a classic Italian Renaissance dish. Unlike most Italian cheesecakes of the time, the English version had a crust. This modern version creates a creamy pistachio-studded cheesecake with a quick and simple grated biscotti crust.

15 ounces whole-milk ricotta

8 ounces cottage cheese (4 percent milk fat)

1 large egg

½ cup sugar

¼ teaspoon ground cinnamon

⅛ teaspoon ground mace

¼ cup coarsely chopped unsalted pistachios

7 almond biscotti

1.
    Blend the ricotta, cottage cheese, and egg in a food processor until very smooth. Add the sugar, cinnamon, and mace and mix until smooth. Stir in the pistachios.

2.
    Preheat the oven to 300°F. Grate 6 of the biscotti into the bottom of a 9-inch pie pan and pour in the cheese mixture. Bake for 1½ hours. Grate the remaining biscotti over the cheesecake and refrigerate for at least 1 hour before serving.

Chocolate and vanilla, two flavors highly associated with desserts today, are not found in this chapter. Shakespeare never tasted either one. The Spanish discovered chocolate in Mexico and South America and it wasn’t introduced into England until well after Shakespeare’s lifetime.

Vanilla, another dessert classic indigenous to Mexico, wasn’t imported to Europe until the 1700s.

Shakespeare never drank the prototypical English beverage, tea. He never drank coffee, either. No Elizabethan did. Tea and coffee were not introduced into that country until well after Shakespeare’s time.