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Lamb Chops with Ale and Dried Fruit, Apple Pancakes, and Shrewsbury Cakes
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Feast like the Bard

THE BLADE/ANDY MORRISON

Feast like the Bard

Recipes from time of William Shakespeare

“ ’Tis an ill cook that cannot lick his own fingers,” wrote William Shakespeare in Romeo and Juliet, just one of the many plays represented in the Toledo Museum of Art’s new exhibit, Shakespeare’s Characters: Playing the Part, which runs through Jan. 8, 2017.

Shakespeare, known as the Bard of Avon, was a prolific writer who lived a mere 52 years, from 1564 to 1616. He is credited with having written 37 plays and 154 sonnets addressing human foibles and frailties, misadventures, passions, bravery, silliness, and vulnerability.

And hunger. Not just for power, but also for food.

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For example, Clown, a shepherd’s son, recites a grocery list in The Winter’s Tale as he plans for an upcoming celebration:

“Let me see; what am I to buy for our sheep-shearing feast? Three pound of sugar, five pound of currants, rice .... I must have saffron to colour the warden pies; mace; dates? none, that’s out of my note; nutmegs, seven; a race or two of ginger, but that I may beg; four pound of prunes, and as many of raisins o’ the sun.”

Start preparing your own shopping lists, because today we’re sharing three recipes that would have been popular in Shakespeare’s time. The playwright, who was comfortably well off, might very well have enjoyed these dishes.

One, for “Stewed Steaks,” has been updated and renamed Lamb Chops with Ale and Dried Fruit. The original appears in The Good Huswifes Jewell by Thomas Dawson, a cookbook from 1587:

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“Take a peece of Mutton and cut it in peeces, and wash it verie cleane, and put it into a faire pot with Ale, or with half wine, then make it boyle, and skumme it cleane, and put into your pot a faggot of rosemarie and time: then take some parsely picked fine, and some onions cut round, and let them all boyle together, then take prunes, & reasons, dates and currants, and let it boyle altogether, and season it with Sinamon and ginger, Nutmegs, two or three Cloves, and Salt, and so serve it on soppes, and garnish it with fruite.”

In Shakespeare’s era, food was considered to be medicinal in addition to serving as sustenance. It was believed that raw fruits and vegetables could make a person sick, so these were always cooked. And beer was thought to fight illness; it also helped people to avoid germs, as alcohol was safer to drink at the time than potentially cholera-infested water.

Spices were used generously by those who were well-off, not to preserve foods or to mask spoilage, but as flavor enhancers. Crusaders and explorers had brought home exotic ingredients — saffron, cinnamon, ginger, cloves, tomatoes, and beans, for example — from the Middle East and from the New World. And these were then incorporated into dishes that would have countered the stereotype of English food being bland and boring.

Sugar was terribly expensive during the Shakespearean era, and so desserts made with it were reserved for the rich.

One of the earliest recorded recipes for Shrewsbury Cakes — large shortbread cookies — comes from 1658’s The Compleat Cook: Expertly Prescribing The Most Ready Wayes, Whether Italian, Spanish Or French, For Dressing Of Flesh And Fish, Ordering Of Sauces Or Making Of Pastry, whose author is known only as W.M.:

“Take two pound of floure dryed in the oven and weighed after it is dryed, then put to it one pound of butter that must be layd an hour or two in rose-water, so done poure the water from the butter, and put the butter to the flowre with the yolks and whites of five eggs, two races of ginger, and three quarters of a pound of sugar, a little salt, grate your spice, and it well be the better, knead all these together till you may rowle the past, then roule it forth with the top of a bowle, then prick them with a pin made of wood, or if you have a comb that hath not been used, that will do them quickly, and is best to that purpose, so bake them upon pye plates.”

Eating so many sweets led to a significant problem among the upper classes: rotting teeth. But this became quite the status symbol, and cosmetics were sold to blacken people’s teeth, such that even those who couldn’t afford sugar could mimic the fashionable look.

Our final recipe, for “Apple Pufs” or fruit-filled pancakes, comes from John Murrell’s A New Booke of Cookerie, published in 1615:

“Take a Pomewater or any other Apple that is not hard, or harsh in taste: mince it small with a dozen or twenty Razins of the Sonne: wet the Apples in two Egges, beat them all together with the backe of a knife, or a Spoone. Season them with Nutmeg, Rosewater, Sugar, and Ginger: drop them into a Frying-pan with a Spoone, frye them like Egges, wring on the juyce of an Orenge, or Lemmon, and serve.”

Please enjoy these dishes from Shakespeare’s days.

As Duke Senior says to Jaques in the Bard’s As You Like It: “Sit down and feed, and welcome to our table.”

Lamb Chops with Ale and Dried Fruit

In Shakespeare’s Kitchen: Renaissance Recipes for the Contemporary Cook, Francine Segan writes: “An Elizabethan physician notes in The Haven of Health that dates ‘are commonly used at delicate feasts, to set forth other meats, and are counted restorative.’”

2 large onions, thinly sliced

3 sprigs rosemary

4 sprigs thyme

¼ cup chopped parsley

½ teaspoon cinnamon

½ teaspoon ginger

½ teaspoon nutmeg

¼ teaspoon cloves

12 loin lamb chops

1 teaspoon salt

½ teaspoon black pepper

8 large dried plums

4 dried apricots

¼ cup raisins

10 dates

¼ cup currants

12 ounces ale or beer

Preheat the oven to 375F.

Lay the onion slices on the bottom of a lightly buttered baking pan. Scatter the rosemary, thyme, parsley, cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, and cloves over the onions. Season the lamb chops with the salt and pepper, and lay in a single layer over the herbs.

Sprinkle the fruits over the chops and pour on the ale. Cover tightly with aluminum foil, and bake for 30 minutes or until the meat is cooked to medium.

Preheat the broiler. Remove the aluminum foil from the pan and broil the lamb chops for 2 to 3 minutes, or until the meat is browned.

Spoon the onions and dried fruits in the center of a serving platter and top with the lamb chops. Drizzle the cooking juices over the chops.

Yield: 6 servings

Source: Adapted from Francine Segan, Shakespeare’s Kitchen

Shrewsbury Cakes

This recipe for large, decorative shortbread cookies was adapted from one for Shropshire Cakes in Peter Brears’ Traditional Food in Shropshire.

1 pound flour

1 cup sugar

½ teaspoon cinnamon

1 cup butter, chilled

2 eggs

½ teaspoon rose water (see note)

Preheat the oven to 350F. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper.

Mix all the dry ingredients together in a bowl, then rub in the butter until the mixture is crumbly. Mix the eggs and rose water together, pour over the dry ingredients, then knead to form a stiff dough.

Divide the dough into 16 equal balls. Place two balls of dough onto each of the prepared baking sheets, spacing them well apart. Pat each one into a 5-inch round.

Use a clean, fine-toothed comb to score a diamond pattern in the dough: press parallel lines ½ inch apart going in one direction, then press a set of parallel lines perpendicular to the first ones. Use the non-pointed end of a wooden skewer to press an indentation into the center of each diamond.

Bake for 12 minutes until the cakes are set but not yet starting to brown. Let cool.

Note: Rose water is available at Middle Eastern markets.

Yield: 16 cakes

Source: Adapted from atasteofthepast.wordpress.com

Apple Pancakes

In The Cookbook Library: Four Centuries of the Cooks, Writers, and Recipes That Made the Modern Cookbook, Anne Willan says the original recipe calls for the eggs to be beaten with the back of a knife, because “our four-tined table forks ... had not yet appeared in the kitchen” in Shakespeare’s time. They didn’t become common in Europe until the 18th century.

1 medium dessert apple, peeled, quartered, and cored

2 tablespoons dark or golden raisins

2 eggs

¼ teaspoon nutmeg

½ teaspoon rose water, or to taste (see note)

3 tablespoons sugar

2 tablespoons flour

½ teaspoon ground ginger

2 tablespoons butter, melted

1 orange, halved

With a large knife, coarsely chop the apples. Chop the raisins, add the apple, and then chop them together until quite fine and clinging to each other.

In a bowl, whisk the eggs until frothy, then stir in the apple mixture, nutmeg, rose water, sugar, flour, and ginger.

Heat a nonstick frying pan over medium heat until a drop of batter sizzles immediately on contact. Brush the pan with some of the melted butter.

Drop egg-sized spoonfuls of batter into the hot pan to form 2-inch pancakes. Fry them until browned on the first side, flip, and brown the other side, 1 to 2 minutes’ total cooking. Transfer to a plate and keep warm. Cook the remaining batter in the same manner, brushing with more butter between batches.

Divide the pancakes between two warmed plates, sprinkle each serving with a squeeze or two of orange juice, and serve at once.

Note: Rose water is available at Middle Eastern markets.

Yield: 14 silver dollar-sized pancakes

Source: Adapted from Anne Willan, The Cookbook Library

Contact Mary Bilyeu at mbilyeu@theblade.com or 419-724-6155 or on Twitter @BladeFoodPage.

First Published September 6, 2016, 4:00 a.m.

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