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Goutte Housekeeping
a column on medieval cookery

Lorez Pies

Wulfric of Creigull

This recipe was my entry in the Cooking War Point competition at the Southern Shores Esfenn War. I'd boast that it won, except that it was the only entry.

*** regardless, though, I think it's still pretty a good dish. Pasties are great for tourneys because they are very portable, and you don't have to wash dishes after eating one.

Personal rant: a contest really can't be decided by just one dish so I expect to see quite a few entries in the upcoming Silver Spoon competitions. See last month's article if you're having doubts about entering.

Lorez Pies

Take meat well cooked and hashed fine, pine nuts, currants and cottage cheese chopped fine, and a little sugar and a little salt.

To make little Lorez pies, like great pies or those above, and fry them, and don't let them be too large, make rounds of pastry, and fry in deep fat until they are as hard as if cooked on the hearth. (Le Viandier de Taillevent)

3 cups chopped cooked pork
3 T pine nuts
1 1/2 cups currants

1/2 cup butter
1 1/2 cups white flour
1/2 cup stone ground wheat flour

crust:

6 ounces 'Farmer’s cheese"
2 T sugar pinch salt
pinch salt
4 5 T water

Mix flours and salt. Cut in butter. Add water until just melding together.

Boil pork in water until cooked. Drain and chop finely. Mix meat and other ingredients together. Roll out dough into small circles and fold over, crimp into pasties. Bake at 350° for 20 minutes, until brown.

I used pork as a "generic" easily available meat. Farmer's cheese is a generic whey-type cheese, which would likely have been widely obtainable (more so than specialized cheeses such as Emmenthal. Since the intent here is for a simple food that can be taken into battle, I elected to make a simple pie crust from period ingredients. A mixture of white and stoneground wheat is used to more closely approximate period common flour, which tended to be coarser than modem white flour. A more complex pie crust recipe is available ("To Make Short Paest for Tarte"): this calls for saffron and egg yolks in addition to flour and butter. This recipe is from the 16th century and seems likely to be used for more ornate pie crusts; in the interests of simplicity, I have omitted the extra ingredients.

I chose to bake these as pasties rather than frying; they are less greasy and easier to handle this way. Since they should be "as hard as if cooked on the hearth", I used a baking stone in the oven to achieve a better crispness. This also simulates cooking in a brick oven.

Sources:

Friedman, David, and Cook, Elizabeth. A Miscellany. 1992.

 



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