Tasting History with Max Miller
Published 27 Mar 2024Medieval stew with meat, spices, and verjuice, and thickened with egg yolks
City/Region: England
Time Period: 15th CenturySome medieval taverns may have had what is called a perpetual stew bubbling away. The idea is basically what it sounds like: as stew was taken out, more ingredients would be added in so that the stew kept on stewing. In southern France, there was a perpetual stew that was served from the 15th century (around when this recipe was written) all the way up until WWII, when they couldn’t get the right ingredients.
I have opted to not make this stew perpetual, but it is delicious. The medieval flavor of super tender meat with spices and saffron is so interesting, especially with the added acidity and sweetness from the verjuice.
A note on thickening with egg yolks: if you need to reheat your stew after adding the egg yolks, like I did, they may scramble a bit. The stew is still delicious, it’s just the texture that changes a little and it won’t be quite as thick.
Vele, Kede, or Henne in bokenade
Take Vele, Kyde, or Henne, an boyle hem in fayre Water, or ellys in freysshe brothe, and smyte hem in pecys, and pyke hem clene; an than draw the same brothe thorwe a straynoure, an caste there-to Percely, Swag, Ysope, Maces, Clowys, an let boyle tyl the flesshe be y-now; than sette it from the fyre, and alye it up with raw yolkys of eyroun, and caste ther-to pouder Gyngere, Veriows, Safroun, and Salt, and thanne serve it forth for a gode mete.
— Harleian Manuscript 279, 15th Century
July 9, 2024
What it was like to visit a Medieval Tavern
QotD: “No official Propaganda Department has ever been half as effective as Twitter and Facebook”
Straight off, we know one thing they wouldn’t do — create a Reich Culture Chamber or Department of Enlightenment. To be fair to the Commies and Nazis, they probably didn’t have much of a choice in their home countries — totalitarianism being what it is, and Europeans being what they are — but the Soviets, at least, soon saw the error of their ways, and let the free market handle it overseas. 99% of the USSR’s propaganda effort was done pro bono by Western “intellectuals”, and that’s how it’s done — convince cripplingly insecure dorks that they’re oh so smart for parroting your party line, and they’ll do all your dirty work for free.
Our overlords figured that out, give credit where it’s due. No official Propaganda Department has ever been half as effective as Twitter and Facebook. But that’s a problem, too, as we’re starting to see. The problem with freelance propaganda is the free market problem of marginal utility.
Facebook and Twitter are SJW cesspools. Everyone knows this. Even your sweet old granny, who is only on Facebook to exchange pie recipes and knitting ideas, knows this, because the #WokeStapo came for knitting years back. When the “trust and safety council” goes so far as to ban the sitting President of the United States, even hermits living in remote Himalayan caves got the message — toe the Party line on social media, or else.
This reduces the value of ALL information on social media to, effectively, zero. Sure, it might be true — and propaganda, as we know, works better the closer to the truth it steers — but given that they’ve even gone after knitting, for pete’s sake, means that any even halfway sorta quasi rational person assumes everything on social media is nothing but propaganda.
Severian, “If They Were Clever”, Rotten Chestnuts, 2021-06-08.
