On Food and Cooking

These recipes from more than 500 years
ago show the great care with which
medieval cooks made sauces and jellies.
The broth recipe is remarkable for its exact
descriptions of consistency and stirring
time off the heat to prevent curdling.

Fish    or  Meat    Jelly

Cook [the fish or meat] in wine, verjuice,
and vinegar...then grind ginger, cinnamon,
cloves, grains of paradise, long pepper, and
infuse this in your bouillon, strain it, and
put it to boil with your meat; then take bay
leaves, spikenard, galingale, and mace, and
tie them in your bolting [flour-sieving]
cloth, without washing it, along with the
residue of the other spices, and put this to
boil with your meat; keep the pot covered
while it is on the fire, and when it is off the
fire keep skimming it until the preparation
is served up; and when it is cooked, strain
your bouillon into a clean wooden vessel