The Tudor Society
  • Tudor Cooking with Claire – A Tudor Fool

    Instead of my Claire Chats video this week I have made a “Tudor Cooking with Claire” video. One of my favourite desserts is trifle, so I was drawn to the recipes for “fools” in Tudor cookbooks.

    As I explain in the video, the recipe I use is a combination of Gervase Markham’s “A Norfolk Fool” and Peter Brears’ modern renditions of a Norfolk Fool and “Elizabeth Cromwell’s Fool. Here’s the recipe I used:

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  • Tudor Buttered Beere Video

    In my latest Tudor Cooking with Claire video I’ve made a recipe from Thomas Dawson’s 1594 book The good Huswifes Handmaide for the Kitchin which presumably was the inspiration for the drink butterbeer in the Harry Potter book

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  • Pears in Compote – Tudor Cooking with Claire

    For today’s Tudor Cooking with Claire video, I’m making a recipe dating back to the 15th century called Pears in Compote, or, as it’s written in the manuscript, Pears in Compost!

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  • Tudor Cooking with Claire – Lombard Slices (Leche Lombarde)

    In this edition of Tudor Cooking with Claire, I make Lombard Slices, also known as Leche Lombarde, a medieval sweetmeat. In the video, I read the original recipe which is found in Two Fifteenth Century Cookery Books and here it is:

    “Take fayre Hony, and clarifi yt on the fyre tylle it wexe hard, then take hard yolkys of Eyroun, & kryme a gode quantyte ther-to, tyl it be styf y-now; an thenne take it vppe, & ley it on a borde; then take fayre gratyd Brede, & pouder pepir, & molde it to-gederys with thine hondys, tylle it be so styf that it wole ben lechyd; then leche it; then take wyne & pouder Gyngere, Canelle, & a lytil claryfyid hony, & late renne thorw a straynour, & caste this Syryp ther-on, when thou shalt serue it out, instede of Clerye.”

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  • Tudor Cooking with Claire – Strawberry Tart

    I love strawberries so when I saw this Tudor/Stuart strawberry tart recipe I just had to give it a go. It was delicious and takes very little preparation and time.

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  • My Lady of Middlesex’s Syllabub

    For today’s Claire Chats I’m sharing a “Tudor Cooking with Claire” video that I have just done. In it, I make “My Lady of Middlesex’s Syllabub” recipe from the book The closet of Sir Kenelm Digby, knight, opened. It’s a really simple dessert and you can tell your guests that it’s an authentic Tudor recipe.

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  • Tudor Cooking with Claire – Bread and Butter Pudding

    For this week’s Claire Chats video, I decided to do a recipe from the November section of Elinor Fettiplace’s Receipt Book, a compilation of Elizabethan recipes by Lady Elinor Fettiplace. As I say in my video, I didn’t think it would be sweet enough with just sugar scattered over the top, but it actually was. It was a big hit at lunch, disappearing rapidly.

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  • Cooking with Claire – Tudor Buttered Sweet Potatoes

    In today’s Claire Chats video, I am cooking Buttered Sweet Potatoes from Elinor Fettiplaces’s Receipt Book: Elizabethan Country House Cooking edited and modernized by Hilary Spurling. The original book was compiled by Lady Elinor Fettiplace from Oxfordshire in 1604 and it’s a treasure trove of Tudor recipes divided into the months of the year. In the October section, I found a recipe entitled “To Butter Potato Roots” and that’s what I have made.

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