An Elizabethan classic that makes for a fun modern side dish!
Jane has been a great addition to the blog because experimenting with Tudor and Elizabethan recipes can be a lot of fun. Sometimes, the flavor profile is just a little bit off from a modern perspective, and some recipes I'm not sure I'm brave enough to ever try myself, but a lot of the recipes I've posted about here are actually pretty tasty, as well as being interesting.
Take this pea tart for example! I was clued into this recipe from Joyce White's A Taste of History blog, which I've shared with you guys before. Joyce is a really talented food historian and the past recipes I've tried from her arsenal have come out pretty well. This pea tart - actually a pea pie - is adapted from a 1596 cookbook by Thomas Dawson entitled Good Housewife's Jewel. It's a really easy recipe to try out in your own home, and with the exception of one key ingredient, you won't have to look high or low for most of the components.
What's that ingredient, you ask?
Take this pea tart for example! I was clued into this recipe from Joyce White's A Taste of History blog, which I've shared with you guys before. Joyce is a really talented food historian and the past recipes I've tried from her arsenal have come out pretty well. This pea tart - actually a pea pie - is adapted from a 1596 cookbook by Thomas Dawson entitled Good Housewife's Jewel. It's a really easy recipe to try out in your own home, and with the exception of one key ingredient, you won't have to look high or low for most of the components.
What's that ingredient, you ask?
Verjuice! Verjuice was an extremely popular seasoning ingredient in the medieval period. Originally developed by the Romans, it's a vinegar-like liquid made from unripened grapes. You can make it in your own home if you have access to a grape arbor or a farmer's market that might have unripe grapes for sale, but you can also order it from a Middle Eastern specialty shop or other retailers, as it's still a popular ingredient in Middle Eastern cuisine.
I'd never tried verjuice before, and was very interested to see how it would turn out. Joyce White describes it as a good substitute for vinegar or lemon juice - slightly fruity, but definitely acidic. My wife helped me track some down - and ordered some yummy falafel mix while we were at it! - so now we have this giant bottle of it in our fridge. I must say, I was bummed I didn't have a chance to make it myself, but I guess there's still time for that to happen, right?
The rest of this pea tart is absolutely something Jane would have had access to in Jamestown, especially considering the English reliance on peas as a staple food for their early American colonies, as discussed in our Pease Pottage post. However, Joyce White has adapted it to be a lot more palatable to a modern audience. Remember, this is a period when pie crusts were not expected to be eaten. They were called coffins, and were often tough, flavorless, and reused from pie to pie, sort of like a prototype of Tupperware.
Instead, White instructs readers to just use some store bought puff pastry, which is nearly impossible to ruin and tastes really lovely when cooked. After letting it thaw, she instructs you to line the bottom of a deep dish pie tin with it and then set it aside in the fridge while you assemble the filling.
As an aside, I realized while making this that I apparently don't have a pie pan. This really feels like either I had one and it's fallen through a black hole, or I just somehow have let my lack of pie pan slip my mind this whole time and this is the first recipe where I've actually needed it. Either way, onto the wedding registry one goes, and I used a cake pan instead. This probably worked out for the best because it gave me more depth than most non deep dish pie pans would give me, so it was actually able to hold all my peas.
Next, take five cups of fresh or frozen peas and blanch them in boiling water for about 90 seconds. Transfer them to an ice bath to cool, then drain them and put them in a large bowl for the other ingredients. For seasoning, add two tablespoons of butter, 1/2 teaspoon of salt and 1/4 teaspoon of pepper. White - and the original recipe she's adapting - also instructs you to add 1/8 teaspoon of saffron, but I skipped this because I didn't have any on hand and saffron probably would have been pretty precious to the Jamestown settlers, especially in the earlier days of the settlement, and even after the colony was well established, saffron is an expensive, difficult to harvest spice. It seems a little unrealistic that a comfortably middle class family like the Colliers would have had access to it for use in a simple pea tart.
The filling gets dumped directly into your uncooked pie shell. I knew this meant the pie was going to come out with a soggy bottom, but I'll explain why that didn't bug me at the end of the post.
Add the top crust, crimp the edges however you see fit, and cut a hole bit enough to fit a funnel. This is how the verjuice is going to go in, but first, the pie needs to bake in a 350 oven for 45 minutes.
Once the timer beeped, I took the pie out and was pleased to see it was nice and golden brown. I carefully poured 1/4 of a cup of verjuice into the vent I created and shook the pan as instructed to make sure it touched every part of the pie.
Eight more minutes in the oven, and you've got yourself a cooked pea tart ready for consumption.
Now, as you can probably tell from the photos, the bottom did indeed disintegrate. Again, this didn't really bug me or surprise me because 1. the filling didn't really have any real body to it and was very loose with nothing binding it together and 2. this is supposed to be a recipe before the crust would really be considered edible. The original version of the recipe would probably produce a really tough, solid crust that would resist this sogginess, but modern puff pastry is too delicate to do the same. The sides and top of my pie were delicious and perfectly flaky, but the bottom was swimming in verjuice. If this is going to bother you, I'd recommend ditching accuracy and just baking a top crust, or blind baking the base with some pie weights. It might not save it completely, but it might help it keep its structure.
That said, this pie was definitely tasty. I was a little unsure of what to make of it going in because I'd never tried verjuice before, and my main experience with sour grapes comes from a childhood of picking grapes from my great-grandfather's grape arbor. Every year, my siblings, cousins and I would go out and eat grapes off the vine, hoping they wouldn't taste awful this year, and every year they were extremely sour, with very thick skins. The smell of the verjuice really reminded me of this, and tasting it out of the bottle definitely brought those memories back as well. However, cooked in the pie, it was a much more subtle, fruity flavor with just a hint of sourness that perfectly complimented the peas. The peas were nice and warm, with just enough salt and pepper, and the top crust was flaky and tasty. It made a really good side dish to a steak my wife cooked, and I'm sure it'll hold up reasonably well as leftovers over the next couple days.
Medieval or Tudor era recipes can often seem intimidating, gross, or complicated, especially when you're looking at the original recipe. This adaptation is totally approachable and something I'd really encourage you to try out for yourself. It's an interesting way to enjoy one of my favorite veggies, and brings a once household name in western kitchen back to the spotlight. I'm very interested to see what other applications I can find for this tasty, new to me ingredient!
I'd never tried verjuice before, and was very interested to see how it would turn out. Joyce White describes it as a good substitute for vinegar or lemon juice - slightly fruity, but definitely acidic. My wife helped me track some down - and ordered some yummy falafel mix while we were at it! - so now we have this giant bottle of it in our fridge. I must say, I was bummed I didn't have a chance to make it myself, but I guess there's still time for that to happen, right?
The rest of this pea tart is absolutely something Jane would have had access to in Jamestown, especially considering the English reliance on peas as a staple food for their early American colonies, as discussed in our Pease Pottage post. However, Joyce White has adapted it to be a lot more palatable to a modern audience. Remember, this is a period when pie crusts were not expected to be eaten. They were called coffins, and were often tough, flavorless, and reused from pie to pie, sort of like a prototype of Tupperware.
Instead, White instructs readers to just use some store bought puff pastry, which is nearly impossible to ruin and tastes really lovely when cooked. After letting it thaw, she instructs you to line the bottom of a deep dish pie tin with it and then set it aside in the fridge while you assemble the filling.
As an aside, I realized while making this that I apparently don't have a pie pan. This really feels like either I had one and it's fallen through a black hole, or I just somehow have let my lack of pie pan slip my mind this whole time and this is the first recipe where I've actually needed it. Either way, onto the wedding registry one goes, and I used a cake pan instead. This probably worked out for the best because it gave me more depth than most non deep dish pie pans would give me, so it was actually able to hold all my peas.
The filling gets dumped directly into your uncooked pie shell. I knew this meant the pie was going to come out with a soggy bottom, but I'll explain why that didn't bug me at the end of the post.
Add the top crust, crimp the edges however you see fit, and cut a hole bit enough to fit a funnel. This is how the verjuice is going to go in, but first, the pie needs to bake in a 350 oven for 45 minutes.
That said, this pie was definitely tasty. I was a little unsure of what to make of it going in because I'd never tried verjuice before, and my main experience with sour grapes comes from a childhood of picking grapes from my great-grandfather's grape arbor. Every year, my siblings, cousins and I would go out and eat grapes off the vine, hoping they wouldn't taste awful this year, and every year they were extremely sour, with very thick skins. The smell of the verjuice really reminded me of this, and tasting it out of the bottle definitely brought those memories back as well. However, cooked in the pie, it was a much more subtle, fruity flavor with just a hint of sourness that perfectly complimented the peas. The peas were nice and warm, with just enough salt and pepper, and the top crust was flaky and tasty. It made a really good side dish to a steak my wife cooked, and I'm sure it'll hold up reasonably well as leftovers over the next couple days.
Medieval or Tudor era recipes can often seem intimidating, gross, or complicated, especially when you're looking at the original recipe. This adaptation is totally approachable and something I'd really encourage you to try out for yourself. It's an interesting way to enjoy one of my favorite veggies, and brings a once household name in western kitchen back to the spotlight. I'm very interested to see what other applications I can find for this tasty, new to me ingredient!
Or I can just make more of these pies, I suppose...
The logic behind the old ingredients always impresses me. Silphium, for example...only that remains a mystery.
ReplyDeleteInteresting pie. I can think of other things I would rather do with peas though.
I'd make it again! The leftovers have made for a good vegetarian, fiber filled lunch.
Delete