Saturday, January 26, 2019

Ideas for using up plentiful parsley

I have a surfeit of parsley in the garden. Working my way through the an excellent index of recipies, looking for dishes that are primarily parsley.

The sources say:

Le Viandier de Taillevent (French, 1375-1390)
  • fry meat (especially poultry) in parsley, onions and fat
  • serve fish with a green sauce or parsley and vinegar
  • add to herb mixes
  • green colouring agent
84. Green egg and cheese soup.
Take parsley, a bit of sage, just a bit of saffron in the greens, and soaked bread, and steep in puree [of peas] or boiled water. Add ginger steeped in wine, and boil. Add the cheese, and the eggs when they have been poached in water. It should be thick and bright green. Some do not add bread, but add almond milk.

26. Bright green soup.
Cook whatever meat you wish in wine, water and beef broth, with pork fat to give it taste. Brown your meat well. Grind ginger, saffron, parsley, a bit of sage (if you wish), some raw egg yolks, and bread; strain everything through cheesecloth; and steep in your broth. It needs a bit of verjuice, and good cheese (if you wish).
74. Bright green soup of eels.
Skin or scald them, and cook them in wine and water. Crush bread and parsley, with just a bit of saffron in the greens (to make it bright green), and soak in your broth. Crush ginger steeped in verjuice, and boil everything together. You can add good cheese cut into little cubes if you wish.
215. Green Sauce.
Take bread, parsley and ginger, crush well, and steep in verjuice and vinegar. (BN manuscript, p. 33.)

216. Green Verjuice [Sauce].
Take sorrel including the stem, steep in some other verjuice, strain [through cheesecloth], and add a bread crust so that it does not turn. (A 1490 printed edition quoted by Pichon et al., p. 194.)
Not a recipie for parsley, just interestign to see that parsley was not the only thing used this way.

221. Sauce for keeping saltwater fish.
Take bread, parsley, sage, avens, vinegar, ginger, cassia flowers, long pepper, cloves, grains of paradise, saffron powder and nutmeg. When everything is strained it should be bright green. Some add the avens including the root. (BN manuscript, p. 33.)

  • herb tarts
  • herb mixes
  • sauces (recipie not specified) for poultry
  • green colouring agent for chicken basted in 6 colours
Portions of Ein New Kochbuch (c. 1581)
  • garnish (with vinegar on hard boiled eggs, obn rice)
  • salad
  • colouring agent (for turkey)
  • in chicken hamburger patties (ok, no hamburger)
  • boil meatballs, harts lung in a broth of parsley
Du Fait de Cuisine (1420)
Bruet of Savoy
3. And again, another potage, that is a bruet of Savoy: to give understanding to him who will be charged with making this bruet, to take his poultry and the meat according to the quantity of it which he is told that he should make, and make ready his poultry and set to cook cleanly; and meat according to the quantity of potage which he is told to make, and put to boil with the poultry; and then take a good piece of lean bacon in a good place and clean it well and properly, and then put it to cook with the aforesaid poultry and meat; and then take sage, parsley, hyssop, and marjoram, and let them be very well washed and cleaned, and make them into a bunch without chopping and all together, and then put them to boil with the said potage and with the meat; and according to the quantity of the said broth take a large quantity of parsely well cleaned and washed, and brayed well and thoroughly in a mortar; and, being well brayed, check that your meat is neither too much or too little cooked and salted; and then according to the quantity of broth have white ginger, grains of paradise, and a little pepper, and put bread without the crust to soak with the said broth so that there is enough to thicken it; and being properly soaked, let it be pounded and brayed with the said parsley and spices, and let it be drawn and strained with the said broth; and put in wine and verjuice according as it is necessary. And all of the things aforesaid should be put in to the point where there is neither too little nor too much. And then, this done, put it to boil in a large, fair, and clean pot. And if it happens that the potage is too green, put in a little saffron, and this will make the green bright. And when it is to be arranged for serving, put your meat on the serving dishes and the broth on top.

looks like annother version of green soup

Liber Cure Cocorum (15th century English)
  • garnish
  • herb mix (including chicken stuffing, herb pies, haggis)
  • green colouring

114. For cabbage.
Take fresh broth of mutton clean,
Of veal and pork all anon;
Hack small your coleworts100 and parsley, then
When that it boils, cast them thereto,
Add a few groats among your coleworts
And seethe them forth I understand.
If you have salt flesh sethand101 I know,
Take a fresh piece out of the pot,
And seethe by itself, as I teach you;
Take up, put [it] in your coleworts then,
In the meanwhile you get good gravy
To garnish your coleworts at the last heat.
groats - crushed hulled cereal grains

I'm cooking:


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