Sensing Shakespeare - Cooking

 

I decided to prepare Frittars of Eggs and Herbes from the archives! I chose this recipe because it seemed similar to other meal preps I make for breakfast. I thought I could make enough for me and my sister's dinner, and then have the leftovers for the rest of the week. I wanted to be sure that the recipe I chose was one I wanted to eat. 

Here are my ingredients gathered. I want to point out that I added thyme and sage, in addition to using dried oregano which I rehydrated, because I already had it in my cupboard. 

In addition to the recipe which took little prep, it was cheap because it was made of ingredients I already used, and I added some micro greens. These were not part of the recipe, but I needed to use them up and I wanted to beef up the recipe because I wanted it to last me a few days. 

Here is a picture of it in the pan! I was getting tired because I had come home from work and I hate cooking after a long day, so I did not end up forming individual "frittars" as was suggested. The cake format cut into triangles worked well and was quick! 

Cooking was very fun, quick, and the finished product was good, very fresh and definitely herbaceous! Not only that, but my sister was a fan, and she can sometimes be hard to please in terms of cooking. AND, not only that, she requested I make it again! Big score! 

My method of recipe following may not have been precise or exactly historically accurate, but it reflected my actual culinary needs in a manner that benefitted my life. I feel this experience of tailoring the dish to fit not only my personal desires (by adding ingredients like the micro greens), but also my budgetary needs (by choosing a recipe with ingredients I had or could use in other meals going forward into the week) gave me a greater understanding of perhaps the more everyday lives of the people watching Shakespeare's plays, and depicted within. 

The resource I chose to explore in connection with my project further informed me about the different ways people of different social classes interacted with cooking and with food. From the Folger Shakespeare Libarary's webpage entitled "Foodways - Before Farm to Table," a post exploring a cookbook by an elite British woman in the 1600s is explored and annotated. Within, the author of the post points out that written recipes probably were not so much for the actual application of cooking, rather "may have served as a signal of wealth and status rather than a record of an actual dish cooked in someone’s kitchen." The quote is in reference to an ambergris cake, made with calcified parts of a sperm whale stomach. So while I was limited in what I might have been able to choose to make, the recipes I did choose were maybe not an exact reflection of what people were eating. This is my first reason for not following the recipe to a T. 

In addition, according to the website, recipes were less functional instruction because the instructions contained within assumed "a greater level of implicit knowledge on the part of cooks, who were expected to already have learned the technical processes involved in cooking and baking." When I was perusing the sources I was thinking of using, this became a main reason why I did not feel it was too necessary to stick so closely to the historically-accurate recipe. I have knowledge about cooking and baking, I know what will work for my life, and that in and of itself is probably more historically accurate than not. 

In connection with the play, now that I have tasted the food, I can imagine that this sort of fare every day could become tiring. While I have an appreciation and general desire for somewhat simple fare, I think of specifically The Twelfth Night, and the introduction of Sir Toby Belch, and the wider attitude of celebration. If I was only really going to have sugary deserts just a few nights of the year, I feel I would also have an attitude with a servant telling me something different! While fresh food is good, it is sometimes nice to have cake. If sugar was brand new, trust and believe I would be partying to the max with my cakes and ale! 

In any case, I enjoyed this project. While I still cannot really imagine what it would have been like to live in Shakespeare's time, cooking a dish from that era gave me a greater appreciation for how important celebrations must have been during that era. 

Link to FSL Foodways source. 

Walkden, M. (n.d.). Page and Plate: Reading Early Modern Recipe Books . Before Farm to Table, Folger Shakespeare Library