Cooking Around the Calendar

A very tasty medieval green sauce.

In the medieval times, anyone who could afford it used a lot of spices in their cooking. Whenever this is mentioned, I often hear the comment that the cooks were trying to disguise bad meat. This couldn’t be much farther from the truth. Spices were a very expensive luxury; many imported from Asia, and kept under lock and key.

The recipe books we see from the middle ages were how the wealthy ate. And they loved to show off their precious spices! The common people would season their food (if at all) with herbs that were locally grown.

The spices that we typically use only in sweet dishes, were commonly used in sauces to accompany meats.

The recipe source for my green sauce comes from The Liber de Coquina; The Book of Good Cooking.  The text consists of two independent parts, mostly cited as Part One; Tractatus and Part Two; Liber de Coquina. The titles are taken from marginal notes by the medieval editor. While the identity of both the authors is unknown, scholars believed that the Tractatus was originally written by a French author and the Liber de Coquina by an Italian author.

Recipe in the original Latin, “Salsa viridi. ad salsam viridem accipe petrosillum cum menta, fusticel- las, cardamomum, nucem muscatam, piper, gariofilum, zinziber. Tere omnia in mortario fortiter et cum eis tere parum de mica panis. Et si vis, potes ponere allea. Distempera cum bono aceto. “.

Recipe in modern English, “Green Sauce. To make green sauce, take parsley with mint, fusticelli, cardamom, nutmeg, pepper, clove, and ginger. Crush everything vigorously in a mortar and pestle, and crush a small piece of bread with it. And if you want, add garlic. Mix it with good vinegar. 

Note: The term “fusticelli” probably refers to a type of aromatic bark, licorice or sandalwood here. M.A. Causati Vanni identified it as sumac in Il Convito dell’Imperatore. “.

I have listed two alternate period treatments of green sauce. Both recipes are similar to the Liber de Coquina recipe, each calling for a mix of fresh greens and spices.

The first recipe is from Le Viandier, a recipe collection generally credited to Guillaume Tirel, alias Taillevent, dating from around 1300, France. In this Saulce Verte, “grind untoasted white bread, a great quantity of parsley leaves with peeled ginger and sage; steep this in a mixture of vinegar and little verjuice, and strain it”.

The second recipe is from The Forme of Cury, a compilation of recipes of the Master Cooks of King Richard II, dating from the around 1390, England. This is the oldest known complete cookbook in English. This Verde Sawse calls for “parsley, mint, garlic, a little thyme and sage, a little cinnamon, ginger, pepper, wine bread vinegar and salt. Grind it small with saffron”.

A quick humble brag; I won the last Trial by Fire with this recipe; both in the Vegetable catagory, and also as the overall winner.

Green Sauce

A medieval sauce which is likely the ancestor of modern pesto.

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Course: Condiment, Side Dish

Cuisine: Italian, Medieval

Ingredients Method Notes

Ingredients

  

• 2 cups fresh flat leaf parsley
• 12 fresh mint leaves
• 1 or 2 slices dry sourdough bread crumbled
• 4 fresh garlic cloves chopped
• 1 tablespoon fresh grated ginger root
• 1 teaspoon ground nutmeg
• 1 teaspoon black pepper
• 1/2 teaspoon ground sumac
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cardamom
• 1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
• 3 tablespoons white wine
• 2 tablespoons white vinegar

Method

 

1. Remove parsley and mint leaves from their stems, and coarsly chop.
2. Using a large mortar and pestle, pound the leaves into to a paste.
3. Add the dry bread, garlic, ginger, nutmeg, pepper, sumac, cardamom and cloves to the mortar. Pound all the ingredients until you have a very fine paste.
4. Add the white wine and white vinegar, and mix until you have a smooth consistency.

Notes

Unless you are trying for historical accuracy, it’s so much easier to make this in a food processor, or blender.

Tried this recipe?

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