Ryshews of Fruit, Redacted

This recipe is from the Forme of Cury.  A full copy is available online, here: http://www.pbm.com/~lindahl/foc/
The Forme of Cury is a 14th century English manuscript.

First, a quick note about redaction.  Medieval cookbooks don't give amounts, and in many cases, directions.  They assume that you know how to cook.  These manuscripts are more of a set of reminders of what goes in specific dishes than what we would modernly call a recipe.  Because of all these factors, there are many ways that the recipe could be interpreted.  To redact is to take these clues and make them into a modern recipe, with amounts and directions.  If you are a beginner cook, don't try to redact by yourself, at least at first.  On the other hand, if you think your redaction is better than ours, that's great! 

Ryshews of Fruit

Ingredients:
1/2 cup raisins
1/2 cup dried figs
Red wine
2 small apples
1 large pear
1/4 tsp each of ginger, cinnamon, nutmeg
1/8 tsp cloves
2 Tbs white sugar
3-5 Tbs white flour

Directions:
Chop the raisins and figs fine.  We used a pair of kitchen scissors to chop up the dried fruit in a shallow bowl.  Pour red wine over the dried fruit, and let it sit for at least an hour. 
Combine the ginger, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves and sugar, set aside.  Peel the apples and pears, and chop them fine.  Grind the apples and pears.  We used a mortar and pestle, you could also substitute a blender or food processor. 
Next you need to grind the raisin and fig mixture in with the apple and pear mash.  Drain the fruit, discarding the wine (or you can use if to make other projects, it is yummy). Add the chopped dried fruit that has been soaked in wine to the mashed apple and pear, in whatever you've been using to mash.  Make sure the dried and fresh fruit are well mixed, and not extreemly lumpy. 
To the fruit mixture, add the spice mixture, and approximately 3-5 Tbs of white flour.  The amount of flour will depend on how much juice is in the fruit mixture.  It should be just sticky enough to roll into balls.  Roll into balls about 1 inch in diameter, then roll each in white flour.  Set the rolled balls aside while you heat up the oil. 

In a heavy bottomed pan, put vegetable oil to a depth of about 1.5 inches.  Heat on medium heat until hot but not smoking.  We tested every 30 seconds or so by CAREFULLY sprinkling in a tiny amount of water.  CAUTION!  If you pour water in, it could explode in your face, put in a FEW DROPS!  The water is ready when it sizzles sharply. 

Put each fruit ball in individually.  The oil should sizzle with each one.  Keep in mind that with each addition, the oil temperature drops slightly, so don't add them too fast.  We fried them in small batches to keep the oil at a good temperature.  Allow to cook for approximately one minute.   The goal is to have them be golden brown on the outside, while soft and tender on the inside.  Drain the fritters well before serving. 

Herb Fritter recipe

Frytour of Erbes / Herb Fritter


Ingredients
• 3 cups flour
• 1+ cup water
• 1 package baker's yeast
• 1/4 tsp salt
• vegetable oil for frying
• Fresh herbs-what you have available, e.g.,
• 2 Tbs fresh sage
• 1 Tbs fresh thyme
• 4-5 Tbs fresh parsely
• 1 Tbs fresh oregano
• 1 Tbs fresh rosemary
• 1 Tbs fresh marjoram
• honey for dipping
Directions
Dissolve yeast in warm water with a small amount of honey to get it started working. Set in a warm spot for ½ hour to an hour.
Combine salt with flour, then add in the foaming yeast and water to the flour, and mix the batter by hand. Let sit for a few minutes.
Chop up the herbs very finely. You can either keep them separate, to make some fritters just of sage, some of parsely, etc, or combine all the herbs together.
Mix the herbs into the batter.
Heat up oil, 1" deep, in a pan on the stove at medium high temp. Check that the temp is good before frying all fritters- drop in a small amount of dough at first ( you want it to turn golden brown & puff up a little bit.)
Form patties of dough in your hand, (~1 Tbs each), and pat out into a thin pancake before carefully dropping them into hot oil to fry. Flip & pull out when golden brown.
Makes approx 1 doz large fritters to 3 doz small.
You can dip the fritters in clear honey for a nice compliment.

Recipe Information
The source is Forme of Cury out of Curye on Inglysch, a collection of English recipe manuscripts from the fourteenth century. Forme of Cury; “Fryto’ of Erbes” XX. VII.XI.
You can see it online at: http://www.pbm.com/~lindahl/foc/FoC109small.html

14th Century Sweet and Savory Fritters

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