A Recipe

Recipe

I previously mentioned the BELL cookbook and that has turned my mind to recipes. Here is one I didn't submit (can't think why) but would like to share. It is simple to cook and has stood the test of time since the Middle Ages. The dish was in fact mentioned in one of Shakespeare's plays although it originates from several centuries before. It is a stew, often known at the time as a brew. You just boil up all the ingredients together and the resulting dish is truly bewitching. Make it to warm your friends this winter!

In contrast to the simplicity of cooking, some of the ingredients will be difficult to obtain nowadays. It hardly needs pointing out that much has changed in the intervening centuries and so some ingredients are simply not obtainable in shops nowadays, others present a challenge to the squeamish and yet others are of dubious legality now. However, I have annotated them below to suggest modern alternatives where necessary.

Ingredients

1.1 Toad
2.Poisoned entrails
3.Fillet of fenny snake
4.1 Newt's eye
5.1 Frog's toe
6.Bat's wool
7.1 Dog's tongue
8.Tongues of adder and slow worm (one of each)
9.1 Lizard's leg
10.1 Owl wing
11.1 Dragon's scale
12.1 Wolf's tooth
13.1 Shark's head
14.1 Hemlock root
15.1 Jew's liver
16.1 Goat's gall bladder
17.Yew twigs
18.1 Baby's finger
19.Tiger's entrails
20.Baboon's blood

Notes

It's probably not advisable just to present this list to your favourite local butcher; he is unlikely to have many of the ingredients anyway. I've simplified the ingredients slightly, omitting some that I deemed unnecessary, but the list remains challenging. Items 1,4,5,6,7,8,9,14, and 17 present few problems, other than that of hunting the creatures and gathering. A good Sunday afternoon walk in the countryside should secure many of them. Actually, several healthy Sunday walks may be required. So much the better! However do be careful when collecting item 7; a very strong (and thick) pair of gloves is recommended to avoid a severely bitten hand.

For item 2 we can allow for the fancifulness of the times; focus on the flavour and assume simply that the offal should be rotted a little. For item 3 it is reasonable to assume that most available snakes will taste much the same so any common snake may be substituted. Similarly, for the rather fanciful dragon's scale (sign of the times!) probably any animal scale would do, although fish scales should be avoided. There may be scaled lizards near where you live or a neighbour's tortoise pet may not miss a piece of it's shell (it has rather a lot). Again, for item 12 a dog's tooth would probably do just as well as a wolf's (but do remember those gloves!) and for item 16 we could substitute a sheep's gall bladder, if there are no goats near you, without compromising the integrity of our dish.

Items 10,13,15, 18,19 and 20 do present rather more intractable problems in so far as owls, sharks, tigers, baboons, jews and babies are all to some degree protected species. And you can't blame all of that on the EU. Not all sharks are protected though and the recipe doesn't specify any particular type of shark. (Once again, watch those hands!) For the owl's wing you may be lucky on your Sunday walk and find a dead one or, if you have a cat you may get lucky. Failing that, I suggest you substitute the wing of any fully fledged bird. A cat my be the solution to item 19 too, a tiger being simply a larger species of cat. You may need the entrails of more than one cat, though, to make up the quantity.

Item 20 allows for an easy substitution. As those of you up on your vampirology will know, most red-bloodied mammals' blood tastes similar and so any such mammal can be substituted. No specific quantity is prescribed but I suggest you use the blood as nowadays we would use a good red wine.

Items 15 and 18 may prove the most difficult. It's not obvious why the liver of a jew is specified or why the finger has to be that of a baby, except that it may be assumed to be more tender and the bone more gelatinous. We can discount jewishness but, even so, a human liver will be difficult to obtain. (I keep my eye on the news so know that there is a waiting list for transplants). You may have to substitute sheep's or pig's liver. Similarly, oxtail could be substituted for the baby's finger but will not have the same gelatinous quality. Perhaps a rodent's tail (minus any hair) would do.

Unfortunately, apart from the above substitutions I have little to suggest. If there is an accident black spot near where you live............but perhaps we won't elaborate on that.

There are some specifics in the original recipe that I have discarded as fanciful. For instance, the baby's finger should have been cut from a baby born to a prostitute in a ditch and strangled at birth. Whilst these details were no doubt easy to meet in former times I cannot see how they would affect the flavour and so have discarded them.

Anyway, good luck with collecting the ingredients. Just give them a good rolling boil when you have them all and Bon Appétit.

PS I find this dish goes down particularly well at Halloween party