Cooking Experiments and Key Learnings
Beet & Pork Soup
White beet-leaves soup is so-called because it is made from the white part of the beet-leaves, with backbone, with
sausages, and with ham, in the seasons of autumn and winter, on meat days; and know that no other fat than that
of pork is good with it. And first you clean, wash, and mince them, and blanch them, that is in summer when the
beet-leaves are young: but in winter, when the beet-leaves are older and tougher, they should be parboiled
instead of blanched, and if it is a fish day, after the above you must put them in a pot with hot water and so cook
them, and also cook minced onions, then fry the onions, and then fry the beet-leaves with the onions which have
already been fried; then put all to cook in a pot with cow's milk, if it is a fish day not in Lent; and if it is Lent, use
milk of almonds. And if it is a meat day, when the beet-leaves are blanched, or winter beet-leaves are parboiled as
told above, put them in a pot to cook in salted water, with pork and bacon in it.
http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Medieval/Cookbooks/Menagier/Menagier.html#Ordering
Findings: This recipe sounds like YUK! Beets, Pork and Milk? You know its going to be bad!. First thing I did was
do a search beets, and turns out that beets are actually part of larger family that includes chard. http://en.
wikipedia.org/wiki/Beet. I then searched further trying to figure out what the sausages were made of. In the same
compilation of recipes I found this :
To Make Sausages. When you have killed your pig, take some chops, first from the part they call the filet, and
then take some chops from the other side and some of the best fat, as much of the one as of the other, enough
to make as many sausages as you need; and have it finely chopped and ground by a pastry-cook. Then grind
fennel and a little fine salt, and then take your ground fennel, and mix thoroughly with a quart [129] of powdered
spices; then mix your meat, your spices and your fennel thoroughly together, and then fill the guts, that is to
say, the small gut. (And know that the guts of an old porker are better for this purpose than those of a young
pig, because they are larger.) And after this, smoke them for four days or more, and when you want to eat them,
put them in hot water and bring just to boiling, and then put on the grill.
I then searched the web for more modern recipes of beet soup. Most include some type of yogurt/sour cream or
cream fresh. So I used raw milk because it has a higher milk fat.
Going into this I just knew it was going to taste horrible but I was willing to try.
I used two types of leaves. Regular red beet leaves, and white chard. I made two batches of the recipe using the
same ingredients to determine if the flavor changed.
I used smoked bacon to give the smoke flavor (as if the sausages were smoked).
I rolled the pork sausage into balls because I did not have any prepared sausage.
I chopped the leaves up fine and then chopped one white onion fine. I put the bacon in a deep fry pan and fried
it until it released the fat. I then added the leaves, onions, sausage, and fennel, pepper a little salt and some
dill. I cooked this for about 20 minutes and then added 1 cup water. I cooked an additional 20 minutes then
added about 2 cups raw milk. I cooked this down until thicker (15 more minutes). I then tasted it… OMG!
So Yummy!
It had the rich flavor from the milk, the yummy smoky flavor from the bacon and the porky goodness from the
sausage!...
In a taste test Corwyn determined that the chard was the best.
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