Le rost (noble meat course, heart of the banquet)
Grand Venison Pie in Crust
FestiveReconstruction🧂 🌶️difficile2h30 (including resting)
A firm, golden crust enclosing a stuffing of venison and bacon, perfumed with warm spices and sharpened with a dash of verjuice. It is sliced at table to reveal the tender meat, like a chest being opened.
Le rost (noble meat course, heart of the banquet)
A firm, golden crust enclosing a stuffing of venison and bacon, perfumed with warm spices and sharpened with a dash of verjuice. It is sliced at table to reveal the tender meat, like a chest being opened.
Come now, approach my table without ceremony! This pie I love above all, for the meat comes from my own hunts in Sologne, where I often chased the stag until nightfall. My master cook minces it finely with bacon, covers it with ginger and grains of paradise, moistens it with a stream of sharp verjuice, then seals it in its crust as one seals a letter with the royal seal. Believe me, nothing gladdens a hungry king more than a fine pie broken at the knife's point.
Ingredients
- •Venison (or wild boar) meat — a fine shoulder piece (game meat, heart of the pie)
- •Fat bacon — as needed (moisture and binder for the stuffing)
- •Fine wheat flour — as needed (firm pastry)
- •Lard — a good amount (pastry fat)
- •Eggs — a few (bind and glaze pastry)
- •Fine spices (ginger, pepper, cloves, nutmeg) — generously (court perfume)
- •Grains of paradise (melegueta pepper) — a pinch (signature spice, peppery warmth)
- •Verjuice — a dash (acidity that awakens the meat)
- •Salt — to taste (seasoning)
How it was made : At the time, the crust (the "coffin") served mainly as a waterproof container for cooking and preserving the meat; it was sometimes eaten, sometimes not. Pies could thus travel for several days. The stuffing was heavily spiced because spices, exorbitantly expensive, displayed the master's rank.
Sources : Le Viandier de Taillevent (medieval and Renaissance cookbook) · Le Ménagier de Paris (c. 1393) · Platine en françois — translation of Platina, De honesta voluptate (1505)