Thoughts on rhyming cheese tarts

Liber cure Cocorum - For flaunes.

I need to write down some notes for a major research project before I start experimentation. These notes will eventually be part of an Ice Dragon Pent project. But, in the meantime, this will be a way to focus my thoughts and to avoid any extraneous rabbit holes. 

On 2/27/22, on the facey-booky, I jokingly asked Mistress Cori Ghora, who was running the Ice Dragon Pentathlon that year, if I would get bonus points if I write my documentation in iambic pentameter. She replied, "No. Unless you can document why it would have been in iambic pentameter at the time and place your entry is from."

My exact response was, "*cracks knuckles* Challenge accepted. Next year's Ice Dragon prepare to be.... not amazed. What's the word? Confused?" There were some favorable comments on this chain. After some four hours of research, I found, not iambic pentameter, but an entire cookbook in rhyming couplets. The 15th century Liber cure Cocorum 

For flaunes.
Take new chese and grynde hit fayre,
In morter with egges, with out dysware;
Put powder þer to of sugur, I say,
Coloure hit with safrone ful wele þou may;
Put hit in cofyns þat bene fayre,
And bake hit forthe, I thee pray.

For tarts.
Take new cheese and grind it fair,
In [a] mortar with eggs, without doubt;
Put powder thereto of sugar, I say,
Color it with saffron quite well you may;
Put it in coffins that are fair,
And bake it forth, I thee pray.

I might have bitten off more than I can chew. First of all, I am not a baker. Secondly, as a cookbook, the Liber Cure Cocorum is a terrible cookbook. There are no measurements. There are no details to describe what to actually do. The only thing going for me is my research skills, my ability to make logical deductions, my love for cheese, and my inability to give up a challenge. 

In discussions with Cori, Katja and other more learned cooking/baking laurels, I have decided to make this one project a complete Ice Dragon Pentathlon project (entered into five major categories). This will be a research paper, a desert, a poem (I will create my own rhyming verse recipe), a presentation of the poem, and I will calligraph the poem on a scroll of my own illumination. By then, I should be well and truly done with cheese tarts.

So, almost six months after accepting this challenge, I think I am done with the bulk of the research and I am ready to start testing my theories. 

To begin with, what is this thing. Modern translations call it a cheese tart. Tart implies a small pie. Something for one or two people. The line of "Put hit in cofyns" implies that this recipe is intended for multiple flawnes, or tarts. Coffin, singular, would have implied that this was for a single, large pie. Coffins, coupled with tarts, leads me to conclude that this is for multiple small tarts.

Thomas Tusser's Five Hundred Pointes of Good Husbandrie, Volume 8 (1878) gives the following: "Flawnes;" a kind of pancake was also so called. Nettleham feast at Easter is called the Flawn, possibly from Flauns having been formerly eaten at that period of the year: but see Babees Book, p. 173, where Flawnes are started to be 'Cheesecakes made of ground cheese beaten up with eggs and sugar, coloured with saffron and baked in cofyns or crusts.'" The book then gives the above recipe as one of two examples. (The other example is not a recipe.)

So. our cheese tarts should be treated as a cheesecake rather than a sweet custard or quiche. 

The next point of contention: "New" cheese. What is meant by new cheese? Unaged cheese. Cheese curds. Something like ricotta or something like mozzarella? I was thinking of using ricotta cheese as the recipe calls for saffron: the whey of the ricotta would carry the saffron. But, why would I need to grind ricotta in a mortar? It's already mushed up. As I am ready to start experimenting, I picked up some cheese curds. Cheese curds are newish. They are not aged and firm enough to need to be ground into a powder. But, I found a YouTube video of the making of a 15th Century Italian saffron cheesecake. The narrator explains that you should use a fresh, soft cheese and put it in the mortar to mash it into a homogeneous state. 

The video also covers the next point of contention: The Saffron. I was wondering how to integrate the saffron into the filling in the absence of a warm liquid. Grinding the saffron in with the frim cheese curds would flavor some of the cheese. Integrating it into the whey of a ricotta would be better; the saffron would have a liquid to step in. But this video says to bloom the saffron in a small amount of warm water. Then add the liquid into the cheese and egg mix. I have also found this method in other  redactions of medieval cheesecake recipes. 

Why saffron? It would add some nice flavor to the tart. The only ingredients are saffron, cheese, sugar, eggs, and the crust. There would be no other flavors to cover up the saffron. But, saffron was also used to color food. Other, similar, recipes say "color with saffron". So it would make more sense to bloom the saffron in warm water and let the saffron water fully color the egg and cheese mixture. 

Which leads me to the coffins. I think that since we are coloring the filling of our small tarts, we might want to show off the color of the filling. If our tarts are small, small enough to be eaten in one or two bites, then the diner might not notice the color if the tarts were completely covered. If they were open at the top, the diners would be able to see the saffron color as they were being served. Very important for the location and time period: saffron was an expensive luxury that one would want to show off. 

Also, if we assume that these are small tarts, we would want a light, edible crust to serve them in. I have always been under the impression that "coffins" were heavy dough crusts used more as a casserole dish than something to be eaten. Thick and heavy enough to survive being moved from kitchen table to the oven to the table without breaking open. But, if we are talking about a small tart, we can conclude that the crust would be light enough to be eaten without chewing away at it. So, it should be firm enough to hold the filling, but not so heavy that eating it wouldn't be a chore. I have found several redactions of period tart crusts, so I'm set there. 

Next is the egg. Modern cheesecake recipes call for whole eggs. The video of the cheesecake recipe from Registrum Coquine calls for only egg whites. The recipe for Honey and Saffron Tarts from MS Harlein 279 calls for only egg yokes. The Forme of Cury has a recipe for daryols, which is an egg custard, that calls for whole eggs. But the Libro de arte coquinaria has a daryols recipe that calls for only yokes. 

So. I will need to experiment. I have secured some frozen filo tart shells from my local grocery store. Yes, I know that filo dough is not the same as English fine coffins, but I did this out of convenience. I will need to experiment with my redaction and see what tastes best. whole eggs versus egg yolks. Cheese curds versus ricotta. Perhaps learning how to make my own cheese. 

I think that the Liber cure Cocorum is not a cook book per se. I think it was a vanity project. It wasn't intended to teach anyone how to cook something; it assumes that anyone reading it would already know how to cook, and these were just clever rhymes to amuse chefs. There is a very famous French cook book, Le Répertoire De La Cuisine, first published in 1914, that contains hundreds of dishes but no instructions on how to cook any of them. The chef was expected to know how to cook everything and the book was more of a menu suggestion than an actual cookbook. One of the "recipes" reads as follows: Marguerites - Poached and coated, half with white wine sauce, sprinkled with julienne of truffles and half shrimp sauce sprinkled with julienne of white of egg, decorated with daisies made with cooked turnips, the center or the flower made with yolk of egg. That's it.