Sam’s historical recipe corner: A delicate chewit

History Extra

© Sam Nott 

In every issue of BBC History Magazine, picture editor Sam Nott brings you a recipe from the past. In this article, Sam recreates a delicate chewit - a meat and fruit pie enjoyed in the 16th century. 

Britain loves pies, and recipes for them can be found in cookbooks going back centuries. This month I’ve chosen a 16th-century pie called a chewit that mixes sweet and savoury flavours – a combination that was popular in the Tudor era. Recipes from that time often refer to coffins – robust pastry designed more to contain the filling than to be eaten. My version, including measurements, is based on this 16th-century recipe:

 Parboyle a piece of a Legge of Veal, and being cold, mince it with Beefe Suit, and Marrow, and an Apple or a couple of Wardens: when you haue minst it fine, put to a few parboyld Currins, sixe Dates minst, a piece of a preserued Orenge pill minst, Marrow cut in little square pieces. Season all this with Pepper, Salt, Nutmeg, and a little Sugar: then put it into your Coffins, and so bake it. Before you close your Pye, sprinckle on a little Rosewater, and when they are baked shaue on a little Sugar, and so serue it to the Table.

 Ingredients

 Pastry:
 • 400g flour
• 1 tsp salt
• 200g butter
 • 1 egg yolk
• Iced water

 Filling:
• 500g minced beef
• 50g sultanas
• 6 dates
• Zest from half an orange
 • 2 medium-sized pears, chopped
 • 100g suet
• 1 tsp nutmeg
• Salt and pepper
 • Rose water (sprinkle)
 • Sugar (sprinkle)

 Method

Pastry:
Sift the flour and salt into a basin. Cut the butter into small chunks and rub it into the flour until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs. Make a well in the centre. Add the egg yolk and 5 tbsp of iced water. Roll the pastry into a ball, wrap in cling film and leave in the fridge for 30 minutes.

 Filling:
Roll out the pastry and line a pie tin, leaving enough for the lid of the pie. Lightly fry the minced beef, then add the suet, fruit and seasoning. Pack tightly into the pie case and sprinkle a small amount of rose water on the top of the filling before adding the pie top. Sprinkle sugar on the pastry and cook for an hour in an oven preheated to 200˚C.

 Team verdict: “Delicious and moist” “Mmmmm – fruity!”
 Difficulty: 4/10
 Time: 1 hour preparation, 1 hour cooking

 This article was first published in the December 2015 issue of BBC History Magazine

Q&A: When did Italian replace Latin as the language of Italy?

History Extra

Venice in 1338. (Bridgeman Art Library)

Languages can literally die overnight when the last of their speakers dies, but the death of Latin was very different. 

 

After the fall of the Roman empire in the west in AD 476, Latin evolved into a wide variety of regional dialects now known as Romance vernaculars. In the early 14th century the Florentine poet Dante Alighieri reckoned that more than 1,000 such dialects were spoken in Italy. At the time of Dante, Latin was still used in literature, philosophy, medicine and other cultural or legal written documents. Dialects were spoken, but also used in writing: the earliest examples of vernacular writing in Italy date from the ninth century. 

 

The early 16th century saw the dialect used by Dante in his work replace Latin as the language of culture. We can thus say that modern Italian descends from 14th-century literary Florentine. Italy did not become a single nation until 1861, at which time less than 10 per cent of its citizens spoke the national language, Italian. 

 

Throughout the first half of the 20th century, Italy was a ‘diglossic country’ – one where a local dialect such as Neapolitan or Milanese was spoken at home while Italian was learned at school and used for official purposes. 

 

The First World War helped foster linguistic unification when, for the first time, soldiers from all over Italy met and talked to each other. The rise in literacy levels after the Second World War and the spread of mass media changed Italy into a bilingual nation, where Italian, increasingly the mother tongue of all Italians, coexists and interacts with the dialects of Italy.

Answered by Delia Bentley, senior lecturer at the University of Manchester.

 

Stunning 16th Century Church Emerges from Mexican Reservoir after Drought

Ancient Origins

The remnants of a 400-year-old Spanish colonial church have emerged from the depths of the Nezahualcoyotl reservoir in Chiapas, Mexico, after a drought caused the water level to drop by 82 feet (25 meters).  The church, known as the Temple of Santiago or Temple of Quechula was originally lost to the waters of the reservoir in 1966 when the dam was finished on the Grijalva River. Tourists are now flocking to the site to catch a glimpse of the Temple before it disappears beneath the water once again.

The church measures 183 feet long (61 meters) and 42 feet (14 meters) wide, while the bell tower reaches 48 feet (16 meters) above the ground.
The Temple of Quechula was first built in the mid-1600s by a group of monks headed by Friar Bartolome de la Casas. The Dominican friars also constructed a town around the church, which they called Quechala and Friar Bartolome made himself Bishop.
Mexico News Daily reports that the region was inhabited by the Zoque people, predecessors of the Olmec.  In 1494, they were invaded and defeated by the Aztecs before the Spanish moved into Zoque lands in 1523. Under Spanish rule, their population was decimated by disease and the toils of hard labor, and their land was parcelled out among the settlers.
Friar Bartolome initially supported the colonization and subjugation of the Zoque, but later took an opposing view and went on to write about the horrors of colonization.
Bartolome had high hopes for the town of Quechala, expecting it to one day become a great city. However, a plague hit the town in 1773, forcing the inhabitants to flee. The town and the church were left abandoned.
When the dam on the Grijalva River was completed, not just the colonial church, but the whole town and surrounding villages and archaeological sites were submerged.
The Associated Press (AP) reports that tourists are now flocking to the site to catch a glimpse of the temple before it disappears once again. Local fisherman Leonel Mendoza has been taking people to the site by boat in droves.
According to AP, it is only the second time that a drop in water level has revealed the church. The first time was in 2002 when the water decreased so much that people were able to walk inside the church.
People are taking the opportunity while they can to explore the church as it is not known when it may emerge from the water once again.

Featured image: A photograph of the colonial church that has emerged out of the Nezahualcoyotl reservoir in Chiapas, Mexico. Credit: Associated Press.
By April Holloway

16th-Century Masterpiece Reveals Cheese Glue Recipe

      by Rossella Lorenzi              

Sticky cheese might be the secret behind one of the most intriguing Mannerist paintings, according to a preliminary investigation carried out during restoration work.
Restorers had wondered what holds together the five poplar wood planks which make up “Visitation,” an enigmatic work by the 16th-century Mannerist Jacopo Pontormo.
“We believe they were pieced together with a caseine-based glue,” restorer Daniele Rossi told Discovery News. Caseine is a group of proteins commonly found in mammalian milk.
Photos: Restoring ‘Visitation’
“Cheese glue was very popular at that time, and was normally used to join wood planks. We are going to carry out special chemical analyses for bindings to get a definitive answer,” Rossi said.
Described in the 16th-century Compendium of Rational Secrets as a “great secret of nature, a “super glue which withstands dampness and heat,” cheese glue was already detailed in the artists’ manuals of both Theophilus, a 12th-century German monk and 15th-century Italian painter Cennino Cennini.
The recipe for the potent adhesive relied on polypeptide casein protein molecules, and included ingredients such as hot water and quicklime. The goat or cow cheese-based concoction resulted in a sticky and thick compound which dried hard as stone, making it extremely hard for wood joints to separate.
Photos: Da Vinci’s ‘Magi’ Hides Master’s Original Vision
“Whatever glue was used there, it was a powerful one. It’s still holding after five centuries,” Rossi said.
The source of inspiration for “The Greeting,” a video installation presented at the 1995 Venice Biennial by the Italian American artist Bill Viola, the dream-like Visitation is now the centerpiece of an exhibition on Mannerist artists Jacopo Carucci, also known as Pontormo (1494-1557), and Giovan Battista di Jacopo, a.k.a. Rosso Fiorentino (1494-1540) which runs in Florence through July 20.
Pontormo was one of the last artists of the Florentine Renaissance. He was a pupil of Leonardo da Vinci and Andrea del Sarto, and one of the earliest of the Mannerist school, a style of art developed in Italy following the High Renaissance, which emphasized mental conception over realistic depiction.
Pontormo completed the Visitation around 1528-1529, but the oil painting remained almost unknown until 1904, when it was rediscovered in the church of San Michele in Carmignano, a village west of Florence, and attributed to Pontormo.
Michelangelo’s David Holding Secret Weapon?
The painting depicts in an almost metaphysical way the biblical meeting of the Virgin Mary, pregnant with Jesus, and Elisabeth, pregnant with St. John the Baptist. Staring fixedly into space, two statuesque figures in the background represent their alter egos.
The younger of the two wears the same color clothing of the Virgin Mary, but reversed. The older one appears to be Elizabeth shown in a sort of doubling.
 Naked Dwarf Revealed Again in Painting
“This intensely abstract atmosphere is sustained by the disproportionate size of the figures in comparison to the Florentine architectural backdrop and by the artist’s multiplication – as though in a mirror – of the number of figures witnessing the scene,” art critic Antonio Geremicca wrote in the exhibition catalog.
“These figurative devices make it more complicated to interpret the painting, whose significance scholars have yet to fathom in full,” he added.
Rossi’s restoration might help acquire new clues.
In addition to finding the super glue, the restorer filled 1,673 woodworm holes and removed the heavy repainting of past restorations. Incisive, luminous colors which previous interventions covered with a yellow varnish, re-emerged in full glory.
Photos: The Face of Da Vinci: An Enduring Mystery
“We discovered a bright blue sky beneath a black overpainting that had made it almost overcast, and Pontormo’s clouds are white and ragged,” Rossi said.
Previously unseen details were also unveiled.
“A woman is leaning out of a window and a white cloth is falling from a window ledge. A smiling donkey peeks out from behind the corner of a building, while two passers-by converse on a bench like masked mannequins,” Rossi said.
Image: Detail of The Visitation by Jacopo Pontormo. Credit: Daniele Rossihttp://news.discovery.com/history/art-history/16th-century-masterpiece-reveals-cheese-glue-recipe-140326.htm

16th-century artillery manual shows illustration of 'rocket cat' weaponry

 

PHILADELPHIA –  You're a 16th century German prince plotting to crush a peasant rebellion, or perhaps you're leading an army against the Ottoman Empire or looking to settle the score with a rival nobleman. What's a guy looking for a tactical edge to do?

Bring on the rocket cats!

Fanciful illustrations from a circa-1530 manual on artillery and siege warfare seem to show jet packs strapped to the backs of cats and doves, with the German-language text helpfully advising military commanders to use them to "set fire to a castle or city which you can't get at otherwise."

'It clearly looks like there's some sort of jet of fire coming out of a device strapped to these animals.'

- Mitch Fraas, a historian and digital humanities expert at the University of Pennsylvania library

Digitized by the University of Pennsylvania, the unusual, full-color illustrations recently caught the attention of an Australian book blog and then found their way to Penn researcher Mitch Fraas, who set out to unravel the mystery.

"I really didn't know what to make of it," said Fraas, a historian and digital humanities expert at the Penn library. "It clearly looks like there's some sort of jet of fire coming out of a device strapped to these animals."

So were these unfortunate animals from the 1500s really wearing 20th-century technology?
Fraas' conclusion: No. Obviously.

The treatise in question was written by artillery master Franz Helm of Cologne, who was believed to have fought in several skirmishes against the Turks in south-central Europe at a time when gunpowder was changing warfare.

Circulated widely and illustrated by multiple artists, Helm's manual is filled with all sorts of strange and terrible imagery, from bombs packed with shrapnel to missile-like explosive devices studded with spikes -- and those weaponized cats and birds.

According to Fraas' translation, Helm explained how animals could be used to deliver incendiary devices: "Create a small sack like a fire-arrow. If you would like to get at a town or castle, seek to obtain a cat from that place. And bind the sack to the back of the cat, ignite it, let it glow well and thereafter let the cat go, so it runs to the nearest castle or town, and out of fear it thinks to hide itself where it ends up in barn hay or straw it will be ignited."

In other words, capture a cat from enemy territory, attach a bomb to its back, light the fuse and then hope it runs back home and starts a raging fire.

Fraas said he could find no evidence that cats and birds were used in early modern warfare in the way prescribed by Helm.

A good thing, too.

"Sort of a harebrained scheme," Fraas said. "It seems like a really terrible idea, and very unlikely the animals would run back to where they came from. More likely they'd set your own camp on fire."

http://www.foxnews.com/science/2014/03/06/16th-century-artillery-manual-rocket-cat-weaponry/