Carnel of Pork

I was perusing Project Gutenberg's copy of The Forme of Cury, a collection of recipes compiled around 1390AD "by the Master Cooks of King Richard II", which you can access here.

My goal was to find recipe(s) that I could successfully do at an historical cooking demonstration location.  I finally was able to get back to doing some demonstrations this year!  The site had a lovely outdoor kitchen with tables for preparation, many platters/bowls/cooking pots, a big fire pit, and a wood-fired oven.  I decided I wasn't ready to try baking as I needed to get back into the techniques needed to prep and cook over fire in front of the public.  The venue was set in Elizabethan England, so recipes prior to 1600 would work just fine.

One that caught my attention was

CARNEL [1] OF PORK. XXXII.

Take the brawnn of Swyne. parboile it and grynde it smale and alay it up with zolkes of ayren. set it ouere [2] the fyre with white Grece and lat it not seeþ to fast. do þerinne Safroun an powdour fort and messe it forth. and cast þerinne powdour douce, and serue it forth.

[1] Carnel, perhaps Charnel, from Fr. Chaire. [2] ouere. Over. So again, No. 33.

In other words, 

Take pork, parboil it, grind it small, and thicken it with egg yolks.  Cook it with lard and cook it slowly.  Add saffron and powder forte, and put it on a platter to serve.  Sprinkle with powder douce, and serve.

 My Redaction

1 pound pork tenderloin (boneless)

3 egg yolks, well beaten

1 tablespoon vegetable shortening or lard

1 teaspoon powder fines (see note below)

1/2 teaspoon pepper

1 teaspoon saffron

1/4 teaspoon salt

a sprinkling of powder douce (see note below)

Notes:  My powder fines is a spice mix containing cinnamon, cloves, ginger, grains of paradise, pepper, and saffron.  Powder forte is supposed to be a strong (forte) flavored mix, which is why I took the fines and added more pepper to it, along with salt to more suit modern palates.  

My powder douce is a spice mix containing cinnamon, allspice, ginger, nutmeg, cloves, cardamom, and star anise.  Powder douce is supposed to be a sweet (douce) mixture; what I used was a Baker's Spice Mix -- good for sweet breads.  It was mild enough to be a garnish.

The powder douce did not make it into the picture.

Grind the spices and salt together.  Set aside.

Cut the pork into chunks -- I did four 1/4-pound pieces.  Bring a saucepan of water to a boil, then put in one chunk.  This will drop the temperature to below a boil.  Set the timer for 5 minutes and watch the water.  You want at most a slow simmer for a parboil, so adjust the heat as needed.  When the time is up, remove the meat and place in a bowl to drain.  Keep parboiling the pieces like this.  The goal is to lightly cook them without making the meat tough; they don't even have to be cooked all the way through.  Just not completely raw.  

If a piece looks only slightly cooked, put it back into the hot water for a few more minutes.

Before parboiling

Parboiled:  the two pieces on the left went back in for 3 minutes each

Let the meat cool until you can easily handle it.  Cut it into small pieces or grind it (I cut it).  Mix well with the egg yolks.

Melt the fat over medium heat in a saucepan.  Add the meat and stir well.  Cook slowly over a low to medium heat (2 to 4 out of 10), stirring occasionally to mix the meat, yolks, and fat together.

Cook until the meat is no longer pink, 15 to 20 minutes.  Remove from the heat.

Mix in the spices thoroughly while the meat is still hot.

Put the mixture into a bowl or other container that functions as a mold for the final product.  Compress the mixture using a flat-bottomed cup or similar object.

Put a plate over the bowl and quickly turn the bowl and plate over to unmold the meat.

Sprinkle with powder douce lightly as a garnish.

Serve and enjoy!

My Notes

I first made this for a public demonstration.  I parboiled the meat at home in advance, then completed the preparation in front of the public.  I chose to cut instead of grinding because I didn't want to pound all the meat in a mortar.  For the demonstration I used 2 pounds of pork, 5 egg yolks, and double the amount of spices listed above.  It turned out well and I wanted to make it for this blog.

The meat is much easier to cut up into small pieces after parboiling.  Well worth the time.

I pounded and rubbed the spices together in the mortar until they looked reasonably blended.  The saffron threads did not all break up, which was fine with me.

It took some time to cut the meat up in small pieces, about 1/4 inch cubes.  Smaller pieces would work, too, or grinding/pounding them to more of a paste.  Notice the pink in the pieces below, but none of them looked completely raw.

Meat and yolks before mixing.

The idea of the yolks is to coat the meat pieces before cooking.

Ready to cook!

The slow cooking and regular stirring keeps the yolks from turning into hard-boiled egg consistency.  It acts like a sauce.

No pink.  It is done.

With the spices mixed in.

Packed into the mold.

You can see flecks of color where the spices are.  The saffron displays as orange threads.  They smelled good while I was mixing them in.

Unmolded and garnished.  Ready to serve.

The Verdict

I served it as the main course along with sliced tomatoes garnished with minced shallots, green onions, and parsley dressed with a mixture of olive oil (lemon infused), balsamic vinegar (lime infused), and a little salt.  Also toasted sourdough bread.

My guest taster and I spooned some of the carnel onto our plates.  We ate it like that or spooned onto a piece of toast.  At the public demonstration, the carnel was part of a larger potluck and was placed on the main dish table, and served as it was presented.

We both loved it.  Meaty, creamy, and the spices were zesty!  My tongue got little blasts of spice while I was eating it, not quite like having chiles but close.  If the spice level was lower, I think the carnel would have been bland and uninteresting.  

I felt the same way about it at the public demonstration -- I almost underspiced it then; I'm so glad I didn't.

The meat was very tender, which we both appreciated.  

Success!  

This is so easy to do, and I think it would be a good dish for a potluck.  

Grinding it would make it more of a paté, so it could be spread on toast or crackers.

Albóndigas delicadas -- Delicate meatballs, a Pinedo recipe

Today my attention was attracted to this Pinedo recipe on page 5.  The idea of a "delicate" meatball appealed to me, and I wondered if I could achieve that delicate goal.  I wasn't sure it meant that the flavor or the texture was delicate, or both, but I wanted to try it.

My Translation

Delicate meatballs.

         Raw poultry breasts are cut into small pieces; bring them to a boil and then grind or mince until they are reduced to a paste.

         Take a good amount of white breadcrumbs that will be boiled in broth, set aside and let cool, put in the mortar and grind with the poultry breasts, adding pepper, salt, nutmeg, a piece of butter the size of an egg, parsley and green onions very finely chopped, two shallots and some cooked egg yolks.

         All this is stirred well, and with it they are formed into meatballs by hand, immediately tossing them into the broth to cook them.

My Redaction

1 3/4 lbs raw chicken breast, boneless and skinless

1 cup breadcrumbs made from a French bread loaf that was a few days dried (not rock hard)

1 teaspoon pepper

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/8 teaspoon nutmeg

3 tablespoons butter

1/8 cup Italian parsley, finely chopped

1/4 cup green onion (white and green parts), finely chopped

1/4 cup shallot, finely chopped

4 cooked egg yolks, mashed

Heat 3 - 4 inches of water in a large kettle or Dutch oven to boiling.

Cut the chicken meat into chunks that will conveniently fit into the feed tube of a meat grinder.

When the water is boiling, put the chicken meat into the water.  Stir occasionally.  When the water returns to a boil, remove the meat, draining it as it is removed.  Keep the resulting broth in the kettle and maintain the heat beneath it.

Add 3/4 cup of the broth into the bread crumbs, and stir until all the crumbs are moistened.  Set aside.

Put the meat through a meat grinder using the fine plate.

Add the moistened bread crumbs to the ground meat and mix well.  

Add the pepper, salt, nutmeg, butter, parsley, green onion, shallot, and egg yolks.  Stir until everything is well-mixed.  The mixture should form a cohesive ball, like a soft dough.  Not soggy but not dry, and it should stick to itself.

Bring the broth back up to a boil.  Reduce heat to create a strong simmer.  Form balls with a 1- to 1 1/2-inch diameter.  

Drop the balls in batches of 5 to 10 into the broth.  When the balls float, remove and drain them; place in the serving dish.

My Notes

The method of putting the chicken chunks into hot water resulted in a broth and also the chicken was cooked all the way through.  I saw no pink meat at all.

Before

After

I tried to envision boiling the breadcrumbs in the broth and then taking them out, and it just seemed that I would lose more into the broth even if I used a fine sieve to get them out.  So I chose to just add the hot broth the crumbs and skip the mess.

Moistened, not soggy

Miss Pinedo might have had access to a food grinder, but her instructions seemed to indicate the cook would be using a mortar and pestle, or perhaps a mano and metate.  I took advantage of my modern technology to grind the meat to a paste.  The fine plate did a good job.  

Finely ground chicken breast

I chose to mix the crumbs and meat with my hand; this was because the meat was so finely ground already.  It didn't need more grinding with the bread.  I both scooped and squished the two ingredients together until it felt like they were uniformly blended.  I think you should be willing to add a little broth if the mixture does not behave well.

Bread and meat

My main concern was following the instructions for specific amounts of butter and shallots without having an idea of how much breast meat Pinedo thought should be used.  Once I chose the two large pieces of meat, I decided to use less of each with the hope of making the mixture balanced in flavor.

Very finely chopped!

Once all the ingredients were put with the meat mixture, I mixed it all by hand, again working it until everything seemed uniformly mixed.  I tasted it and I liked the balance of salt, pepper, onions, parsley, and shallots.  

Notice the moisture level.

The mixture was moist enough to stick together when I pushed it with my hand.  When I formed the balls, I made sure I pushed the mixture together to get rid of cracks or holes.

Ready for cooking

I cooked two meatballs alone first to make sure they would stay as balls when in the hot water.  They did, and it only took a minute or two for them to rise to the surface.  After that, I put in more balls to cook at once.  As one batch cooked, I made another batch.  The broth was hot-to-simmering, but not actively boiling because I was afraid that would break up the meatballs.

Floaties!

The Verdict

I served the meatballs in a dish with no sauce or anything else on them.  I included a side dish of rotini pasta coated with a ramps pesto and mixed with the chopped egg whites left over from the yolks used in the meatball mixture.  Thank you to @blackforager on Instagram for the ramps pesto inspiration!

I think they swelled some upon cooking.

So, were the meatballs delicate?  

Yes, they were very soft, but not so soft that they fell apart.  I guess the better word was tender.  The meat and other ingredients stuck to themselves well until the fork pushed against them, then the balls broke up easily.  The meatballs were very tender to bite.  They had a fine texture and were very moist inside.

Yes, in flavor, they were also delicate.  By that I mean the flavor was not robust, but we could taste the pepper and the onions/parsley/shallot flavorings.  The salt level was right.  I could not discern the nutmeg; it wouldn't hurt to add more.  Or, now that I think about it, sprinkle some nutmeg over the tops of the balls just before serving!  That would be a nice garnish.

My guest taster and I both felt the flavors were balanced, with just enough pepper to make it interesting and to add a little bitter to the onions and shallot, which were cooked enough to remove any bite but still leave a good flavor.

Success!  They didn't need any sauce and they stood up for themselves as a main dish.  They paired nicely with the pasta side dish.  Together they formed a very tasty meal.

I think using chicken breast helped to make it delicate in flavor.  I typically do not use breast meat because thigh meat is moister and has more flavor.  But this was, I think, the right choice.