Workable Dark age recipies?

[Høvding]

Hi, new here and was wondering if anyone could shed some light on workable recipies of the dark ages.

I am familiar with some unlevene d bread such as bannock also salted meat and dried fish along with oatcakes etc, but am looking for some recipies involving root vegetables that may be used to feed a crew (15) of guys and girls whilst on campaign. any help would be gratefully apprieciated.

Tusseb Takk

[Cat]

A C12 recipe (from Dorothy Hartley, so no provenance):
Paraphrased by me:
To boil a flank with worts.
Take the mutton flank, bone it , crack the bones and boil them in water. This is the broth.
Season the meat with salt and spices(pepper, cinnamon) working it well in. Roll up the meat, leave 24 hours while the bones boil.
Next day take parsnips,turnips,and onions. Prepare them then wash the meat and stuff the veg into the bone space. Sprinkle with green pot-herbs-mint, rosemary, thyme, parsley. Tie the stuffed meat in a cloth, set to simmer it in the bone-broth, to which you will need to add the vegetable peel and a little pepper.Simmer the meat until a skewer will go into it easily.
Shred a young green cabbage and cook it in a little butter and milk for 10-15 mins.
To serve, turn the hot meat out, unroll it, garnish with the vegetables that were cooked in it and surround it with the cabbage. Strain a little of the broth into the cabbage juices and use as a white gravy.

[Cat]

And more- some that we used in the Iron Age group I was in:
Stewed nettle tops: pick nettle tops (the top few leaves) WEAR GLOVES!
Boil in stock until a dark green mush. Tastes ok, is very good for you! Serve with a little butter or gravy. (Makes me fart like a badger.)

New cheese: Leave milk to stand for 12 hours in the warm, covered OR add a little of the nettle juice to new milk. When it separates, tip it into a clean cloth and let it drip. The curds will be good to spread on your bread in 12 hours. You can add herbs or honey or blackberries to this cheese, it is lush.

Sourdough- this is natural leaven for your bread. Sometimes you will get a batch of dough that will spontaneously ferment-it is worth leaving some dough a day or so to see if it will. You can keep a piece of this sour dough in a cool place and use it to leaven your bread on camp. Work it into your fresh dough, and leave to prove.

Berries and honey. Leave black or blue berries and honey in a warm place for a day. It ferments a little, and ends up as a 'jam' to use on your oatcakes. Very nice indeed! This is also good with the new cheese.

As far as basic camp cooking of meat etc goes, a lot of places used one cauldron, with broth in in which they boiled up the meat, veggies and sometimes a bag-pudding too. Some early societies used pot-boilers to heat this, rather than putting it over the fire- this is where you heat stones in your fire, and drop them into the cauldtron to keep the water boiling.
OOoh, and then there's fish baked in the fire, in clay.

God, I've rambled a bit! Experiment, and have fun! Good luck!

[Høvding]

Thanks very much!, I think we will have to try the flank with worts! sounds interesting, and would leave a well fed crew. takk