Sour fruit

In 13th century Arabo-Andalusian cookery, added sourness in dishes was achieved by the use of sour apples, citron or pomegranates, in addition to that of vinegar and verjuice. In Christian Europe, recipes with lemon juice, of Arabic origin, were called Limonia (or limonea in the Sent Sovi) and they are found in the Liber de Coquina, the Anonimo Toscano, the Anonimo Veneziano and the Modus. Recipes with pomegranate were called Romania (Liber de Coquina, Anonimo Toscano, Modus). The Libre del Coch also uses lemon and orange juice for sauces.

Candied lemon was used in Arabo-Andalusian cookery, and was found again at the end of the 16th century in Lancelot de Casteau. The Viandier de Taillevent (printed edition) has a recipe for blancmange with pomegranates.

Sugared fruit and dried fruit

25% of the recipes, in the Anonymous Andalusian cookbook, have fruit in them, which is three times more than in Catalan recipes. But apples, quinces, figs, oranges, peaches, pears, raisins and pomegranates are found in the salty recipes of the Sent Sovi and the Libre del Coch (according to Patrick Gillé in les traités de cuisine de la péninsule ibérique – treatises of cookery from the Iberian peninsula).

In England and in Italy, the many sweet and sour dishes used mainly plums, dates and raisins, which are found in the Forme of Cury’s Egurdouce, or the Italian Saracen broth (Del brodo saracenico), and chicken Ambrosia (Ambrogino di polli). Maestro Martino and the Anonino Veneziano each have some twenty or so recipes with raisins. The Forme of Cury gives about ten recipes with pine nuts.

Maître Chiquart recommended, at the beginning of the Fait de Cuisine, for the supplies of a banquet: 6 loads of almonds, 12 bags of candied grapes, 12 bags of candied figs, 8 bags of candied plums, a quintal of dates, 40lbs of pine nuts. In his recipe for Parma pies (Tortes parmeysines), you find figs, dates, pine nuts, prunes and raisins, besides an impressive variety of meats. He used the same candied fruit in Fish pies, in Parma fish pies and in a very rich recipe for Rissoles. Maître Chiquart also proposes a Quince pie (Cuyns en pasté), cooked pears and an apples compote (Emplumeus de pomes), all three recipes from the end of the book and made for the sick.

On the other hand, the printed edition of the Viandier de Taillevent, in the 15th century, has only 3 recipes with fruit, a sauce with grapes (Saulce au most) and 2 desserts: a Pâté of raw pears and an Apple turnover (Tartres de pommes) with figs and raisins.

Almonds

The use of almonds, or almond milk, was developed in all countries and throughout Medieval cookery. The oily nut of these fruits were mostly used as extra liaison for sauces (complementary to bread) or as a substitute for butter or milk on fast days. Almonds were just as well found with meat dishes as with fish preparations. They were also, in the Middle Ages, part of those products which were both food and medicine. As such, doctors could prescribe them. This was also the case for sugar, spices, and hippocras. Thus are almonds and sugar found in the composition of preparations for the sick: 10 recipes for the sick by Maître Chiquart out of 16 contain almonds.

13% of the recipes in Taillevent’s 15th century printed edition and 39% of Maître Chiquart’s recipes (1420) contain almonds.

Candied fruit

Banquets were often ended, in the Middle Ages or Renaissance, by the boute-hors (out drive): the meal was finished, the table cleared, and wine and chamber spices were served in another room. The chamber spices were sweets made of spices or fruit, candied in sugar or honey. Ginger can be preserved (gingibrat) as well as coriander or aniseed. Fruit were candied as in the menus of Messisbugo and Scappi: melons, lemons or oranges, quinces, pomegranates, chestnuts … Nuts (pine nuts, almonds, walnuts), they were also candied, else made into more elaborate confectionery, some ancestor sort of nougat: pignolat in France, pinyonada or torron in Catalonia, torrone or copeta in Italy. These candied fruits, as the hippocras people drank at the end of the meal, were supposed to close up the stomach and make digestion easier.

Fruit jams

A bit like the candied fruit, jams were also served at the end of the meals, for the same reasons. Jams, however, had much more of a medical aspect to them. The earliest recipes for jams, like those for fruit syrups, are found in medicine books. Compared to ours, the medical beliefs of those times are amusing: doctors were suspicious of raw fruit, they barely accepted fruit cooked in wine and spices, and they recommended, as a medicine, fruit candies, fruit syrups and fruit jams. It was assumed, probably, that the sugar, or the honey used to cook them, allowed for a kind of transmutation of the fruit, which gave them their medical qualities. The difference was slim between medical candy and the confectioner's.

Jam was letuaire in old French of the 12th century. It was (as sugar and spices) bought at the grocer's or the apothecary's. Letuaire was above all a medicine, a medicine of Hippocratus, of Galen, or later, one prescribed by the Arab medicine or by the Salerne School of medicine.

The ambiguity between medicine and confectionery, including jam, is found in the Treatise on cosmetics and conserves by Doctor Nostradamus, in which indications for health care are given at the end of some of the jam recipes. The book was published in Lyon in 1552. Another preserves book was published in 1545 in Paris: Petit traicté contenant la maniere pour faire toutes confitures (small treatise with the way of making all sorts of jams), itself inspired in part by the Antidotarium Nicolai, a 12th century apothecary's book by the Salerne School of medicine, which contains preparations inherited from Arab medicine.

Recipes:

Literature:

Sources:

Fruit in Medieval Europe by Marie Josephe Moncorge, Translated by Jean-Marc Bulit: https://www.oldcook.com/en/medieval-fruit