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SAMANTHA’S RECIPE CORNER Every issue, picture editor Samantha Nott brings you a recipe from the past. This Tudor pie would be eaten on days when abstinence from meat was practised
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Exhausted German soldiers rest in a trench in the Aisne region after the battle of the Marne
Pieday Friday
INGREDIENTS • Pastry: 1lb plain flour, 5oz butter, 1 egg • 8oz mixture of spinach, lettuce, cabbage, chard • 2oz raisins, chopped • 1oz grated hard cheese • 2oz fresh bread crumbs • ½ tsp salt • ½ tsp cinnamon • 1 tbsp sugar (I used 1 tsp) • 3 raw egg yolks • 1 hard-boiled egg yolk • 1oz melted butter
METHOD To make the pastry, rub the butter into the flour, work in egg and water, and knead lightly. Use half to line a dish; I used a 10-inch metal flan dish. Remove the coarse stalks of the greens, shred leaves thinly, mix with other ingredients (I also added black pepper) and pack into the dish. Cover with pastry, keeping some back to make decorations for the top. Bake at 150°C for 50 mins (mine took an hour), brushing the top with a little butter and sprinkling on a little fine sugar before serving. VERDICT The pastry handled well and the pie was tasty. It made a good summer lunch, served with pickles. I’ll make it again, but this time minus the sugar sprinkled on top. Difficulty: 4/10 Time: 1 hour 30 mins From a recipe in Cooking and Dining in Tudor & Early Stuart England by Peter Brears (Prospect, 2015)
The Tudors loved past ry, from the high-status venison past y to this meat-free pie
Q If the German army had been successful at the battle of the Marne in 1914, and gone on to capture Paris, what would have been their next objective? Noel McCann, by email
A
Though the German army had plotted the invasion of Belgium and France in immense detail, it had given almost no thought to postwar planning. There were no formal plans to occupy France. It was anticipated that, after victory in the west, German forces would be immediately transferred to the east to fight against Russia. In September 1914 the need to plan for a postwar world prompted chancellor Bethmann-Hollweg to draft a memorandum that became known as the Septemberprogramm, a plan that demanded huge territorial acquisitions. Germany was to annex a swathe of France’s wealthy north-eastern territory, including the Channel coast from Boulogne to the Belgium border. Luxembourg was to be
annexed and Belgium was to become a German vassal state. Beyond Europe, Belgium and France were to surrender their central African colonies to allow Germany to create a vast, contiguous Mittelafrika that would span the centre of the continent from the Atlantic to the Indian Ocean. Had Germany triumphed in 1914 the Septemberprogramm would have provided a starting point for peace negotiations. Yet in an ironic twist, the ambitious memorandum was drafted on 9 September – the same day on which German forces began to retreat at the battle of the Marne, an event that signalled the decisive failure of the invasion of France. Spencer Jones, co-editor of Over the Top: Alternate Histories of the First World War (Frontline, 2014)
BBC History Magazine
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This 1596 recipe for a “pie of bald meats [greens] for fish days” was handy for times such as Lent or Fridays when the church forbade the eating of meat (another similar recipe is called simply Friday Pie). Medieval pastry was a disposable cooking vessel, but in the 1580s there were great advancements in pastry work. Pies became popular, with many pastry types, shapes and patterns filled with everything from lobster to strawberries. This pie’s sweet/savoury combo is typical of Tudor cookery: I enjoyed it, but was glad I’d reduced the sugar content.