😅 WHEN THE EXPERIMENT FAILS! MEDIEVAL RECIPE GONE WRONG

Failure is the greatest teacher, this I firmly believe! And I had my first medieval cooking fail this past weekend.Many of you watched my livestream medieval cooking party, during which we experimented with a 15th century Italian “cherry cheesecake” recipe by Maestro Martino, the OG master chef of Italian cooking (“torta de cerisa”, spellt a bunch of different ways in the various sources). The recipe called for fresh and aged cheese, and so I went with an aged cheese that was commonly available in 15th century Italy, Parmesan, combining that with a sheep’s milk cream cheese that I had on hand.

So, it turns out that cherries + Parmesan cheese + sheep’s milk cream cheese = super gross! It was a total fail. The texture was grainy (the Parmesan cheese was pounded in a mortar rather than grated); the acidic nature of both the cherries and the sheep’s milk cream cheese combined with the very distinctive nutty flavor of the Parmesan resulted in something that was reminiscent of, um….semi-digested food that one’s stomach has rejected. Mind you, to a 15th century Italian palate, this could have been a desirable flavor, but definitely to anyone in my household – and we regularly eat foodstuffs that modern Westerners generally eschew…

Thus, when I test this recipe again, here is what I will be changing:

1. Cream cheese or ricotta cheese made from cow’s milk, a much more mild, “sweeter” less acidic option
2. An aged cheese with a more neutral flavor – for certain not a 24-month aged Parmesan! Maybe an aged mozzarella or aged “farmer’s” cheese even.

I am hoping my newly discovered 15th century cheese manual will provide hints as to other kinds of cheeses that would fit the profile of “aged” without being overpowering and will also have a less grainy texture when pounded.

Back to the kitchen counter we go! 😃

#lessonslearned #cooking #howto #medievalfood #history #historyoffood #reenactment #livinghistory #MySCA