About the Enseignements

"The Enseingnemenz Qui Enseingnent à Apareillier Toutes Manières de Viandes (Enseignements qui Apprennent à Préparer Toutes Sortes de Viandes; “Teachings Which Teach How to Prepare All Types of Foods”) was a latecomer in food history, one of a handful of medieval cookbooks to be discovered after Taillevent's Viandier had long been considered the first French cookbook...

Like several other of the previously unknown documents, this one was already in a library's collection but unknown to the world until a researcher discovered it; in this case, Louis Douet D'Arcq, an archivist at what was then the Imperial Library and is today the French National Library. The volume in which he found it had belonged to Philip the Fair's celebrated surgeon Henri de Mondeville and includes his treatise on surgery, as well as other works on both medical matters and food. This pairing was not at all unusual for the time; the two subjects were intimately linked and de Mondeville's own work includes very specific instructions about what patients should eat (often, it should be said, NOT the kind of food described in the current work).

....the Enseignements is very valuable in its own right. If it is far less organized than its more famous successors and includes far fewer recipes, the ways in which it both resembles and differs from these works is revealing and allows us to trace at least a tentative outline of how French cuisine developed from the start to the end of the fourteenth century – the century in which, if French cuisine was not actually invented (it had been developing for some time), it first became widely influential beyond the kitchens of noble households."

The unknown author

"Unlike the Viandier, which bore its (supposed) author's name from the start and the Menagier de Paris (whose author has been tentatively identified), this work is anonymous and is very likely to remain so.

Can we make any guesses about the author's identity? The text itself is said to contain some Norman words and de Mondeville himself was Norman; but it is very unlikely that a prominent surgeon would have written the text himself. It may be that the text was copied from an earlier document and so whoever copied it may be responsible for errors or changes in the document.

Otherwise, a few things can be deduced about the author, almost certainly a professional cook (and so very likely male). He writes at the end of serving a master and would himself have been attached to a household (at least in the past); probably a household of some importance for his notes to have been thought worthy of preserving (certainly a rich one, to judge by the spices used). If he wrote all this down at the start of the fourteenth century (or perhaps earlier, if someone else transcribed his document), the cuisine he is describing would have been from (at latest) the end of the thirteenth..."

The Enseignements compared to the Viandier and the Menagier de Paris

"Whether he wrote it or assembled it from previous kitchen notes, Taillevent's Viandier remains the most well known and influential of French medieval cookbooks; the recipes in the Menagier de Paris were almost as influential. Since these also appeared towards the end of the fourteenth century, it is doubly useful to compare this work with these later ones; first, because so many ideas of medieval cuisine have been formed by the later works and secondly because differences between those two and this one to some degree reflect differences in sophisticated French cooking between the early and later part of the century.

The most obvious differences are structural. Not only is the Enseignements a much briefer work, it is less organized than the Viandier (which itself is often summary to a fault) and certainly than the Menagier. While it is clear that it does not contain anything like the hundred or more recipes in most versions of the Viandier, it is difficult to say exactly how many recipes it does contain, since some dishes are referenced in such cursory fashion.

One structural element is an artifact of this brevity. Taillevent and the Menagier describe sauces in separate sections. In the Enseignements, these are described "in line"; that is, as part of the same recipes in which they are first used. It takes some analysis to see that the document includes recipes for the following named sauces: green; parsley and spices in vinegar; garlic; cameline; and white garlic sauce. A number of other combinations are described without being given a specific name..."

Piglet stuffing

Few modern cooks will find it convenient to use a piglet for the original recipe here. But the stuffing, with cheese, eggs, chestnuts and pears flavored with spices and sugar. has, at the least, possibilities. Having made the stuffing, you might roll it in a veal scallop or slice of pork shoulder.
While the original recipe's “May cheese” would be hard to find today, a number of cheeses are classified as spring cheeses, which is effectively the same. One form of gouda, meadowkaas, is specifically sold as a spring cheese. Otherwise, here are some French cheeses said to be spring cheeses: Banon, Brie de Meaux, Cantal, Coulommiers, Cure Nantais, Époisses, Fourme de Montbrison, Fourme d'Ambert, Laguiole, Langres, Livarot, Muscadet, Montasio, and Pont-l'Eveque. In general, these tend to be hard or semi-hard cheeses, though some are soft. A simple Gouda will probably do the job adequately.
The sugar may be superfluous here for a modern eater, given the sweetness of the pears. It might also be tempting to add some olive oil (once of course you have tasted the “authentic” version).
Chestnuts are seasonal in many places. If you can find them fresh, broil them until they are ready to eat, then remove the shells. Otherwise, you can use either canned or, if even these are hard to find, canned water chestnuts (which are certainly not ideal but far easier to find and pleasantly crunchy).
Overall, of all the recipes in the document, this may be the most promising as a modern dish.

• 2 eggs
• 6 cooked chestnuts
• 4 small slices of cheese
• 1 pear
• Cinnamon, ginger, pepper, others
• 1 tsp sugar

1. Hard boil two eggs (the yolks should preferably be warm by the time you use them).
2. Slice the pear into broad slices.
3. Lay out the pear slices and the chestnuts (or water chestnuts) on a baking pan.
4. Place the pan in the broiler and broil for ten minutes.
5. During the last five minutes, add the slices of cheese on the pan.
6. Take the pan out of the broiler.
7. Chop up the pear slices, the chestnuts, and the egg yolks and put them in a small bowl.
8. Slice up the cheese and spread it over the contents of the bowl.
9. Stir all this thoroughly together.
10. Sprinkle cinnamon, pepper, ginger and salt over it.
11. Stir it a little more.
12. Eat as is or combine with a cooked meat.

Teachings Which Teach How to Prepare All Types of Food

These are the teachings which teach how to prepare all types of food. First, all types of meats and the sauces which go with them, such as pork, veal, mutton, beef, and after other less large meats, like kid, lamb and piglet, and after all types of bird, such as capons, hens, geese, domestic and wild ducks, and after all sorts of wild birds, such as cranes, wild geese, herons, scoter ducks, colandes, noncelles, puffins, partridge, turtledoves, wild hens, plovers and all the sauces that go with them. And after, civets and purées of hares and rabbits, and civets and brewets of everything, and the pottages one can make of them. And after, salt and fresh water fish and all the sauces that suit them, made in every guise.