The Aspiring Luddite

	I carry no phone An aspiring Luddite In a wired world. Mastodon Verification Link	Jeff Berry is an early adopter of the Internet and the Web, a late adopter of Twitter, and declines to adopt Facebook. With the death of Google+, he migrated to the Fediverse. He admins a medievalist Mastodon instance. He hates cell-phones.

Egurdouce
13 December 2013

The last few weeks, I've been feeling more medieval than usual, so when I was trying to think of something else to do with the lovely goat which has featured so prominently in my diet lately, I turned, as I often do, to The Forme of Cury in Curye on Inglysch. Poking around, I stumbled across a recipe that I was shocked to realize I hadn't made before. In fact, I'm a little surprised I hadn't made it for several hundred people.

I suspect the reason I held back was that it calls for rabbit or goat, and I tend to avoid recipes for such when planning a full scale feast. On the other hand, I see no reason why the recipe wouldn't work for lamb or even pork.

The recipe is for Egurdouce, and is transcribed by Hieatt and Butler as follows:
Egurdouce. Take conynges or kydde, and smyte hem on pecys rawe, and frye hem in white grece. Take raysouns of coraunce and fry hem. Take oynouns, perboile hem and hewe hem small and fry hem. Take rede wyne and a lytel vynegur, sugur with powdour of peper, of gynger, of canel, salt; and cast þerto, and lat it seeþ with a gode quantite of white grece, & serue it forth. [Lots of pictures]

Egurdouce

1 pound coney, kid or other meat. I used goat, lamb would also be good.
2 medium onions
2 Tbs currants
1/2 cup red wine
2 T red wine vinegar
2 tsp salt
2 tsp sugar
1 tsp ginger
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp pepper
olive oil

First, let me say, that if I had pork, duck, goose or chicken fat, I would have used that instead of olive oil. But needs must when the devil drives, so olive oil it was. Smite your meat into pieces; I opted for slightly larger than bite-sized chunks. Cut your onions into small bits. Heat your lipid and sear your meat. Remove it. Add the currants to the pan and let them cook for a minute, then remove them as well. Add the onions and let them brown. Then add the meat and the currants back.

Add the wine, vinegar and spices and stir well. Reduce the heat, cover the pan and let the whole thing simmer for a while. How long will depend a bit on how hard you seared your meat and what the cut is; you want the meat to be tender. With the goat, it took in the range of 30-45 minutes.

Serve with carb of your choice, if you like such things, and something green. Then serve it forth. We went for mashed potatoes and brussels sprouts that had been sautéed up with some bacon. We did not choose poorly.

The Aspiring Luddite