Did a custard tart take down one of
Shakespeare's most villainous kings? Well no, no, not exactly, but Richard the
seconds penchant for opulent feasts and fantastic food did lead to him getting
into some hot water, which then led to his downfall. So today I'm going to show
you how to make a Crustade Lombarde, or Lombardy Custard which was featured at
one of the most famous of Richard II feasts. Then we'll dig into how Richard
II did fall from power, and how it gave way to the rise of the Lancastrian
dynasty. This time on Tasting History. The Crustade Lombarde, or Lombardy Custard, is essentially just a fruit custard tart, but with a medieval twist.
See while it has eggs, and fruit and cream, and sugar which would be normal in
a fruit custard tart. It also has some interesting ingredients like bone marrow,
and parsley. Bet you didn't see those coming. So the recipe I'm going to use
today comes from the Harleian manuscript, and reads as thus "Take good cream and
leaves of parsley, and eggs the yolks and the whites and break them into the cream.
Beat the mixture until it is so stiff that it will stand by itself. Then take
fresh marrow, and dates cut into two or three, and prunes and put the dates and
the prunes and the marrow into a fair coffin made of fair paste and put the
coffin into the oven until it is a little hard then draw it out of the oven.
Take the liquid and put it into the coffin and fill it up and cast enough
sugar on. If it is Lent leave the eggs, and marrow out, and then serve it forth."
Now this recipe is kind of cool because it answers a question that I have often
wondered and that is how do they do blind baking in the Middle Ages?Tthey
never really mention it in in any recipes but if you just bake
pastry a tart shell by itself it's going to puff up. So did they use baking beans
or pie weights like we do today, and if so what were they made out of? Well I
don't know, but in this case they actually use the fruit, and the bone
marrow to keep the pie pastry down. So I think that's a little ingenious. Now
when it does come to the crust, or as it calls it a coffin, which iI think is way,
cool it calls for a fair coffin made of fair paste which is going to be made out
of fair flour. Which is nice white refined wheat flour and it's interesting,
because in the Middle Ages crusts were often not meant for actually eating. You
would eat the inside and then the crust was just there to kind of keep
everything together, but since this specifies that it's going to be made out
of nice refined wheat flour it kind of implies that you're going to eat this
crust, so interesting. Anyway that is our first ingredient a nice pie pastry made
out of wheat flour. Now the original probably would have
just been water, and flour but go ahead, and make whatever kind of crust you want,
or just buy it nobody's gonna judge you. I'm not gonna judge you. Next you'll need
about 15 dates and 15 prunes. It's gonna vary depending on the size, but what you
want is enough that when they're cut up they're gonna pretty much cover the
bottom of the pie plate. Then about 1/4 cup of bone marrow, a cup of heavy cream,
1/4 cup, or 50 grams of sugar. Now for this I used turbinado sugar, but you
could use regular white sugar, or brown sugar. Really whatever you got. 2 eggs, 3
tablespoons of finely minced parsley, a pinch of salt, and the smash of a Like
button. Now that's not in the original medieval recipe, but I promise you it
makes everything taste just a little bit better. Now the recipe says if it be Lent
leave the eggs and marrow out, but it not be Lent so we're leaving the eggs and
marrow in. So go ahead and pre-heat your oven to 425 degrees Fahrenheit, and pull
out your marrow bones. Now the best and easiest way to get marrow is to get an
actual marrow bone that's just chilled, but you can't always find them.
Usually if you have a really good butcher, or an Asian market they'll have
them, and they'll actually hack them open for you which is necessary, but if you
don't have that or you just can't find it then you can always get frozen ones.
Just put them in the oven for about 20 minutes at 400 degrees Fahrenheit and
that'll loosen up the marrow enough that you can scoop it out, but I got an entire
leg bone which is by the way, way too much, but that's what they had and he
hacked it open for me at the Asian market down the street, and so it's gonna
be just so much easier to scoop out. I'll show ya. Just take a spoon, and scoop it
out of the bone and it just kind of crumbles which is perfect, because you're
gonna end up having to crumble it anyway, and then set it aside. Then take your
prunes, and chop them up into two or three pieces each, and then take your
dates and chop them up into two or three pieces each. You want them fairly small
because you want to kind of cover all the gaps when you lay them
out. Then take a 9-inch pie plate, and line it
with your dough prick the bottom then spread out the prunes, and the dates and
cover those with the marrow then provided that your oven is preheated pop
it into the oven for about 10 to 12 minutes until it's pretty much
completely cooked. Now while that's in the oven go ahead and mince your parsley
nice and fine then in a bowl combine the cream and the eggs, and whisk now the
recipe says to whisk until it stands on its own. I'm not exactly sure what that means,
but I assumed it meant like peaks. Well because you're using a whole egg instead
of egg whites it's probably never going to get like stiff peaks like a
meringue, or whipped cream. So if you can just get it you know fairly firm nice
soft peaks that's going to be good enough. Then add in your pinch of salt,
and your parsley and whisk that in. Now you'll notice that salt is not actually
mentioned in the recipe so you can leave it out if you want, but salt is almost
always omitted from medieval recipes, but we know that they used it so I think
it was just maybe one of those things that you know cooks just knew to throw
that in there, but I'm just using a pinch so if you leave it out probably not a
huge deal. So I've made this tart twice now, and the first time I made it was was
quite some time ago before I started the show, and I made it like a pecan pie
where all of the ingredients would be together in the mixture, in the
custard, but that's not what this recipe says. This recipe has you put all the
fruit on the bottom, then you make the custard with a filling, and then instead
of including the sugar in that, the sugar is cast on top and I kind of thought hmm
that's that's interesting. So the first time I I didn't do it that way but this
time I did, and you'll see how it turns out. So by now the pie shell should be
ready, so take it out of the oven, and reduce the oven to 375 Fahrenheit or in
190 Celsius. Now you want to let the crust cool pretty much all the way
before adding in the filling, but once it is cool add in the cream, and egg filling,
and then cast sugar on, and now maybe in the Middle Ages they
would have just used a little bit of sugar I don't know but I pretty much
covered the whole top with sugar because I like things sweet, and you know why not
show off, you're the king. Then set the custard back into the oven for about 20
minutes, or until the top starts to brown. Now while the tart bakes let's take a
look at the king who ate it, Richard II. So like I said this is less a
history about the custard itself, and more history about the king who ate it,
Richard II. I thought I would do it this way because he played such an
important role in the culinary history of the Middle Ages, so I thought I could
just kind of shoehorn it in plus I think it's interesting, and it's my show so I
can do what I want. Now Richard II became king of England at
the tender age of 10 so it's probably no surprise that he was not exactly
down-to-earth. In an episode a few weeks back about The Forme of Cury which was
England's first cookbook, and created by Richard's chefs. I'll link to it in the
description below. I discussed how Richard really loved the finer things in
life. He held lavish banquets filled with
fantastic food. He wore fine clothes, and commissioned expensive pieces of art, and
while all that sounds just peachy he could be a bit much.
He was peevish, and capricious, and notoriously thin-skinned. He was in need
of constant praise. In fact he was the first English king to make sure that
everyone around him called him your majesty, or your high royal presence. He
created an air of divinity around the crown, that kind of Divine Right of Kings
and that didn't sit too well with the the nobles of England, because up until
then the English King had really been first among equals. He was in charge, but
he had to listen to the whole group especially after Magna Carta 170 years
before, and it didn't make things better that Richard really liked to play
favorites, and the favorites that he chose tended to be seen as kind of
upstarts, and many blamed them for counseling Richard into some really poor
policies that eventually led to the peasant
revolt in 1381. What made it almost even worse was that Richard to the peasants
came out smelling like a rose which was ridiculous, and as he grew more powerful
he siphoned off money from the government to give to his favorites and
pay for his extravagant lifestyle, including these amazing banquets that he
had. In the play "Richard II" Shakespeare has his Uncle, John of Gaunt
chastise the young king by saying "Landlord of England art thou now, not
King" and truly it was John of Gaunt who kept the wolves at bay for Richard,
because at once he was one of his greatest critics, but he was also his
most fervent protector. So fast-forward to 1386
and John of Gaunt decides to go off to Castile to press his claim to the throne
their leaving poor King Richard to his own devices. Well it didn't take long for
Richard to elevate Robert de Vere, his number one favorite, and "familiaritas
obsonenae" lover to Duke of Ireland. The nobles against Richard now known as the
Lord's appellant retaliated by holding what was known as the Wonderful
Parliament which attempted to rein the king in, and basically dismiss a lot of
his favorites from court, but then Richard just turned around, and declared
them all treasonous. So yeah things were not going well in in England, and this is
where our tart enters the story. On September 23rd 1387 Richard and the
Bishop of Durham held a lavish feast for two thousand courtiers in London.
Ostensibly in honor of John of Gaunt - as far as I can tell was out of a
country at the time, but I don't know maybe he was in for the weekend, seems
doubtful. Now one thing that makes this feast so interesting to us today is that
we actually know everything that was served at the feast, and in what order we
even have the shopping list and it gives us a good idea of just how much these
dinners for Richard were costing the kingdom. 14 oxen lying in salt, a hundred
and twenty heads of sheep fresh, a hundred, and forty pigs of lard and
grease enough, however much that is, fifty swans, two hundred and ten geese, sixty
dozen hens, four hundred koenings are big rabbits, a hundred dozen pigeons,
a hundred and twenty gallons of milk ,12 bushels of apples, and eleven thousand
eggs. The feast was broken up into three courses. Each course had like 15 to 20
different dishes, and the dish that finished out the first course was the
Lombardy Custard. Now while this feast was probably no
more lavish than any other feast that Richard held the mood in the kingdom was
turning against Richard, and this kind of spending didn't really help in the way
of optics. See England was in the fiftieth year of the Hundred Years War,
and everyone was broke paying for it, rich people and poor people alike, and
here's Richard having a giant feast for his uncle who's not even in town. So
Richard couldn't be that surprised when on December 19 the Lord's appellant
headed by Richard's own cousin, and John of Gaunt's son Henry Bolingbroke raised
an army and defeated the king at The Battle of Radcot Bridge sending his
favorite Robert de Vere scampering off to the continent, where he died a couple of
years later, but that's a couple more years than most of Richard's followers
got, because the Lord's appellant purged Richards court of his favorites and
beheaded his top eight, but they stopped just short of deposing the king himself
for as another one of Richard's uncle's the Duke of Gloucester said we do not
rebel or arm ourselves against the king except in order to instruct him.
Seriously we're gonna buy that? Well it just goes to show you should never leave
a job half done, because over the next ten years Richard became more despotic
and maybe understandably paranoid, and finally executed most of those who rose
up against him, but his cousin Henry Bolingbroke escaped, and a year later
when he returned he overthrew Richard declaring himself King Henry IV,
first of the Lancastrian dynasty. Poor Richard was locked away, and died soon
thereafter ironically of starvation, but I am NOT going to follow in Richards
footsteps and die of starvation. No, no I am going to eat this Lombardy Custard,
which should be ready to take out of the oven. So after about 20 minutes the top
should look nice and set, but should have a slight wobble in the middle. Go ahead
and take it out of the oven, and let it cool. So here we are our Crustade
Lombarde. It smells so good. I kind of thought that because I cast sugar on top
that there would be almost like a crust, or actually I was worried that it was
going to burn, but it didn't. It was like it melted in, muah, beautiful. It looks
completely different from the one that I did a while back so I'm curious to see
how the flavor is different. Here we go. Really good. Nice and sweet, good amount
of sugar, no more than that because the dates, and the prunes are already so
sweet. The flavor is similar to the to the one that I baked, but the texture is
completely different. It's much more, it's like a custard. The other one wasn't
really like a custard. This one is like a custard, because everything was separated.
Now I didn't expect the marrow to come through, I kind of figured that that
would just kind of be like a source of fat in the in the dish, but I expected
maybe the parsley too and I could taste a piece, but I didn't feel like the
flavor infiltrated it in any way. I'm wondering if the parsley is actually
meant to give it a sort of green tint, though I don't really see a green tint
on this, because they often use parsley and other foods to to color their food.
Now if you're interested in learning more recipes that Richard II would've
eaten I have a wonderful playlist down here of all The Forme of Cury recipes
that i've done so far on the show. So make sure to hit that Like button and I
will see you next time in Tasting History.
Excellent video, you seem to keep getting better and better at this. I've been wondering two things: 1: Do you have some sort of background in TV production? You seemed to start off really professional from the jump and most new YouTube channels seem to flail around for a bit before figuring it out. 2: How many video game plushes do you have? I don't think I've seen one repeat yet.
Wonderful video, my wife has added it to the queue of things you've done that she is doing.
She's a big one for medieval cooking from her time in the SCA.
As usual, great video! Loved the historic background and the high production value. Can't wait to see your channel grow even more! :)
Another gem. Looking forward to future recipes/productions.