The recipe comes from le Viandier de Taillevent, as translated by James Prescott.
Take mutton, veal or pork meat, cook it, chop it appropriately, spice it extremely reasonably with Fine Powder, and fry it in lard. Afterwards, have large uncovered pies the size of little platters, with pastry sides higher than for other pies, and made in the manner of crenellations. The pastry should be strong so that it can hold the meat. If you wish, mix some pine nut paste and currants with the meat, and crumble some sugar on top. Take some boiled and quartered chicken, and in each pie put 3 or 4 chicken quarters in which to fix the banners of France and of the lords who will be in the [royal] presence. Gild them with sprinkled saffron to be more attractive.
If you do not wish to depend so much on chicken, you need only make some flat pieces of roasted or boiled pork or mutton. When the pies are full of their meat, glaze the top of the meat with a little egg yolk and egg white beaten together, so that the meat will hold together more firmly for inserting the banners. Have some gold, silver, or tin leaf for gilding the pies in front of the banners.
Parma tarts were most definitely a regal dish and variations were served around Europe. (As far as I know, the dish is named after Parma, Italy.) They were very tall things, stuffed, as they were, with meat. And most of the spices were definitely not locally sourced, hence only the wealthy could afford to purchase them. The saffron may well have been grown in France but the Grains of Paradise were imported from Africa. Along with them may have come the ginger but it probably was brought from Asia. Cloves came from Indonesia while the cinnamon/cassia would have been shipped in from Sri Lanka/China. The recipe above is for a tart to be served on a meat day while Parma tarts for fast days could be found stuffed with fish and eel. Don't forget that, as far as the papal culinary squad was concerned back then, animals such as frogs, snails, dolphins, and whales were considered fish when it came to meatless days.
The Dulcinea had fried up some boneless pork chops and boiled chicken thighs a couple days previously so all I had to do was chop them up. Next I needed to make some powder fine, a common spice mixture of the Middle Ages.
It's a mix of cloves, cinnamon, ginger, sugar, and Grains of Paradise. I picked up the Grains of Paradise at the booth of The Spice House at the Milwaukee Public Market a few weeks ago. They are like black peppercorns but have a more floral aroma and a fruitier taste. Being related to cardamom, GoP also have a pungency like its cousin. This spice was all the rage in French cooking at this time. The powder fine has a very bold taste (and a bit of heat too) with all that ginger and GoP.
Here's a photo of the seasoning mixture. It's powder fine along with some ground pine nuts, sugar, salt, saffron, and currants.
I tossed the meat in this stuff and put the result in a pie shell. Truth be known, I was feeling lazy and used a store bought shell and used a second one for the top which didn't work overly well as it was not keen on being removed from the dish. So the top was a bit of a patchwork job. Plus it didn't help that it was over-filled. But it came out of the oven looking edible despite this and not having and banners of France or lords therein.
No gold gilding either. Although the crust was edible, I've read that the filling was scooped out back in the day. Presumably diners wouldn't have eaten the crust as it was more to protect the goodness inside from the ravages of the oven than being part of the meal. This being the case, I urged Miles to dig in. At first he didn't take me literally and wanted to cut a piece out. I instructed him to take a serving spoon and scoop out some filling.
I served it with peas and some raspberry applesauce.
After shoveling some of it into his gaping 10 year-old maw, Miles proclaimed that it was awesome and eventually went back for seconds. Aside from the Grains of Paradise, there isn't anything here that is completely unfamiliar to the modern American palate. However, I think many of us tend to associate some of the flavors with autumnal sweets like gingerbread cookies and pumpkin pie. Medieval chefs liked to combine the sweet and the savory and many dishes of the time reflect this. We generally stick with the savory today.
The dish was just a teeny tiny bit on the dry side so I think I'll put a bit of lard or butter on top of the filling next time before I seal the tart.
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