There is no early recorded recipe for hippocras jelly, but the one heading this chapter, taken from the pages of a manuscript housed in the British Library, is from the same period and just needs a spot of gelatine to turn it into jelly. There were a variety of sources to choose from. Sometimes it was extracted from the bladder of sturgeon (isinglass), at other times from the antlers of male red deer (hartshorn). Calves’ feet were another good source, providing a high level of collagen and, more importantly, a neutral flavour. Raspberry jelly made using a calf’s foot might not sound appealing, but actually it’s rather more appealing than gelatine, the setting agent for modern jelly.
But it is not so much the jellies served at the end of the courses during that Windsor get-together that merit our attention, as the jelly served as the second plate of the second course during the Sunday dinner – in between ‘A sotelte’ and a ‘Kind Kid’. It was ‘Jely Ypocrass’ – that is, jelly hippocras.
Hippocras is an ancient type of mulled wine and while the fifth century physician Hippocrates might well have drunk it – indeed might have advocated its befits to health – the word comes from the name of the bag used to filter the wine. The manicum Hippocraticum – the sleeve of Hipocrates – was conical in shape and was used to strain the liquid, getting rid of any unwanted particles, while letting the spicy juice run clearer. Certainly mulled wine brings on feelings of warm well-being, although a hippocras is not necessarily heated. A jellied version would have made a spirited addition to the lavish proceedings. Henry’s Knights of the Garter enjoyed his favour for the likes of capturing Boulogne, raiding Calais or because they were the father of his current wife. They needed to make the most of their privileged times at the king’s court as life was precarious. One moment you’d be guffawing and wolfing down some boozy jelly, the next you might fall from favour and end up in the Tower or worse. And that’s a poor place to be when you’ve got the Tudor equivalent of a vodka jelly hangover.
circa 1540
AUTHOR: Bernardino de Sahagún,
FROM: Historia general de las cosas de la Nueva España
(General History of the Things of New Spain)
Here are told the foods which the lords ate … turkey pasty cooked in a pot, or sprinkled with seeds; tamales of meat cooked with maize and yellow chili; roast turkey hen; roast quail … turkey with a sauce of small chilis, tomatoes and ground squash seeds, turkey with red chilis, turkey with yellow chilis, turkey with green chilis …
Turkeys arrived on the shores of England in the mid sixteenth century. They must have startled those who first saw them. With their exotic plumage, their strutting, their ugliness and the strange noises they uttered, they characterised the wonder of what merchants were importing from overseas at the time.
The turkey was so named because that was where people reckoned it came from. Merchants had been trading in what was then called the Levant – the eastern Mediterranean – and when they came across these big edible birds they snapped them up. The birds then spread across Europe and while the English thought they were from Turkey, other nations – the Dutch, Danes, Finns, Germans and French –thought they came from India. And so the French today call the turkey dinde – the coq d’Inde, or ‘cock of India’. Meanwhile, the Danish word kalkun comes from the name of an Indian port on the Malabar coast, Calicut. Turkeys were breeding there but they weren’t indigenous, having been brought to Calicut by the Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama. After sailing round the Cape of Good Hope and travelling up the east coast of Africa, he had crossed to India and landed in Calicut in 1498. On board his ship were turkeys, brought by him from Mexico.
And it was from Mexico that they arrived in Turkey. So really we should call turkeys ‘mexicos’. Except that at the time Mexico was called the New Spain as the conquistadors – led by Hernán Cortés – were conquering and killing their way through the country from 1521. These ‘new spains’ had been domesticated by the Aztecs and they called them huexolotl, which evolved into the current Mexican word guajolote. But ‘turkey’ is easier to say, so we’ll stick to that.
Whatever their name, the Aztecs loved them. Fossils of turkeys have been found in the Mexican highlands that date back 10 million years, and by the early sixteenth century they were an important part of their diet. More than that, they were a key ingredient at festivals and feasts. Their meat was devoured and their feathers used as head-dresses and to add colour to jewellery.
The most detailed accounts of the Aztecs consuming turkey come from a Spanish Franciscan friar, Bernardino de Sahagún, who was dispatched to the New Spain as a missionary in 1529. Having studied at the convent of Salamanca, he was, aged thirty, considered worthy of evangelising the natives. Doubtless he showed the right degree of religious zeal that it would take to convert to Catholicism those whom Cortés hadn’t killed. His companions reported that he never missed Matins and went into frequent ecstasies – of the religious kind.
It was only a few years since Cortés had defeated Montezuma (but not before joining him for a hot chocolate), the ruler of the Aztec nation, slaughtered thousands and torn down their altars. But life had settled down to a certain extent and Bernardino was tasked with getting to know the locals. ‘They chose out ten or twelve of the principal old men, and told me that with those I might communicate and that they would instruct me in any matters I should inquire of,’ he wrote. ‘With those appointed principal men I talked many days during two years. On all subjects on which we conferred they gave me pictures.’
Bernardino is a little modest about his endeavours. The men must have taken to him and his gentle nature and not just because he learnt their language and became a fluent speaker. His work, translatable as a ‘General History of the Things of New Spain’, is one of the great works of anthropology, accompanied by 2,000 detailed drawings produced by the Aztecs themselves.
The vivid picture he painted of the Aztecs ran to twelve books and a total of 2,400 pages detailing their society, economics, rituals and, of course, food. On which subject the Aztecs were quite keen, particularly when it came to eating people. But aside from freshly sacrificed and cooked young man, the Aztecs liked turkey, as did Bernardino. Given that in the early months of his arrival much of the food seemed to consist of ‘tadpoles, ants with wings, and worms’, turkey must have been a welcome relief.
Templo Mayor Library Mexico / Gianni Dagli Orti
Friar Bernardino de Sahagún’s General History of the Things in New Spain in mid-sixteenth century Mexico showcased drawings produced by the Aztecs (who liked eating turkey).
He found it ‘always tasty, savoury, of very pleasing odour’ and he noted the various ways his hosts cooked it – the section above from the eighth volume of the Historia being the closest we’ll get to a contemporary recipe – from boiling to roasting, served with different sauces, coloured with green, yellow and red chillies. But he was particularly taken by the turkey-stuffed tomales. These early wraps were made with a corn-based dough, usually stuffed with meat. The wrap – a local leaf – was discarded before eating and its contents sustained the conquistadors, who turned their noses up at the human- or ant-type items the menu otherwise had to offer.
Bernardino noted that one of the first things the Aztec women did as a feast day approached was to prepare the tomales, which they had taken to an art form. Young girls would aspire to twist and plait the dough, imprinting them with designs of seashells and shaping them into butterflies. The skill in their construction belies the Americanised reputation of Mexican food as a sloppy pile of lettuce, rice and beans. To honour the various