Types of Desserts in the Middle Ages
from http://home.comcast.net/~mikibu/

In Medieval times there was no clear distinction between dishes appropriate for dessert and those that could be served with savory dishes. Sweet dishes were served along-side savory dishes. Sugar was initially treated as a spice and early sweetened dishes may not have been as sweet as ours. It was only after sugar became more affordable that we see dishes more heavily sweetened with sugar. Initially, it was the dragees, comfits, and preserved ginger (probably sweetened with honey) that was served at the "Issue de Table." Honey and dried fruits, such as dates and raisins, were the first sweeteners in the Midde Ages. The concept of dessert came about later.

In the 13th century, Montpellier, France located on in Languedoc only a few miles from the coast, was a major center for trade, education in medicine, and was famous for its espices de chamber or "parlor confections", that were eaten at the conclusion of a banquet. Candied aniseed, ginger confection known as gingibrat, dragees, gilded lozenges, almond pastilles, and candied orange peel. The confectionery from the town was so renowned that its market value was twice as high as that of similar products from other towns. Montpellier was also well known for its spices and the wines with which they were flavored, like the ubiquitous hypocras.

Sweeteners

Roman

Middle-Eastern desserts

Early period Europe: this is the hardest to document as there are no extant cook books. A lot of what we believe to be true is educated guesses based on archeological evidence.

Desserts in the Late Middle Ages (English)

During the late medieval period and into the early Renaissance, wafers were an important constituent of the void, or issue de table, the court ceremony at the end of a state meal. Wafers, comfits and hippocras were consumed by the sovereign in this semi-religious ritual linked with the final grace and the washing of hands. The hippocras and wafers may originally have had a quasi-eucharistic significance in that they echoed the Holy Communion. The spicy comfits were intended as 'stomach settlers' to calm the royal digestion, though like both hippocras and wafers they later became luxurious treats consumed at all manner of celebratory occasions by those who could afford them.

English sweets also included many types of cakes, custards, and fritters such as funnel cake. They used strawberries, apples, figs, raisins, currants and almonds. They also made cheese-based sweets including cheesecake. These dishes, which we would classify as "desserts," were served throughout the meal.

Comfits and Suckets (traditional "chamber spices"): these are candies that are either pure sugar with flavoring, candied honey or sugar coated substances. They can be dry or wet, i.e. sticky. The first forks used in medieval Europe were small two-tined forks called “comfit forks” that were used to eat sticky comfits. Types of Comfits:

  • Dragees - most common form of comfits or "chamber spices," candied sugar that had been spiced and colored: red, white . . . Made from aniseed, caraway, coriander, fennel.
  • Sugar Plums - type of large, sugar coated comfit, big caraway comfits, sugar coated almonds. "Sugar-plum - A small round or oval sweetmeat, made of boiled sugar and variously flavoured and coloured; a comfit". (OED, 1914)
  • Candied nuts
  • Candied flowers, especially rose petals and violets.
  • Rose and violet sugar was made by boiling sugar in water, and allowed to slowly crystallize into lumps that could be sucked or used as a sweetner in the kitchen
  • Hard sugar candies, often perfumed
  • Candied citrus peel (suckets) — candied lemon peel and orange peel, but until the introduction of the sweet orange in the late 15th century, all oranges in Europe was the Neroli, or bitter orange, used for its essential oils rather than the fruit. Candied orange peel was also call orengat.
  • Almond paste candies, including marzipan
  • Jujubes [fruit of the plant zizyphus spina-Christi - dark red plum-like fruit] The term comes from the Middle English iuiube. Maybe a sugar paste.
  • Sugar plate—malleable sugar paste used to make decorations of all types
  • Honey based comfits, usually very sticky. Often a vegetable or fruit was used as a base for the candying process.
  • Gilded lozenges, almond pastilles (gummy pills or tablets) (14th century)
  • Sweetened wines, hypocras or other sweet wine.

These "desserts" were served throughout the meal.

Puddings, and here we mean puddings in the American, not the English sense. A pudding is a liquid that is thickened until nearly or completely solid.

  • Custards eggs, dairy, and sweetener
  • Fruit puddings
  • Rice puddings
  • Gelatins—liquids thickened with gelatin
  • Puddings thickened with bread crumbs

Pastries

  • Custards
    • A Flaune of Almayne (spiced creamy apple/pear pie)
    • Flathonys (ale custard in a pie shell)
    • Darioles (green, red, and yellow custard in a pie shell)
    • Custarde (raisin/date custard)
    • Creme Boylede (a thick creamy custard)
    • Papyns (a custard)
  • Tarts—tarts can be filled with anything, fruit, puddings of all types, sweet potato (did you know that sweet potato pie was invented by an Elizabethan cook?), and marzipan.
    • Short Paest for Tarte (tart crust recipe)
    • Darioles, also: daryols, florendines: Sweet custard tarts
    • Crustards, or Fr. croustade:
    • Marzipan in crust is called “Marchpane” and was a very popular Elizabethan dessert.
    • Apply moyse
    • A Tarte of Strawberries
    • Tart de Bry (gingered brie tart)
    • Cheesecake
  • Waffles, wafers, and pancakes: waffles and wafers were made much like modern pizzels. They were extremely popular as a fast food and were sold from stands in cities and at fairs. Pancakes, or more accurately crepes, as there was no leavening added, would be folded like a taco and have some kind of sweet filling
  • Fritters: a fritter is dough cooked in hot fat until fried. It can be batter alone that is fried or filled dumplings.
    • Frytour Blaunched (honey covered fritters stuffed with gingered almonds)
    • A Fritur + at Hatte Emeles (sugared almond fritters)
    • Frytour of Erbes (honeyed herbed fritters)
    • Ryschewys (fried fig pastry)
    • Lente Frytoures (fried battered apple rings)
    • Losenges Fryes (diamond shaped fried dough), also called Cruste Rolle
    • Cryspes (sugar coated funnel cakes)
    • Fritter of Milk (fried sweet cottage cheese)
  • Cookies: all cookies in period were unleavened, so the main type was shortbread. It is hard to know how far back shortbread dates. The first known recipe is 16th century, but the recipe is so similar to pastry dough, that it is likely to go back much further. There are other types like meringues, which are raised with beaten egg whites. Others were baked in small molds like shell bread, made in seafood shells.
    • Prince-Bisket (caraway seed cookies)
    • Iumbolls (iced almond/caraway shortbread knots)
    • Excellent Small Cakes (iced currant cookies)
    • Gingerbrede
  • Cakes: cakes in period were all raised with yeast, so we would think of them more as a sweet bread.
    • Excellent Cake (iced currant and spice cake)
    • Rastons (buttery bread)

Fruit desserts

  • Pureed mixed fruits often mixed with almond milk or wine.
  • Applesauce and similar sauces made from other fruits such as quince or pear.
  • Fruits in syrup: a cooked fruit either preserved in, or served with sweet syrups (confits)
  • Fresh fruits served with sweet sauces or custard
  • Marmalades, jams, and jellies
  • Pastes: fruit pastes are pureed fruit cooked down until it is solid. These were often cut into decorative shapes.
  • Leche Lumbarde: slices of dates cooked in wine with breadcrumbs. A syrup is often served over it.

Other

  • Cheesecakes—virtually identical to modern cooked cheesecakes but without the graham cracker crust.
  • Flavored creams—literally whipped cream with flavorings, they might also have egg whites.
  • Gingerbread: period gingerbread was a mixture of bread crumbs, honey, and spices. It was not cooked, but was most often molded.
  • Tostee (toast topped with candied ginger and spiced honeyed wine)
  • Cuskynoles (fruit filled ravioli)
  • Gaylede (rice porridge with figs and honey)

French

Most of our knowledge about medieval French cuisine comes from 3 books. The first, Le Menagier, was written as an instruction manual for the young wife of a well-to-do Parisian. It contains a lot of information about menus, ingredients and general food preparation. All three contain many recipes.

French sweets appear to be less common and the menus found from this country are meat heavy and mention few sweet or veggie dishes. Recipes for baked or sweetened fruits seem to have been standard. There are mentions of shelled nuts which suggests they used several types. Having made several of these, the recipes are simpler and easier than the English recipes.

Source: Du Fait de Cuisine

Source: Le Menagier

Source: Le Viandier de Taillevent

German

The large German cookbooks are absolutely full of recipes. Surprisingly, they don't name most of the recipes but refer to them categorically (i.e. A meat dish, A clever food - clever seems to refer to sweet).

Germans had many recipes for tarts, puddings, and pastries. They used a wide variety of fruits ranging from apples and strawberries to dates and oranges. Almonds appear to be the only nut they cooked in desserts. One cookbook had a large section on how to sugarcoat virtually anything sweet. I've seen almost hundreds more sweet recipes in these few German cook books than in all the English cookbooks mentioned above. This suggests that either the Germans were very fond of sweets or the English didn't write down their recipes

Source: Ein Buch von guter spis

Source: Ein New Kochbuch

Source: Das Kuchbuch der Sabrina Welserin

Source: Das Kochbuch Meister Eberhard

Italian

Most Italian recipes come from one set of books. They were written by a librarian to the Vatican.

Many Italian sweets are more meatless dinner foods than dessert-like sweets. Unlike many of the previous regions, most of our Italian recipes come from one cookbook. A large number of torta recipes (mashed filling in a thin pastry crust). Other Italian desserts include fried dough and canisiones which are still eaten today.

Islamic

The basic Middle Eastern dessert appears to have been a variation on fried dough covered with honey and candy made by boiling honey with nuts. They used little to no fruit in their desserts and a lot of honey and rose water. Many types of nuts are mentioned in these recipes (almonds, walnuts, pistachios...) Some of these recipes including Hulwa are still made today.

Source: al-Andalus, Cariadoc

Dessert in the Middle Ages
from http://www.oldcook.com/dessert_moyen_age.htm

This is the Google Translation of the original French

The boutehors uses and removed after having served the table. It is composed of wine and spices chamber, ie spices or fruits preserved in sugar or honey, ginger, coriander, fennel or anise candied nougat pignonat or pine nuts, quince paste or codognat, pistachio nuts or candied. The spices are renowned chamber facilitate digestion dragees and jams are also many drugs as sweets. Candied spices are often prepared by the apothecaries and given to patients.

There are few dessert recipes in medieval cookbooks. They grow in Italy from the 16th century, arriving in France from the 17th.

Characteristics of medieval desserts:
- No products from America: no chocolate, no vanilla, no pineapple,
- No puff paste (which was mainly developed in the 17th century)
- Extensive use of spices, as throughout the medieval kitchen,
- Many recipes for pies and tarts but hardly any cake recipes,
- Main dessert: waffles, cakes, custards, pies (pies, turnovers) and blancmange (chicken and rice dish).

Some recipes representative of medieval desserts

1 - Waffles: Menagier of Paris, 1393
2 - Rissoles for fast days: Menagier of Paris, 1393
3 - Pear Compote: Pery into compost, Two Fifteenth-century cookery-books (Harleian)
4 - Applesauce Almond: Emplumeus of pomes, Master Chiquart, Because of kitchen, 1420
5 - Apple Dumpling: Tartars, apple Viandier of Taillevent, the 15th century edition
6 - Marzipan: Maestro Martino, 1450
7 - Apple fritters: Messisbugo, 1549
8 - Pizza: Scappi, 1570

1 - Waffles
Menagier of Paris, 1393

Waffles are made in four ways. In the first, beat eggs in a bowl, then salt and wine, and add flour, and moisten the one with the other, and then put in two irons little by little, each time using as much batter as a slice of cheese is wide, and clap between two irons, and cook one side and then the other; and if the iron does not easily release the batter, anoint with a little cloth soaked in oil or fat. - The second way is like the first, but add cheese, that is, spread the batter as though making a tart or pie, then put slices of cheese in the middle, and cover the edges (with batter: JH); thus the cheese stays within the batter and thus you put it between two irons. - The third method, is for dropped waffles, called dropped only because the batter is thinner like clear soup, made as above; and throw in with it fine cheese grated; and mix it all together. - The fourth method is with flour mixed with water, salt and wine, without eggs or cheese. Item, waffles can be used when one speaks of the "large sticks" which are made of flour mixed with eggs and powdered ginger beaten together, and made as big as and shaped like sausages; cook between two irons.

2 - Rissoles -
RISSOLES ON A FISH DAY. Cook chestnuts on a low fire and peel them, and have hard-cooked eggs and peeled cheese and chop it all up small; then pour on egg yolks, and mix in powdered herbs and a very little free-running salt, and make your rissoles, then fry in lots of oil and add sugar. And note, in Lent, instead of eggs and cheese, put in cooked whiting and sciaena, chopped very small, or the flesh of pike or eels, and chopped figs and dates.

Item, on ordinary days, they can be made of figs, grapes, chopped apples and shelled nuts to mimic pignon nuts, and powdered spices: and the dough should be very well saffroned, then fry them in oil. If you need a liaison, starch binds and so does rice. Item, the flesh of sea lobster is good instead of meat. [Le Ménagier de Paris]

RISSOLES ON A MEAT DAY are seasonable from St. Remy's Day (October 1). Take a pork thigh, and remove all the fat so that none is left, then put the lean meat in a pot with plenty of salt: and when it is almost cooked, take it out and have hard-cooked eggs, and chop the whites and yolks, and elsewhere chop up your meat very small, then mix eggs and meat together, and sprinkle powdered spices on it, then put in pastry and fry in its own grease. And note that this is a proper stuffing for pig; and any time the cooks shop at the butcher's for pig-stuffing : but always, when stuffing pigs, it is good to add old good cheese. [Le Ménagier de Paris, J. Hinson (trans.)]

3 - Pear Compote
Pery into compost, Two Fifteenth-century cookery-books (Harleian)

Pear compote. Take the wine and cinnamon and a large quantity of white sugar, and put everything on the stove to heat hot, but do not let it boil and pass through a sieve, and then take fine dates, and remove the cores and slice thinly, and add them and then take pears (Wardonys = Wardens, pears) and adorn them and boil, and slice them thinly, and throw them in the syrup: then take a bit of sandalwood and add it, and put everything on fire, and if you have quinces, add them to the broth, and make sure there is enough sugar, and enough cinnamon, and add salt and boil, then place it in plain wood, and let it cool and serve.

Translation Ian Bailey.

4 - Applesauce Almond
Ung emplumeus of pomes, Master Chiquart, Because of kitchen, 1420

A boiled sweet potato
Even more, boiled sweet potato: to understand who will take good apples Barberine depending on how much you want to do, and then peel it right and cut them in nice side dishes gold or silver and you need to have a nice pot of good soil and clean, and put the nice clean water you will boil on a beautiful bright embers, then you put your potatoes to boil it. And you will have good almond in large quantities by the quantity of potatoes that you have to cook, and remove the skin, clean the almonds and wash very well and put them in a mortar to grind that does not feel garlic and crush them together very well by spraying with broth in which the apples cook, and when the apples are cooked enough, take them out on a nice table to decide own, and with the cooking water filter your almonds to get a good thick almond milk and give it to boil on a bright and clean coals without smoke, with a little salt. And while it boils, chop very fine apples with a small knife clean, then, once chopped, put them in your almond milk, and add sugar in large quantities, depending on how much of emplumeus apples, and then when the doctor asked, serve it in fancy bowls or flat gold or silver.

Translation Jacques Bouchut.

Contemporary Recipe: Applesauce Almond.

5 - Apple Dumpling
Tartar, apple Viandier of Taillevent, edition of the 15th century.

Cut apples into chunks, and add figs, and grapes thoroughly cleaned, and mix well together, and add the onion fried in butter or oil, and wine, and also add crushed apples and diluted in wine, and mix with saffron and a few minor spices: cinnamon, white ginger, anise and pygurlac, if we have, and make two large rolled-out dough, and put on a thick paste of the whole mixture, well ground by hand and then cover with pastry with saffron and brown, and bake and cook.

Recipe contemporary Chausson of apples, figs, raisins and spices.

6 - Marzipan
Marzapane, Maestro Martino, Libro de arte coquinaria, 1450

World far almonds and crush them as much as possible because we do not pass through the cheesecloth. And to know that they are still more white, tasty and sweet on the palate, it must soak them in cool water for a day and a night or more, so they can be worlds pinching them between your fingers. By crushing you wet them with rose water so they do not turn into oil. And if you want that pie is good, you will put the same weight of sugar almonds, ie a pound of each, or more or less to your taste. And thou shalt set an ounce or two of good rose water and you mix all these things together. Then take unteer or waffles made with sugar, soaked with rose water, you will stretch on the bottom of the pan and you fill it with the aforementioned composition or farce. And when thou hast extended and flattened, you wet it again with a little rosewater, adding more on top of powdered sugar. And sugar well smoothed over, thou shalt bake pies like other low heat, being careful to give him a moderate fire and turning often so it does not burn. Remember that pie marzipan like this should be rather low than too high and thin and thick.

Translation: Gastronomy in the Middle Ages, Sabban Serventi, Redon.
Nostradamus also has a recipe close to marzipan in the 16th century.

7 - Apple fritters
Fritelle di poem, uva e secca pignuoli, Messisbugo, Banchetti ... 1549.

Apple fritters with raisins and pine nuts
Take a bowl and half white flour, four ounces of sugar, sweet potatoes cut menu, four ounces of seedless raisins, four ounces of citron cut into syrup menu, a glass of white wine, a little oil, a little saffron. Mix well all these things together until they do as a glue, then you will have your stove with three pounds of hot oil, and thou shalt bake the same way as the others, putting them above the honey and sugar as has been said.

Translation: The cuisine at the Renaissance Sabban Serventi.

8 - Pizza [fried twists of dough flavored with sweet spices]
Per fare pizza un'altro modo Scappi, Opera, 1570.

To make a pizza in another way
Take 2 pounds of flour and knead it with 6 ounces of Parmesan pounded in a mortar. Dilute with broth and fat rosewater and pass through a sieve, and 3 ounces of sugar, 6 egg yolks, 3 ounces of bread soaked in meat broth. 1 / 2 ounce of cinnamon, 1 / 2 ounces including cloves and nutmeg, and let the dough rest for 1 hour and let the dough with a thin foil and grease it with melted butter and make a twist (twist) in the direction of the length of 4 turns (like a plait) and grease the twist of melted butter and not too hot that several twist made focaccia and fry it in butter or lard or baked in the pie is cooked as twisters, serve hot with sugar on it.

Translation: Colarizi Alessio Graziani.