Quomodo Condiantur Pulli in Pastellis

(called by SCAdians as "Icelandic Chicken", a sort of a chicken pasty.)

Found in "An Old Icelandic Medical Miscellany" compiled by Henning Larsen in Oslo, Norway in 1931. This excerpt is contained in "A Collection of Medieval & Renaissance Cookbooks" by Their Graces Cariadoc of the Bow and Diana Alene. 1978. Societa Illuminata publishers, Cambridge, MA. I served this a part of a feast I did for an event called "Snowball Fight" in Niagara Falls, in January about 6 years ago.

Original Recipe:

"One shall cut a young chicken in two and wrap about it whole leaves of salvia and cut up in it bacon and salt to suit the taste. Then cover that with dough and bake like bread in the oven." (Salvia is a medieval word for sage).

For ease of serving I used a 3 oz. boneless chicken breast per person, wrapped 3-4 leaves of sage around it, wrapped a strip of bacon around the saged chicken, and then encased the whole thing in short crust pie dough (I've also seen folks do this with bread dough. Either works well.) I didn't add extra salt, as I thought the bacon would be salty enough (and it was!) I cut circles of pie dough about 7-8 inches in diameter, put the prepared chicken on one half, folded the other half over and sealed the edges by wetting them with water. Bake for 45 min to an hour at 350 F. (or whatever your bread dough recipe requires if you're using that.) Best served hot, but they can be eaten cold as well.

I like to bake these ahead of time for camping events, to be eaten cold or to be reheated by wrapping in foil and placing around the edges of the campfire till hot. Depends on how hungry and/or patient you are.

Enjoy!

Rose Marian