Ajvar
Ajvar is a cooked Balkan pepper preserve built around roasted red peppers, peeled, drained, ground and slowly fried with oil and seasoning. Leskovac’s protected version is a pepper specialty; regional versions vary.
Sawse camelyne (cameline sauce)
Sawce Camelyne · Sawce Camelyne · Sawse camelyn · Cameline sauce
A medieval English sauce of pounded dried currants, nut kernels, bread crusts and warm spices, tempered with vinegar. It is an unfermented sauce from The Forme of Cury, not a preserving recipe.
What the sauce was
Cameline sauce, in the form The Forme of Cury gives it, is a cold, pounded paste rather than a cooked sauce. Dried currants, nut kernels and bread crusts are ground together with warm spices and salt, then loosened with vinegar and served.
The name is the medieval form the manuscript uses. Its spelling varies between the English manuscript and later editions, and the same name is used for different sauces in other medieval collections, so the Forme of Cury text describes one preparation and does not stand for all of them.
Sources for this section
Its place in the collection
The Forme of Cury gathers many sauces for roast and boiled meat, poultry and fish. Its neighbouring entries include green, white and dark sauces made with herbs, almonds, bread, blood and liver. Read beside them, the cameline sauce shows the same pattern: bread or nuts thicken the paste, vinegar sharpens it and spices give it its character.
The collection is a court and household manuscript, not a recipe for sale. The sauce is a dish component, served with the meat it accompanies, and the manuscript gives no separate instruction for keeping it.
Sources for this section
Why the ingredients matter
The dried currants supply sweetness and body. Nut kernels and bread crusts make the paste thick enough to hold its shape, and bread absorbs the vinegar so that its sharpness is spread through the mixture.
Ginger, cloves and cinnamon are the spice group the source names. Their proportions are not given, so any measure set today is a modern decision, not a reading of the record.
Sources for this section
Reading the record
The manuscript gives no quantities, no temperatures and no holding time. Modern cooks who redraw the recipe must choose these themselves, and their versions differ. This page records the ingredient list and method as the source gives them.
The sauce is a historical dish component. It is not a validated preserving process and no safety claim is made for it. The vinegar in it does not establish a shelf life.
Sources for this section
History
The sauce is recorded in The Forme of Cury, an English recipe collection compiled about 1390 and attributed to the master cooks of King Richard II. The manuscript is a dated attestation of the recipe, not an invention date.
Ingredients
CurrantsRaisins of corance, pounded with the nut kernels and bread crusts.
Amount not stated
Quantity not given in the source as readNut kernelsPounded with the currants.
Amount not stated
Quantity and nut type not given in the source as readBreadCrusts only.
Quantity not given
GingerPowdered.
Quantity not given
Quantity not given
CinnamonGround, as a flour in the source.
Quantity not given
Quantity not given
VinegarUsed to temper the paste before serving.
Quantity not given
Method
- Pound the currants, the nut kernels and the bread crusts together to a paste.
- Add the ginger, the cloves and the ground cinnamon, and salt the mixture.
- Temper it with vinegar, then serve it.
Places
No source in this record establishes a place.
Related
Related in the family
Amlou
Amlou is a nutty, lightly sweet Moroccan spread of roasted almonds, culinary argan oil and honey. The almonds are ground first, then loosened with oil and sweetened; the balance can range from a thick spread to a dip.
Apple sauce for goose and pork
Apple sauce for goose and pork is a plain English accompaniment: cooked apples pulped with water, then sweetened with sugar and finished with a little butter.
Bagna cauda
A warm dip of garlic, anchovy and olive oil, often enriched with butter, that Piedmont serves over a flame with raw and cooked vegetables and bread.
Banana ketchup in a Filipino-inspired direction
A sweet-hot table sauce of ripe banana simmered with vinegar, sugar, onion, garlic and fresh chilli, in the manner of Philippine banana ketchup. An untested development batch of about 500 g.
Bazhe (walnut sauce base)
A Georgian walnut sauce of ground walnuts, garlic, vinegar and spices, thinned with water or broth. It is served with poultry, vegetables and bread, and is the sauce of the dish satsivi.
Butterscotch sauce
A pourable dessert sauce of brown sugar, butter and cream, with a little corn syrup and salt. It is the sauce form of the butterscotch confection and is made without water, unlike caramel.
Byzantine murrī
Byzantine murrī is a cooked imitation of murrī from the medieval Arabic repertoire, made from scorched honey, toasted bread, walnuts, quince, carob and spices rather than from a long grain fermentation.
Middle Ages
Aceto Balsamico Tradizionale di Reggio Emilia
Protected Italian vinegar made only from cooked grape must, fermented and aged in a battery of wooden barrels for at least 12 years: sweet, sharp and syrupy.
Airag
Airag is Mongolia’s fermented mare’s-milk drink, traditionally churned with saved starter in a reusable cowhide khokhuur.
Appam and hoppers
Appam, or hoppers, are South Indian and Sri Lankan rice pancakes made from a fermented coconut-and-rice batter and cooked in a curved pan to a crisp lacy rim and a soft, spongy centre.
Auricularia tremellosa
Auricularia tremellosa is a wood ear fungus of the genus that supplies most dried wood ear sold in China; its own food record is thin, and the culinary practice described here comes from the closely related wood ear species.
Ayran
Ayran is Turkey’s cold, savoury yogurt drink: plain yogurt is loosened with water and lightly salted, then whisked smooth or aerated into a soft cap of foam.
Bakestone (Norway, Viking Age to Middle Ages)
A thin stone griddle used over an open hearth. Norwegian archaeology documents the established tradition from the early Middle Ages; a Viking-period origin is only a cautious suggestion linked to Shetland.
Barley and oat porridge (Viking Age)
Crushed or milled barley cooked in water until the starch softens and the mixture thickens, the plainest way a northern household turned stored grain into a meal, here with apple and hazelnut.
Black carrot
Black carrot is the anthocyanin-pigmented Eastern carrot (Daucus carota var. atrorubens), the purple root that preceded orange types and still colours kanji and şalgam.
Community
No community contributions have been published for this entry yet.
Share what you made
Sign in to contribute. Published comments and photos are free to read.
Sources
Project GutenbergHistory · Method
The Forme of Cury: A Roll of Ancient English Cookery Compiled, about A.D. 1390The recipe is titled Sawce Camelyne (XX.VII.IIII in the edition's numbering).
Raisins of corance, nut kernels, bread crusts, ginger, cloves and cinnamon flour are pounded together, salted and tempered with vinegar.
The collection is attributed to the master cooks of King Richard II and dated about 1390.
Cited in: What the sauce was; Its place in the collection; Why the ingredients matter; Reading the record