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Historical recipe: Fake fish – a medieval apple pie for Lent

Historical recipe: Fake fish – a medieval apple pie for Lent

Name: Historical recipe: Fake fish – a medieval apple pie for Lent
Cook time: 35 min
Total time: 35 min
Ingredients: 500g Flour; 40g Ground almonds; 300ml Water; 125g Olive oil; 1tsp Salt; Saffron (optional); Whole/sliced almonds to make the scales of the fish; 3 Apples; 90g Cane sugar; 1tsp Ginger; ½tsp Cinnamon; ½tsp Saffron; 2 Gingerbread slices (lightly toasted and crumbled) or 40g ground almonds

Published: October 29, 2021 at 4:02 PM

Difficulty 3/10

Cook: 35 mins

In every issue of BBC History Magazine, picture editor Sam Nott brings you a recipe from the past. In this article, Sam recreates 'fake fish', a medieval treat as virtuous as it is delicious

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In the Middle Ages, people were instructed not to eat meat during Lent. Yet the ban didn’t apply to fish – in fact, Dutch gourmets enjoyed serving up ‘fish’ dishes so much that they devised this fish-shaped apple pie. With no animal products, it’s every bit as virtuous as it is delicious.

Ingredients

For the dough:

500g Flour
40g Ground almonds
300ml Water
125g Olive oil
1tsp Salt
Saffron

(optional)
Whole/sliced almonds

to make the scales of the fish

For the filling:

3 Apples
90g Cane sugar
1tsp Ginger
½tsp Cinnamon
½tsp Saffron
2 Gingerbread slices

(lightly toasted and crumbled) or 40g ground almonds

Method

For the dough:
step 1

Mix all the ingredients for the dough together, adding more liquid/flour if required, and knead it all until it’s reasonably smooth. Put the dough in the fridge for an hour before you need to use it.
step 2

Add the ingredients for the filling into a blender and blend, or mash by hand using a potato masher.
step 3

Preheat the oven to 200°C. Divide the pastry in two. Roll out the first part and cut out an oval shape.
step 4

Place the fish on a baking tray with toasted breadcrumbs sprinkled on the dough.
step 5

Put the apple filling on to the oval, roll and cut out a second oval and place over the filling, pressing the top layer to the bottom.
step 6

Cut out an eye hole and a hole near where the tail will go. Add fins, gills, scales. Bake for 45mins.

Discover more historical recipes, including:

Recipe courtesy of Coquinaria

This article was first published in the March 2014 issue of BBC History Magazine

Historical recipe: Fake fish – a medieval apple pie for Lent

Ingredients

For the dough:

For the filling:

Method

For the dough:

step 1

step 2

step 3

step 4

step 5

step 6