Rich White Dish

Translation of a 16th century Italian Recipe.

From Christoforo di Messisbugo, Banchetti composizioni di vivande e apparecchio generale (Lucio Spineda, Venice, 1610)

p75r/76v A fare dieci piatti di mangiar bianco da grasso. (To make ten plates of rich white dish.)

Take a young chicken, and drain it of blood, and make it cooked by boiling, and unravel the flesh, and take ten ounces of rice flour, and thirty cups of good milk, and put these things in a good pewter pot, and make [it] in this manner; take the milk, and put in the aforesaid flour a little by little, and mix these things together well, then put in the shredded chicken flesh, and one pound of fine sugar, and put the pot over a tripod, and missing the bright fire, without smoke hold it stirring continuously until it is cooked, and when it will be cooked, put in half a cup of rose water, and when it will be served, put over fine sugar. The pullet will be drained [of blood] before it will be cooked, and I have found this much the best, to grind the flesh of the chicken or pullet, and to pass it through the strainer with the milk, then unravelling, and much cleaner, yet each one can do it in his own way.