Food and snowball fight - Sten Stures ben celebration

The 19th of January is the anniversary of the Battle of Åsunden, where the Swedish regent Sten Sture lost his leg, and later died from the infection. This is celebrated through "Sten Stures ben" (the leg of Sten Sture) where you have snowball fights and eat chocolate balls. For more info on the battle, in Swedish, you can visit my Historiekullan blog. In 2020 it's 500 years since the battle, and our small 16th century group in Falun decided to celebrate it with a proper feast. Unfortunately we have the worst winter I can remember this year so there is no snow on the ground. When we arrived at the feast we had a discussion about finding snow that still remained in some ditches along the way, but that was it. Then some surpise guests turned up - and they had brought snow with them in a portable freeze box!

Snowballs and chocolate balls are ready

By now it was dark though so I don't have any photos of the glorious snowball fight that ensued. We basically put the freeze box with the snow in the middle and then it was about running to the freeze box grabbing snow and throwing it towards the other team.  Then we ate the totally non-historical chocolate balls.

I had finished my new shift, but since it was cold and dark I only have pictures of me wearing my gollar over it, so it's not visible. I wore my green longsleeved 1520's gown and I lent a friend my mustard kirtle and high collared shift so that she could join in for the feast.

For the feast I brought two dishes that I've worked on for a while and feel that I can share with you.

Hunters pudding

Hunters pudding, from the summer

The Hunters pudding comes from Townsend and Sons 18th century cooking and the recipe is available in both video and written format.

Here is my version of the recipe

300 g wheat flour
300 g of fat*
300 g of dried** fruits in small pieces
Peel of 1 lemon or lime (or candided lime or orange - suckat)
3 whole eggs
50-100 ml of milk
1 tsp ginger
1 tsp nutmeg

Put a big pot of water on the stove and bring it to a boil.

Mix the flour fat and fruit untill it feel almost like a crumble, with the fat and fruits all coated by the flour. Add the eggs and then milk until you have a fairly sticky dough. Depending on how dry the fruit is and how big the eggs are you migth need more or less milk. Add the spices, at least a tsp but even better more.

Take a piece of cloth, for historical accuracy use linen, I use a clean cotton towel. Put the towel in the boiling water until it's totally soaked. Then place it in a bowl. Sprinkle flour over the whole cloth, It's really important (I've learnt this the hard way) that all the fabric that will be in contact with the dough has flour on it. Place the dough in the middle of the cloth, wrap it up and tie it all together with a string. Tie it tight, the pudding will expand a bit, due to the eggs, but not too much. Put the cloth package int the pot of boiling water. I tie the package to the handle of the pot, so that the package doesn't drop to the bottom and comes in contact with the direct heat. Boil for 3,5-4 hours. It's hard to overboil a pudding, if you feel through the package it should feel firm and not squishy. I have better been safe than sorry and had it boiling for some more time. Cut the string and unwrap the cloth - eat.

* I have tried this recipe with butter, lard and margarine. Butter and lard both influence the flavours a bit. I definitely prefer butter to lard, but I actually think margarine works best. I would love to get my hand on suet one day and try it, but I've never seen that in Sweden.
** I try to use at least 100 g of xanthe currants (korinter), but for the reast it has been a mix of dried plums, dates, apricots, green raisins or regular raisins. All depending on what I've had at home.

Century and location - 17th-18th century, England
Difficulty level - low
Time - it takes a loooooong time to boil
Vegetarian - It contains eggs, milk and fat, the fat can definitely be substituted for margarine and the milk with water.

Onions in cumin* sauce

My other recipe comes from the great site Medieval Cookery. which in turns links to a web edition of a late 15th century cookbook in Dutch. The web edition has the original text, the modern Dutch and English versions side by side so you can compare them. This is a great side dish, with a surprisingly mild flavor to the onions.

250 g of baby onions - also known as pearl or boiler onions, max 35 mm in size (steklök eller pärllök)
400 ml of almond milk
2 slices of bread, made into bread crumbs
1 tsp cummin (spiskummin)
0,25 g saffron
1 tsp salt

Peel the onions and put them in a small pot. Cover them with almond milk, add in the bread crumbs. If you use fresh slices of bread remove the crust. Add the spices and bring to a boil. Once it boils let it simmer until the onions are tender. If you need to add more almond milk, to cover the onions, and the sauce gets too thin, just add more bread.

My version is a very thick stew, as a side dish it might be nice to make the sauce thinner and then just pick up the onions and don't eat so much of the sauce. The thickness of the sauce only depends on how much bread you add to the almond milk.

*cumin is spiskummin in Swedish, not kummin!

Century and location - Dutch 15th century
Difficulty level - low
Time - short
Vegan - it's a totally vegan dish.