Give it Forth

09/29/2026

Bayberry Candles | 8" Hand-Dipped Taper Candle Pair https://wix.to/27UlLIh

08/24/2026

I finally wrote the article I’ve been meaning to write for a while:

**What Was a Stillroom? Its History, Recipes & Modern Revival** 🌿📜

A stillroom was once a working heart of the household, a place where herbs were dried, fruit preserved, waters distilled, perfumes compounded, cordials made, pickles stored, and practical knowledge passed from one generation to the next.

And the more I researched it, the more one thing became clear:

**The stillroom was not magical. It only looks magical to us because so much of the knowledge once practiced there has disappeared from ordinary household life.**

The article reaches back through household manuals from the 1600s through the 1800s and early 1900s, with recipes and documentation showing just how broad stillroom work really was.

But I also wanted to follow the story forward.

Home canning. Gardening. Sourdough. Fermentation. Mending. Herbal preparations. Long-lived household goods. Many of these arts never truly vanished, and interest in them has been rising again, especially since the COVID years.

Which brings me to the shameless part. 😄

This article also explains **why I chose the name Stillroom Co.**, why I decided to build the strange little shop I wish still existed, and what I hope it can become.

If you’ve been wondering what on earth I mean when I say “Stillroom,” this is the explanation.

And if the idea appeals to you, I’d love for you to come along while I build it. The online catalog is still small, but the first physical merchandise has now been ordered and should begin arriving over the next few weeks.

I’d especially love to know:

**What useful thing do you remember from your parents’ or grandparents’ household that seems to have disappeared? What would you expect to find in a modern stillroom?**

Read it here:

https://giveitforth.blogspot.com/2026/08/what-was-stillroom-its-history-recipes.html

🐝 Stillroom Co.
*Useful knowledge. Beautiful things. Living history.*

Explore the history of the stillroom, where households preserved food, distilled waters, made perfumes, medicines, cordials and household goods.

08/13/2026

🥕 **New on Give It Forth: Hunigbæe Moran – Honeyed Carrots**

If you have attended an SCA feast, there is a good chance you have encountered some version of honeyed carrots.

They are simple. They scale beautifully for a feast. People who insist they hate carrots somehow keep eating them.

And for years, I assumed this particular reconstruction was probably one of the shakier dishes from our 2003 Anglo-Saxon feast.

I was wrong.

When I returned to Mary Savelli's **Hunigbæe Moran** and began tracing the evidence, I found something much more interesting than a surviving recipe.

📜 **Bald's Leechbook** gives us *moru*, a carrot or parsnip-type root, in an edible broth.

🌿 The **Lacnunga** preserves beet cooked in **butter and honey** and eaten hot.

🫚 Ginger was known in the same Anglo-Saxon medical and dietary tradition, although it is not specifically added to those honeyed roots.

And when we follow the evidence forward, medieval cooks eventually put **carrots, honey, and ginger together explicitly**.

So Mary's familiar dish of carrots glazed with butter, honey, and ginger is not a surviving Anglo-Saxon recipe.

But it isn't fantasy food either.

It is a remarkably sensible **composite reconstruction**, built from several genuine historical practices.

And the research led to one delicious surprise:

**If I were reconstructing the dish again today, I would probably begin with beets.**

Come follow the evidence from Anglo-Saxon medical texts through later medieval cookery, see where Mary's recipe holds up, where we need to be cautious, and discover why I would still happily put these honeyed roots beside the beef and barley at an Anglo-Saxon feast.

📖 **Hunigbæe Moran: Reconstructing Anglo-Saxon Honeyed Roots from the Leechbooks to Mary Savelli**

👉 https://giveitforth.blogspot.com/2026/08/hunigbe-moran-reconstructing-anglo.html

08/06/2026

🌾 New on Give It Forth: Beren Briw

More than twenty years ago, I served Mary Savelli’s Beren Briw, a barley “polenta” made with radish, butter, beef broth, and a whisper of cinnamon.

When I returned to the recipe, one question sent me down a wonderfully tangled research path:

Where did the broth and cinnamon come from, and how closely does the dish follow the surviving Anglo-Saxon evidence?

The answer was far more interesting than a simple “authentic” or “not authentic.”

The Lacnunga preserves medicinal barley pottages made with barley meal, butter, radish, leek, salt, and long cooking. Bald’s Leechbook tells us barley pottage was ordinary enough to be prepared “as cooks know how.” Later medieval and Renaissance recipes introduce meat broth, beef-boiling liquor, and cinnamon into the wider barley-pottage tradition.

In this new article, I preserve Mary Savelli’s original recipe, explore it as a thoughtful historical composite, and offer a second reconstruction built more closely around the Old English evidence.

Come follow barley from the healer’s pot to the feast table:

https://giveitforth.blogspot.com/2026/08/beren-briw-reconstructing-anglo-saxon.html

07/28/2026

🥘 New on Give It Forth: Hriðer Smeamete, an Anglo-Saxon-Inspired Stewed Beef

What began as a feast recipe led me down a remarkable culinary trail.

Mary Savelli’s reconstruction combines beef with apples, raisins, dates, honey, w**e, vinegar, saffron, cinnamon, and breadcrumbs. But where did that combination come from, and how much of it can truly be connected to Anglo-Saxon England?

The search began with a tenth-century Old English medical preparation for beef cooked in vinegar and seasoned with oil, salt, dill, and leek. From there, the trail passed through Anthimus’s sixth-century sweet-and-sour beef casserole, evidence for fruit in medieval composite dishes, and finally into the later English tradition of meat pies filled with w**e, dried fruit, spices, and rich baked coverings.

The closest surviving relative may be the fifteenth-century Pies of Paris, but the culinary family stretches back even earlier.

This new cornerstone article includes:

🌿 the surviving Old English evidence
📜 Mary Savelli’s original reconstruction
🥧 the medieval meat-and-fruit pie connection
🔎 a complete ingredient and evidence audit
🥘 a new Give It Forth evidence-weighted reconstruction
📚 linked sources for anyone who wants to follow the research trail

Rather than dismissing Mary’s recipe as anachronistic, the evidence reveals something more interesting: a thoughtful modern reconstruction built from several genuine historical traditions.

Read the full article here: https://giveitforth.blogspot.com/2026/07/hrier-smeamete-anglo-saxon-beef.html

riðer Smeamete traces an Anglo-Saxon beef reconstruction from Bald’s Leechbook through Anthimus and medieval meat-and-fruit pies.

07/06/2026

🍞 Bread was so central to Anglo-Saxon life that the Old English word hlaf gave us the modern words lord ("loaf-guardian") and lady ("loaf-kneader").

That connection between bread, household, and hospitality inspired my newest article, Hlaf: Bread at the Anglo-Saxon Table. It explores archaeology, Galen, Bald's Leechbook, Ælfric's Colloquy, and a tested reconstruction recipe for a mixed-grain household loaf.

If you've ever wondered what bread really looked like before the medieval cookbook tradition, I hope you'll enjoy it.

Discover the history of Anglo-Saxon bread (hlaf), from archaeology and Galen to Bald's Leechbook, with a tested historical reconstruction recipe.

06/13/2026

New on Give it Forth 🏰📜

**Mearh Smeamete – Reconstructing an Anglo-Saxon Sausage Delicacy**

What happens when a 1,000-year-old recipe leaves only fragments behind?

This newest reconstruction follows the trail of **Mearh Smeamete**, an elusive Anglo-Saxon dish tied to feasting, marrow, meat, and the practical kitchen wisdom of early medieval England.

Was it a sausage? A meat pudding? Something closer to a Roman-influenced casserole tucked inside pastry? The answer turns into a fascinating historical detective story involving:

🥩 marrow and meat traditions
📖 medieval manuscript evidence
🏺 Roman culinary echoes
🍎 early medieval foodways
🍽 a modern kitchen reconstruction you can actually try

Sometimes historical cooking is less about perfect certainty and more about asking:

> *What would have made sense to the cook standing at the hearth?*

If you love historical food, Anglo-Saxon history, feast planning, or simply wonderfully strange culinary mysteries, come pull up a chair.

Originally served at Ceilidh XVI, March 29, 2003. Updated with additional research, source notes, and modernized interpretation in June 2026.

06/12/2026

📜🍞🌿 What We’ve Been Building at Give It Forth 🌿🍞📜

The past few weeks at Give It Forth have felt a little like opening old manuscript pages and rediscovering them with fresh eyes.

We’ve been revisiting some of our earliest historical recipes, updating research, modernizing interpretations, improving navigation, and asking a simple question:

What happens when eleven more years of cooking, feast work, and manuscript research meet the recipes we first interpreted over a decade ago?

Quite a lot, it turns out.

✨ Recently Updated & Added

🥛 Let Lory (Larded Milk)
A rich medieval English custard from Harleian MS 279, revisited with modern kitchen notes and manuscript-first interpretation.

🍎 Æppla Syfling
Following the trail of an Anglo-Saxon apple “butter” through language, manuscripts, medicine, and historical cooking traditions.

⚔️ Reconstructing an Anglo-Saxon Feast: Ceilidh XVI Revisited (2003–2026)
A return to one of my earliest feast projects with twenty years of hindsight, new research, and better historical context.

🌿 Lange Wortys de Chare
Medieval braised greens in beef broth, reconsidered as something far more flexible than simply “soup.”

🦴 Caboges
Braised cabbage with marrow bones from Harleian MS 279, humble ingredients transformed into something deeply comforting.

🍷 Soupes Jamberlayne
Bread sops in mulled w**e, because medieval cooks understood comfort food too.

🌰 Bruet of Almaynne in Lente
A medieval almond milk porridge with dates that quietly proves fasting food did not have to be boring.

🥐 Rastons
A medieval pastry disguised as bread and one of the more delightful kitchen surprises from Harleian MS 279.

🍳 Milke Rostys
Fried custard that feels strangely modern once it hits the plate.

🌿🍯 Sekanjabin
A medieval Persian mint drink that still deserves a place in a modern kitchen.

🫛🌿 Wortys Revisited
We also revisited several medieval greens dishes including Lange Wortys de Pesoun and Whyte Wortes, asking bigger questions about pottages, pot herbs, almond milk, and how medieval cooks actually approached vegetables.

🪑 The Steward’s Table
One of my favorite additions this year, helping cooks scale recipes up or down for feast service, household meals, or camp cooking.

🧭 A Better Way to Browse
We’ve also been quietly rebuilding labels and navigation to make the site easier to explore by:

• feast course
• manuscript source
• historical era
• dietary needs
• feast planning
• ingredients
• cooking methods

The goal?

To make Give It Forth easier to use whether you’re:

📜 researching manuscripts
🍲 planning a feast
🏕️ cooking at an event
📚 teaching a class
🍞 curious about historical food
or simply wondering if medieval cabbage was actually good.

(Spoiler: surprisingly often, yes.)

One thing I’ve learned through all this revisiting:

Historical cooking gets richer the longer you stay with it.

Sometimes the greatest joy is opening a recipe you first cooked ten years ago and realizing:

You understand it differently now.

And somehow, it tastes even better.

Come wander the kitchen with us:

Give It Forth Historical Recipes & Research

06/09/2026

Sometimes revisiting an old recipe does not reveal mistakes.

Sometimes it reveals how much care went into the reconstruction in the first place. 🍏📜

Back in 2003, I prepared an Anglo-Saxon inspired feast using recipes from *Tastes of Anglo-Saxon England* by Mary Savelli, including a curious dish called **Æppla Syfling**, translated simply as “apple butter.”

More than twenty years later, I revisited the recipe expecting to find things I might change.

Instead?

I found myself ten pages deep into dictionaries, Bald’s Leechbook, Anglo-Saxon medical texts, Ann Hagen, Apicius, and manuscript rabbit holes asking one deceptively simple question:

**What exactly did Anglo-Saxons mean by “syfling”?**

What followed became one of the most rewarding pieces of culinary archaeology I’ve worked on in a while.

The deeper I looked, the more thoughtful Mary’s original reconstruction began to feel.

And perhaps most importantly:

**She was closer to an Anglo-Saxon interpretation than many recognized.**

If you enjoy historical cooking, manuscript rabbit holes, food history, or just a good research mystery, I think you’ll enjoy this one.

🍎 Read here:
https://giveitforth.blogspot.com/2026/06/ppla-syfling-following-trail-of-anglo.html

Have you ever revisited an old recipe only to discover you understood it differently years later?

Revisiting Æppla Syfling, an Anglo-Saxon apple butter recipe through Bald’s Leechbook, Apicius, and medieval foodways.

06/05/2026

🍲 **New on Give it Forth: The Steward’s Table** 📜

Ever tried scaling a historical recipe for feast and suddenly found yourself doing medieval math with a calculator, three sticky notes, and a mild existential crisis?

I made something to help.

**The Steward’s Table** is a new historical recipe & feast scaling tool on *Give it Forth* designed for:

🏰 Feast stewards
🍞 Historical cooks & reenactors
📜 Medieval & Renaissance food nerds
🍲 Anyone trying to scale recipes without kitchen chaos

Paste in a recipe, adjust servings, and generate a **printable kitchen copy** for feast prep, camp cooking, or home kitchens.

It supports:

✅ Historic recipe texts
✅ Modern redactions / working recipes
✅ Ingredient scaling for feast-size cooking
✅ Printable kitchen copies / PDF saving

It’s currently in **active testing**, so please double-check quantities, especially for ingredient ranges or unusually formatted historical recipes. But it’s ready for adventurous cooks to try!

🔗 Try The Steward’s Table here:
https://giveitforth.blogspot.com/p/the-stewards-table-historical-recipe.html

If you find it useful and want to support projects like this, sharing the page, testing recipes, or sending a little encouragement my way is always appreciated. ❤️