Bad Luck With The Noodles, or "Cookery with other conceits and secrets"

I was going to post a vegetarian version of Ruth Reichl"s "Not  Quite Thai Noodles" this week, but that will have to wait. My attempts at test piloting that recipe have met with mixed results.  (The peanut butter either foams or scorches in seconds, there is no happy flavoring medium. I'm all Thai noodled out right now.)  So instead, I have dug into my roots as a historian, Museum Educator, and former teacher of colonial cooking to girl scout groups, and have brought you the following recipe for "A Spinnage Tart":

"Take good store of Spinage and boyl it in a Pipkin with White-Wine till it be very soft as pap.  Strain it well into a pewter dish, not leaving any part unstrained.  Then put to it Rose-water, great store of Sugar and cinamon and boyl it till it be thick as Marmalad.  Let it coole and after fill your Coffin and adorn it.  Serve it in all points as you did your Pruen-Tart.  And this carrieth the colour green."*


We did not ever have the kids cook this one, they mostly baked gingerbread, but I love the language of this little recipe.  I contemplated test piloting this recipe for a while, but I've already destroyed enough defenseless food this week.


















*Taken from Gervaise Markham's 1630 cookbook Housewive's Skill in Cookery, aka The English Housewife.  Reprint 1991 The Stony Press.