Why a 1685 recipe for Turkish meat contains no spices and no salt
In 17th-century England, recipes were often vague, unhelpful, and surprisingly plain. When recreating a dish from Robert May’s 1685 cookbook, one finds a recipe that lacks measurements, cooking times, and even basic seasoning, offering a strange window into the era's culinary misunderstandings.
The recipe in question, titled 'A Turkish Dish of Meat,' comes from a 1685 printing of *The Accomplisht Cook* by Robert May. While the title suggests an exotic origin, there is no evidence May ever traveled to Turkey. Instead, the dish represents a culinary 'broken telephone,' an English interpretation of a Turkish concept that had been filtered through French influences and London's aristocratic kitchens.
To a modern cook, the instructions are deeply frustrating. The recipe calls for an 'interlarded' piece of beef sliced thin and boiled in a 'good quantity' of clean, well-skinned rice with whole pepper and two or three whole onions. Notably, the instructions omit salt, specific measurements, and any cooking duration. Perhaps most baffling to the modern palate is the instruction to simply discard the onions once the boiling is complete.
This lack of detail highlights a fundamental difference in how historical recipes functioned. Rather than providing a precise blueprint for a meal, 17th-century recipes often described methods or techniques intended for experienced cooks who already possessed the necessary context. The dish is served on 'sippets' (toast), with the instruction that 'the thicker it is the better.'
Recreating such a dish is less about achieving a perfect flavor and more about exploring the mechanics of the 1600s. It reveals how trade, culture, and the movement of ingredients—such as the arrival of rice in English cooking—shaped the era's diet. It serves as a reminder of how much modern cooking relies on the silent context of standardized measurements and seasoning that early modern cooks simply took for granted.
Source: I Cooked a 1685 Recipe Exactly as Written (No Spices?!)
