Sops... it's what's for dinner!

So this summer I hosted a 15th-century dinner A&S event for our Barony.  One of the stars of that meal was something called Jacobin Sops.

Jacobin Sops (the first)

photo credit: Allison Halterman

I used the Chiquart redaction from Scully's Early French Cookery. I am more of a "feeding people yummy food" cook than a culinary experimentation cook, so I usually rely on other people's redactions. 

Per Scully's introduction to the recipe, the Jacobins were the Dominican order, dubbed so because their Order house was on the Rue St. Jacques.  Jacques in Latin is Jacobus.  So the Dominicans were also known as the Jacobins.  The Dominicans had quite a few aristocrats in their number and let's just say they were less than rigid on the "poverty" part of their vows than some of the other orders.  They liked good food and saw no reason to stop eating well.1

The recipe is relatively simple but delicious.  A coarse bread on the bottom with shredded chicken and cubes of brie and an herbed beef bone broth poured over it. The brie gets soft and melty in the broth. It was so delicious that we ate the leftovers from the dinner party for several meals the next week.

I made it again for Castle Wars Royal Luncheon. (sadly, I did not manage to get a single picture; I was too busy cooking)  Multiple lunch attendees asked for the recipe and our Baroness used the recipe the next week for her family's Thanksgiving dinner. So I think it was a hit.

At this point, it is in our standard rotation for mundane weeknight dinners. Jay takes salads to work for lunch and I am always looking for ways to use leftover rotisserie chicken.  We are both cheese lovers (Aldi has rounds of brie for ~$3.29) so there is usually brie in the house. And the Buford Highway Farmers Market has the soup bones, fresh marjoram and thyme, and good Ukrainian rye bread.

Toss the soup bones into beef stock with a Bouquet Garni of marjoram, thyme, parsley & hyssop and simmer for a couple of hours. Remove bones and strain. I end up using dried hyssop because while the Buford Highway Farmers Market has just about everything under the sun (including fresh rue -which I discovered when I was playing with Roman recipes a couple of years ago) even they don't have fresh hyssop.  Luckily, Amazon has it for ~$3.99/oz -prime shipping if you buy the 4 oz package)

The important thing is for the bread to have some weight and texture to it.  I made the mistake early on of using a lovely French boule, which promptly turned to mush when it encountered the broth. If you can't find or don't like Eastern European rye, I'd use a whole-grain bread in its place.

Since we don't shop the Farmers Market every week, I make up large batches of the broth and freeze them into 2 serving portions.  (For a dinner portion, I like 2-3 cups per person). I've been known to freeze the bread too.

And after that, it's an easy peasy weeknight dinner.  Unthaw the broth and bread.  Shred the leftover chicken, dice the brie and toast the bread while the broth heats. Combine everything in a bowl and voila -dinner is served.

So easy, it's what we had for dinner tonight!

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

1Scully, D. Eleanor, and Terence Scully.  Early French Cookery. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2002.