Documentation: *

My Observations and Lessons Learned *

Bibliography *

I choose to make a Honey Nut cake that could have been eaten during the Viking Age in the Norse world. Since there are no surviving recipes from that time and location I combined information from archeological finds and surviving recipes from later periods to create a reasonable recipe from the time period.

At the York Archeological Site, a known Norse settlement in England, many types of foods were found in various states of preservation. A few honey bees and an layer rich in honey bee corpses together with twisted straw indicate that honey bees were kept at this site. The archeologist states that "Clearly bees were kept by the inhabitants of York." (A.R Hall et al. P.207.) Many nutshells were found in the site to include both walnuts and hazelnuts.

The World of the Viking's CDROM data base produced by several museums in England and Denmark depicts evidence of both walnuts and hazelnuts used during the Viking period. Remains of bee hives were also found at several sites in Denmark. The remains of clay ovens were found in most sites in Denmark indicating that baking was a method of food preparation in the Viking period.

Emeles:

Take sugar, salt, almonds, and white bread and grind them together; then add eggs; then grease or oil or butter and take a spoon and brush them and then remove them and sprinkle them with dry sugar. (Pleyn Delit #129)

Cream Bastarde

Take the white of eggs a great heap and put it in a pan full of milk. And let it boil; then season it so with salt and honey a little, then let it cool. And draw it through a strainer and take fair cow's milk and draw it withal, and season it with sugar and look that it be poignant and sweet: serve it forth for a pottage, or for a good baked meat, whether that thou will. (Take a Thousand Eggs of More p196)

Honey Nut Cake (Recipe from "Viking Cookbook" p 37)

2 cups hazelnuts

1 cup dried apple

1 1/2 cups ml honey

4 eggs

Preheat the oven to 175 C. Finely chop the hazelnuts and apple. Mix the nuts, apple and honey in a bowl. Whisk in the eggs. Spread the mixture into a large circle on a greased baking tray. Bake on the middle shelf for approx. 15 minutes

Honey Cream,

2 cups whipping cream

1/2 cup cranberries

1 cup honey

Mix the cream and honey in a pan. Simmer the mixture while whisking until it thickens. Spread the honey cream over the cake and serve with whipped cream.

I used the recipe from the Viking cookbook as a base for the Honey Nut Cake. My version of the cake adds additional chopped nuts. When I used the recipe as stated in the Viking cookbook the mixture was too thin to spread on cookie sheet. My recipe is as follows:

2 cup hazelnuts

1 cup walnuts

1 cup dried apple

1 1/2 cups ml honey

2 eggs

Finely chop the nuts and dried apple. Mix all ingredients in a bowl and then spread the mixture on greased pan. Bake the cake for 10 - 15 minutes in an oven at 400 degrees.

I followed the recipe for the cream as indicated. Cranberries are a modern substitution for the period lingunberry, which would have been found in 10^th Century Denmark. I did not want to omit the berry from the honey cream because the overall dish is very sweet and the berries add a tartness to the cream which helps the overall flavor of the dish. Since lingunberries and cranberries are closely related and cranberries have a similar taste to the European lingunberry, I chose to use the cranberries as a substitution.

I choose to use a combination of nuts for a better flavor. All ingredients used were obtainable during the Viking period, except fot the cranberries which are a substitution for lingunberries. I then baked the cake and made the sauce using a modern stove and oven.

I have made this dish for a feast in the past, which allowed for much experimentation. In one previous version, I substituted almonds for the hazelnuts because I prefer almonds. I enjoyed the taste of the hazelnuts just as much as I did the almonds. I think that it is very conceivable that the Norse people would have prepared a similar dish during the Viking Age. We have the evidence for the nuts, the honey and the eggs as well as the ability to bake bread and other cakes. In all of my research into the Viking Age and the Norse people, I am finding that they were not as primitive as previously believed. For their time period the Norse people were very advanced in all aspects of daily life.

1. Renfrow, Cindy, Take a Thousand Eggs or More, Cindy Renfrow, Unites States of America, 1990
2. Hieatt, Constance; Hoaington, Brenda; Butler, Sharon; Pleyn Delit, University of Toronto Press, Toronto, Canada, 1997.
3. Dr Tom Bloch-Nakkerud, The Viking Cookbook, Norhaven AS, Denmark
4. Hall, A.R. et al. Environment and Living Conditions at Two Anglo-Scandinavian Sites, York Archaeological Trust, London Englan, 1983.

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