This recipe is pure glee.

Medieval recipe book are full of “frittelle” recipe. Frying in fat or oil was very easy and, in the courts with no problem of money, also very practical. Furthermore, people kept a very active life, so the high calory intake was balanced.

What we sometimes miss when we try to replicate at home medieval recipes is the “feast”, the magnificence behind each banquet. This part is very difficoult to replicate with most of the recipes. The “raimbow flower frittelle, on the other side, are so easy, so colorfull and so intrinsecally magnificent that are a banquet by themselves.

What I love in these recipes in particular is how detailed is the explanation on how to keep colors separate while serving. Aesthetic was extremely important in a banquet…also in the so-believed “dark age”.

I copy both the version of Anonimo Meridionale and the version of Liber the coquina (in late latin)

[note: I do the batter slightly differently thank what he says. It is lighter. I am sure “he” (=the anonimus writer of the manuscript, whoever he is) would understand. My batter is 120g flower, 100g milk, 1 full egg, and I fry in seed olis]

ANONIMO MERIDIONALE -TRANSLATION: In the same way you can make frittelle with chopped onions with nepitella [mint] and other herbs; fry them with oil or lard; take flour, and beat all the things together with egg whites, and put elderflowers and other flowers, as you like; and diversify the colours as you like; and put them in boiling lard separated by colour.

LIBER DE COQUINA -TRANSLATION: in order to make Frittelle, mix flower with egg white and put [in the batter] the flower of elderberry or any other flower you want and diversify the color according to your taste and according to what you will accompain with them. Cook in pork fat.

Simile puoi fare con cipolle trite con nepitella e herbe; e friggelle con oglio76 o lardo; poi prendi farina, e distempera insieme tutte cose con albume d’ova, e mettivi77 fiori di sambuco e altri fiori, come tu vuoli; e diversifica i colori come ti piace; e mettili in lardo bolliente con la mescola spartitamente. ANONIMO MERIDIONALE 82