A sweet, spicy, very aromatic bread, a marvel reserved for the palates of medieval nobles, which remains we can spot today in some traditional regional breads.

This recipe is taken from a manuscript called “Anonimo Veneziano” dating back to the first part of the fourteenth century and written in the Venetian vernacular. The sources of this manuscript are the “liber de coquina” (the neapolitan translation of arabic cuisine manuscripts) and the “treatise for 12 gluttons”, Sienese, which has been lost.

Let’s read it directly (english below, translated by the author of this blog).

LVIII. Pane de noxe maravigliosso e bone. (Manoscritto Anonimo Veneziano XIII secolo)

Se tu voy fare pan de noce, toy le noce e mondalle e pestale, e toy de herbe bone e un poco de cevola gratà e specie dolze e forte e uno pocho de zucharo, e miti in lo mortaro con le noxe e fa pastume. Poy toy fior de farina e fane un folglio a modo de lasagne grande e largo e sotile, e miti questo batuto suso, e muolzilo tuto insembre e falo a modo de uno pane, e poy lo caricha ch’ el vengna sotille a modo de una fugaza; metilo a choxere in lo forno, e quando l’ è cocto, trailo fuora e laselo afredare.

If you want to make walnut bread, take the walnuts, clean them, pound them, then take herbs and some chopped onion, and sweet strong spices, and a little sugar, and put them in a mortar with the walnuts, and beat. Then take white flour and make a foil with the dough, like a wide and thin “lasagna”, and put the chopped walnuts, herbs, spices, sugar on it and move it all together as if it were bread. Then flatten it, so that it can be as thin as a focaccia and put it to cook in the oven, and when it is cooked, take it out and let it cool.

In the original recipe there is not measures (as it often happen). I used the following amounts of ingredients:

Reference images refer to a modern “filled focaccia” similar to the onen presented by the AnonimoVeneziano