Sambocade – Form of Curye
A favourite of Company of the Staple’s Sambocade makes a delicious dessert. Effectively, it’s an elderflower cheese cake.
Original recipe from Forme of Cury
Sambocade. Take and make a crust in a trap and take cruddes and wryng out the wheyze and drawe hem thurgh a straynour and put hit in the crust. Do thereto sugar the thridde part, and somnodel Whyte of aren and shake therein blooms of Ellen and bake it up with euros and Messe it forth.
My translation: Take and make some pastry and put in in a trap [open pie case] and take [cheese] curds and wring out the whey and draw it through a strainer and put it in the pastry. Mix Sugar and egg whites and shake fresh blooms of elderflower in top, bake it with rosewater and serve it forth.
Sambocade
1kg of cottage cheese (riccotta will work reasonably well as a substitute but cottage cheese works best)
150g of white sugar
3 eggs
25ml elderflower cordial
15 ml rosewater
pastry for a 9inch pies (Shortcrust works quite well)
Make and prepare pastry in individual cases. (In our experience, people don’t like cutting Sambocade so it’s nicer to have them in individual cases)
Mix all ingredients (except for rosewater)
Pour into pastry cases. Take a fork and sprinkle rose water over the top.
Bake until just set – they’ll turn a beautiful golden brown colour on top.
Original Recipe definitions and substitution explanations
Trap: Based on my experience with Forme of Curye, I believe that a trap is a ceramic pie dish, used
for more delicate pastry compared to salt dough or hot lard pastry which can be hand raised. Other
dishes in forme of curye which use the term “make a crust in a trap(e)” include, raysols, whyte
mylates, crustards of flesh, fysshe and eerbis and mylates of pork. The main thing these dishes have
in common is fairly small amounts of spice, compared to dishes which call for a “coffyn” which tend
to be more heavily spiced.
Cruddles and wryng out the wheyze: Fresh cheese is made by curdling the milk and then separating
the curds from the whey. Here, Sambocade is saying to use only the curds, and more importantly, to
separate so it’s very fresh cheese indeed. The closest modern cheese that is readily available to buy
is cottage cheese, made from the curds of milk. I have made this recipe with riccotta cheese before and cottage cheese makes a more tart, with a better balanced flavour with elderflower and helps balance the flavours between the cheese and elderflower cordial.
Thriddle part – the definition is one third. Most likely, it refers to one third of the cheese should be
sugar. Since I’m using commercial cottage cheese, which is wetter than fresh strained cheese curds,
and because I’m using elderflower cordial which is also sweeter than what was originally called for,
I’ve reduced the sugar quantity.
Somdel – Some. I think that three egg whites is what works best in at this ratio.
blooms of elren – Fresh Elderflowers. I couldn’t get hold of fresh elderflowers and while dried
elderflowers are available in tea shops and in speciality herb shops, I chose to use elderflower
cordial instead as an easier to acquire option.
Eurose – Rosewater
Methodology notes:
I chose to make individual pies, rather than a large pie which I believe is the more period way,
because unless someone is cutting the pies, I found that people were more reluctant to cut into
them.
The pies rise while baking before falling again, so I only fill the pies two thirds of the way.
I chose to use shortcrust pastry for two reasons – 1) I want to use home made pastry and short
crust is one of the easier pastry recipes and 2) the buttery flavour of shortcrust works well with the
delicate elderflower cheesecake, complimenting rather than detracting.
While the original recipe doesn’t call for it, I’ve found that crushing a few strands of saffron in a
tablespoon of water and adding it, turns the Sambocade into a beautiful golden colour and enhances
the delicate flavours within the cake.
In the image, the Sambocade tarts are cooked with a vegetable parchment individual tart case. This made cooking them a lot easier and involved a lot less mess.
