Last year, a couple of days before St. Bartholomew’s Day, which is on the 24th, I went to the butcher shop to procure a beef brisket, and the next day began the preparations for our first Bartlemas Beef, using a recipe more than 350 years old… modified a bit to suit contemporary cooking methods. It turned out to be a really good meal, quite fitting for the traditional celebratory Printers’ Wayzgoose that also falls on St. Bartholomew’s Day, which, this year, is coming up on Wednesday. The Wayzgoose is a day worthy of celebration not just for us printers but for anyone who is a bibliophile. I suspect that describes most of the people who are subscribers to this blog. The preparations can take a bit of time. If you want to join in the celebration this year by cooking a traditional Rare Bartlemas Beef of your own, here’s a reprint of the recipe to get you going.
Some helpful hints on the recipe: we began with a fresh beef brisket and went straight to the step that calls for wine and vinegar. The vinegar we used was white vinegar. “Cover with paste”: I took this to mean put flour on it, like you do when browning beef for stew. We cooked ours all day in the slow cooker, and we ate our meal hot, rather than cold. And if you are going to eat your Bartlemas Beef cold, you’d best cook it Monday or Tuesday rather than on Wednesday. So here you go: the recipe, with some Bartlemas background to boot. It was the Convivio Book of Days chapter on August 22, 2015… though I did find a new illustration and I did alter the dates a bit so it fits this year’s calendar. Enjoy!
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Wednesday, the 24th of August, brings St. Bartholomew’s Day, the day of the traditional Printers’ Wayzgoose, and this is a big day for book artists like me: St. Bartholomew is a patron saint of bookbinders and book artists and his day has been of significance to printers and papermakers, as well, for centuries. Goose is one traditional meal for the day, as is cheese, for St. Bart is also a patron saint of cheesemakers. But so is Bartlemas Beef, which takes some time to prepare… hence today’s post, designed to give you the time necessary to prepare a proper meal for your Wednesday Wayzgoose.
This recipe for a Rare Bartlemas Beef is taken from The Cook’s Guide by Hannah Wolley, printed in London in 1664. (The book’s full title is quite long: The Cook’s Guide: or, Rare receipts for cookery Published and set forth particularly for ladies and gentlewomen; being very beneficial for all those that desire the true way of dressing all sorts of flesh, fowles, and fish; the best directions for all manner of kickshaws, and the most ho-good sawces: whereby noble persons and others in their hospitalities may be gratified in their gusto’s. Phew. Perhaps the first celebratory printer’s wayzgoose came about once the typesetter triumphantly finished setting the type for this long-winded title.)
Lady Wolley calls this beef “rare” meaning fine or good. It does not refer to the cooking temperature. Judging by the three days soaking, she means for us to use salted beef, but that was 1664 and this is not and I think we can begin with fresh beef at the second step of her recipe, where the vinegar and wine is introduced. Be that as it may, here is her full 1664 recipe for a Rare Bartlemas Beef:
Take a fat Brisket piece of beef and bone it, put it into so much water as will cover it, shifting it three times a day for three dayes together, then put it into as much white wine and vinegar as will cover it, and when it hath lyen twenty-four hours take it out and drye it in a cloth, then take nutmeg, ginger, cinnamon, cloves and mace, of each a like quantity, beaten small and mingled with a good handful of salt, strew both sides of the Beef with this, and roul it up as you do Brawn, tye it as close as you can; then put it into an earthen pot, and cover it with some paste; set it in the Oven with household bread, and when it is cold, eat it with mustard and sugar.
There you have it: an old old recipe for celebrating an old old holiday. The St. Bart’s Wayzgoose is not widely celebrated today, but, considering the current boom of interest in letterpress printing and book arts, perhaps it should be. Pass the mustard, please.
Cinnamon is one of the spices you’ll need to make a Rare Bartlemas Beef. The image of a cinnamon tree is from one of the earliest natural history books about China. Its author was an unnamed Jesuit missionary. Engraving, 1656 [Public domain] via Wikimedia Commons.
Yum. This recipe is a keeper!
Enjoy! We’d love to know if you try it, Daria.
“Cover with paste” probably means seal the pot with a flour-and-water paste lid so the beef partly steams and all the juices are contained – exactly what your slow cooker did. Bet it was delicious either way.
Ah, interesting, Annie. Researching further I find “cover with paste” comes up often in old recipes, even well into the 20th century. One says “cover with paste rolled very thin.” So perhaps it is a bit like a thin top crust as in a pie?
I’m going to keep asking around some of the good older cooks I know. Or maybe this is an Ask Martha question! Thanks for prodding me to think more about it. A new mystery to solve.
Just wondering if this might be something like sauerbraten (sour beef)? I like to cook mine with flour dumplings and a gingersnap gravy. I sometimes make it as a roast, other times I’ve used stew beef. It also is a very old recipe. Most everyone likes it, so I may try this recipe you have provided. Thanks!
Hi Dee. It could be. I’ve never had sauerbraten (I can come over next time you make it!) but the “saur” does sound like it’s derived from vinegar, and the Bartlemas Beef certainly has that element. And flour dumplings and gingersnap gravy? For sure count me in for dinner.
Scrumptious!
It is!
[…] enthusiast, your job today is to appreciate a good book. Perhaps you are preparing a traditional Rare Bartlemas Beef for your supper tonight, heady with nutmeg, ginger, mace, cinnamon, and cloves. And perhaps your […]
I made this today for my Bartlemas birthday boy husband’s dinner. It came out delicious. I modernized it a tiny bit by adding ancho chile to the rub and pouring a 1/2″ do dark ale in the bottom of the crockpot. I also made a ring of rolled up foil to. Set the roast on so it wouldn’t sit in the fat. I had to cook it for 8 hours so it shredded instead of sliced, but it was very tasty and we’re looking forward to the leftover sandwiches tomorrow. I also believe the “paste” in the recipe means pastry – I don’t think their clay pots had lids back then. I also think the recipe means to leave the roast in the bake oven all day – until the oven is completely cold. Which is exactly like a Slow Cooker! Anyway, it was a fun Wayzgoose celebration dinner!
That all sounds like excellent advice, Barbara, and a good interpretation of the recipe. And a nice update, as well, with the ancho chile. So glad you tried it and told us about it… and a Happy Bartlemas Birthday to your husband! Happy Wayzgoose, too!