I am researching chickpea recipes. I like chickpeas. I found this delightful recipe:

““Gloves,” that is ravioli.

Take white chickpeas, well softened in water; boil them well, then take them out of the water, minced finely and mix them with said water, and strain them; and with this strained water dilute the flour as you like and fry it on a low fire with lard and oil, and put some honey on top.

Another preparation. Dilute the flour with eggs, then make some gloves or other shape, as you like: set them to cook well in a pan with hot lard or oil.“An Anonymous Tuscan Cookery Book

LOOK AT IT!

So simple but it has inspired 4 days of chasing other recipes and facts so I am doing a whole blog post on just the process of redaction and will do the full recipe once I have bought dried chickpeas to play with.

The questions that this recipe inspired:

Q1: Is that a 14th Century vegan egg-replacement recipe?

Yes. The second half of the recipe “another preparation” covers that question. I believe that this is a recipe to make your own Aquafaba, which is a trendy ‘new’ ingredient.

(to do: find other medieval examples of legumes used as egg replacement)

Q2: Are there simple crepe/pancake/flat bread recipes that are simple flour plus egg or liquid?

Yes. I look at modern examples:

Q3: Could that be using chickpea flour as the ‘flour’ in the recipe?

Maybe? They had access to many different kinds of flours in the 14th Century.

Breadcakesandale has a list (although not a historic timeline) of different flours.

Wikipedia lists a lot of flours too. It discusses chickpeas being a neolithic crop so I am pretty comfortable declaring chickpea flour as a possible option for this recipe. [wikipedias course: Zohary, Daniel and Hopf, Maria, Domestication of Plants in the Old World (third edition), Oxford University Press, 2000, p 110]

Q4: If the recipe had chickpea flour (like you are wishfully thinking) would it work in this recipe?

Yes it would work. Modern examples of chickpea flour flatbreads:

Ok I didn’t find chickpea flour and aquafaba together in a crepe or pancake–chickpea flour has a strong flavour, which is my reasoning behind not combining them.

Q4: What will be your approach?

One cup of dried chickpeas will grow to about 2 1/2 cups. Soften chickpeas in water overnight. Strain chickpeas and discard the soaking water. Bring chickpeas to boil in enough water to cover, then reduce to simmer for ~1 hour. Start checking the chickpea progress at about 35-40 minute. The chickpeas have to be soft.

Take cooked chickpeas and reserve cooking liquid. Chop up chickpeas roughly. Pour chickpea meat back into chickpea cooking water.

Strain the chickpeas out using a strainer, this should take care of the chickpea skins and give you a nice chickpea milk.

Mix one cup of (chickpea and other experiments) flour with one cup of chickpea milk, or less depending on what sort of consistency you want.

Fry in lard or bacon fat in a medium-hot frying pan.

Serve covered in honey.

Q5: When will you make this?

I will make this over the next few days.