Eat like a Saint: Saint Hildegard von Bingen
Chestnuts, spelt, quince as holy ingredients for a healthy and delicious Medieval culinary, with a touch of holiness
I have a slight crush on everything Profenter Stube bakes. Like the delicious and vegan croissant in the picture. So tasty and delicious, yellowed with turmeric and filled with red berries jam.
I especially like their vegan krapfen with rosehip jam, but I also love the marvellous bread they make: 24 hours of dough rest, 100% original spelt, with Galanga root and Pyrethrum root, inspired by Hildegard von Bingen.
They call it their “convent bread” (but people shopping for it at the local Naturasí, where I get it, call it “the Saint’s bread”).
Having eaten this bread weekly for the whole winter, I started reading about the Saint a lot, always munching a small bite of this heavenly bread.
Hildegard of Bingen was a Medieval saint born in 1098 in Bermersheim and died in 1179. She combined a spiritual and cosmic understanding of the world through art, music, medicine, and religion. She was a visionary with modern ideas concerning holistic thinking and living.
She said famously:
“People should eat and drink in moderation and find the right rhythm for work and rest.”
A well-rounded artist, she is also one of the best-known composers of sacred monophony, of which she composed more than 70:
Hildegard explained that she saw all things in the light of God through the five senses: sight, hearing, taste, smell, and touch, and she had visions throughout her life. Her experience helping in and leading the monastery's herbal garden and infirmary and her appetite for reading books from her wide-ranging monastery's library informed her writing about food as a medicament.
Her books are significant as they are the written evidence of female medieval medicine, which is typically not well documented because its practitioners (women) rarely wrote in Latin.
Hildegard of Bingen combined a spiritual and cosmic understanding of the world through art, music, medicine, and religion. Eight hundred years ago, she recommended and described all-inclusive visionary ideas concerning holistic thinking and living.
Farro (from the Latin Far) is one of our Saint's favourite cereals and the oldest type of cultivated wheat, alongside with a type of hulled wheat, called spelt or emmer.
She said:
“Oily and powerful and easier to digest than all other grains. It provides the person who eats it with good flesh and gives him good blood. It makes the soul of man happy and full of cheerfulness. And however it is prepared, whether as bread or as other food, it is good and sweet.”
— Hildegard von Bingen, c. 1151-1158
Spelt has been used as human nourishment since the Neolithic period. It is divided into einkorn (Triticum monococcum); farro (Triticum dicoccum); and spelt (Triticum spelta).
Besides spelt, chestnuts also hold a unique nutritional significance in Hildegard's kitchen, appearing in various recipes and products.
Other favoured foods include fennel, red beets, beans, chickpeas, parsnips, chard, and salads like lettuce and oak leaf.
Among fruits, the Saint loved quince, mulberries, medlar, cornelian cherries, and apples.
Cookies of Joy and Violet Wine
Saint Hildegard writes about these cookies whilst giving their simple recipe:
"These cookies take all the bitterness out of your heart and calm your nerves. They open your heart and five senses, provide for a good mood, and cleanse your senses; reduce all bad juices, provide for good blood quality, and make you productive and strong.
Take some nutmeg and an equal weight of cinnamon and a bit of cloves, and pulverize them. Then make small cakes with this and fine whole wheat flour and water. Eat them often. ”
— Physica by Hildegard von Bingen, c. 1151-1158
We all agree we may need cookies that put us in a good mood and eliminate gloominess and sadness these days.
These cookies are recommended together with violet wine:
’s mum made these cookies a couple of years ago, but she may have slightly exaggerated the spices’ quantities - as the cookies ended up being more medicinal than pleasant bites for the soul.“Anyone oppressed by melancholy with a discontented mind, which then harms his lungs, should cook violets in pure wine. He should strain this through a cloth, add a bit of galingale, and as much licorice as he wants, and so make spiced wine. When he drinks it, it will check the melancholy, make him happy, and heal his lungs.”
— Physica by Hildegard von Bingen, c. 1151-1158
Habermus
Spelt was also the staple food of the labourers in the ŕegion where Hildegard grew up. Habermus was one of the regular spelt dishes, consisting of coarse spelt porridge boiled in milk.
Nowadays, we'll make do with the spelt meal soup prepared in water.
Habermus should be our first meal in the morning. After breakfast like this, we feel cheerful, and our senses are sharpened.
To prepare a delicious Habermus, combine 1 cup of coarsely ground spelt flakes or meal with 2 cups of water in a pot. Add two finely chopped apples and bring the mixture to a boil.
After 5 minutes of cooking, incorporate raisins or cranberries, two teaspoons of honey and a few dashes of galangal and pellitory. Reduce the heat, cover, and let it simmer for another 5 minutes, stirring occasionally. This recipe serves 2 to 4 people and can be garnished with cinnamon or sweet almond slivers.
Recipe for sweet chestnut cake according to Hildegard von Bingen
The Salzburger Grain Mills has provided this recipe in their Advent Calendar: To prepare the dough, combine 250 g of finely ground spelt flour, one egg, 125 g of butter, and 75 g of sugar, kneading them well before rolling out the mixture to line a round cake tin approximately 30 cm in size.
For the topping, peel 400 g of sweet chestnuts, boil them until soft, and then pass them through a sieve to create a puree. In a separate bowl, beat 150 g of butter with 150 g of sugar and three eggs until fluffy, then mix in the cold chestnut puree with one tablespoon of rum.
Pour this mixture into the prepared cake tin and bake in the oven at 175 to 200 degrees Celsius for about 1 hour.
Hildegard wrote about the quince:
“Anyone suffering from gout should often eat the quince fruit cooked or fried, and it will clear away the gouty substance in them.”
To prepare a delicious quince sauce plumcake according to this recipe, combine 200 grams of soft butter or 180 millilitres of vegetable oil with 200 grams of sugar and a tablespoon of vanilla sugar until the mixture is fluffy.
Next, incorporate 3 to 4 medium-sized organic eggs individually, ensuring each is well beaten.
Add 250 grams of quince puree and the juice and zest of one untreated lemon.
Mix 350 grams of strong spelt flour in a separate bowl with baking powder, a teaspoon of cinnamon, and a pinch of salt. Then, gently stir this dry mixture into the egg mixture using a wooden spoon.
Prepare a plumcake tin by brushing it thoroughly with oil or butter, sprinkling it with flour or breadcrumbs, and pouring the batter in until it is three-quarters full.
Finish by sprinkling the top with 1 to 2 tablespoons of flaked almonds.
The cake should be baked in a preheated oven at 180° C for about one hour to ensure even baking. Then, please remove it from the tin and let it cool completely on a wire rack.
This is also fun insight into Pre-colombis exchange European foods.
XD who's to say what's too medicinal ? A very holy pumpkin spice (less pumpkin, more spice)