What did Pirates eat and drink?
Listed below are recipes to some of the most popular foods that Pirates were known to make part of their daily nurishment.
Salmagundi (see recipe)
They drank bombo or bumboo, a mixture of rum, water, sugar, and nutmeg. Rumfustian was another popular drink that blended raw eggs with sugar, sherry, gin, and beer. Pirates also enjoyed beer, sherry, brandy, and port.
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Brännvins-sweet-bread
(Swedish 17th century)
These small sweetbreads were consumed together with brännvin. (If you live outside Scandinavia you can use vodka instead).
1 dl of cinnamon
three whites of egg
2 dl of sugar
mix everything til ye got it looking like foam then pour it out with a spoon onto a plate the cakes should be the size of a larger coin bake for 5-10 minutes til they´re slightly golden. And now fer the fun part: take a cooled of bread in one hand and the ”sup” (dram) in the other. Put the bread in yer mouth and let it melt on yer tounge then empty the glass.
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Hard Tack
Mix one teaspoon of salt with one pound of flour.
Add enough water to make a very stiff dough.
Flatten the dough to about 1/2 inch and cut it into about 4 inch circles. Punch holes in each circle with a fork.
Bake in a flat pan at 250 degrees for two or three hours.
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Meatpie
(16th century)
5 chickenlivers
200 g of pork cut to small pieces
1 dl of cream
salt and pepper
1 cl of porter
1/2 cl of irish whiskey
a couple of plates of half puff paste
Mix everything but the puff paste take a greased tin and make something that looks right (if youve never baked a pie before: dont try this recipe). stuff the pie with yer piestuffing and shove it into the oven (i nearly slipped and wrote something else there) at 175°c til ye can see the liver turning darkgrey. Now make a lid with little holes cut out, maybe in the shape of a jolly roger. Let the lid turn golden and serve while its hot with red beer.
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O´Hanlons stew
(Irish 16th century style)
4 portions
use a deep stewpan
300 g of pork
300 g of beef
a bottle of fine porter
2 - 3 slices of dark bread cut into dices
3 - 4 potatoes (Not very historically correct, I know. But it tastes better)
3 dl of cream
50 g of butter
Fry pork, beef and half a glass of porter. After about 5 minutes you can add the sliced potatoes. When the potatoes starts to turn golden, add cream, porter and the dark bread and maybe a little salt and pepper. Let it cook for about 10 - 15 minutes. Serve with white bread and india pale ale.
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Honey Cake
(Swedish, early 17th century)
1 1/2 dl of honey
4 eggs
1 dl of sugar
2 spoons (or more) of ginger
1 spoon of jamaica pepper
4 dl of wheat flour
Grease a tin about 1½ litres in size. Warm up the honey so that you can stirr it easily with a spoon. Whip up the eggs til they´re white, mix them with honey and spices. Finally stirr in flour and pour it all into the tin. Bake in oven for about 30 - 40 minutes in 175ºC. Take it out, leave it for a day and serve with butter.
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Stuffed hen
(late 16th century)
1 large hen
3 dl of currants
1 spoon of sugar
1 spoon of cinnamon
100 g of butter
mix currants, sugar, cinnamon and butter. Stuff the hen. Now comes the tricky part sew up the hole (just the skin) and press out the stuffing under the skin allaround the hen. Place in suitable container and cook in oven at 150 c til its done. (you do know how to check if its ready dont you?).
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Salmagundi
(the MGM way)
When MGM released the movie "Cutthroat Island" they also launched a website. On that website they had a recipe of Salmagundi. It looked like this:
This entire menu can also be mixed together forming the pirate stew of choice, the legendary culinary feast of Salmagundi:
1 part salted, pickled beef or pork.
1 part fresh goat, dog, rat, cat or seabird.
1 part pickled vegetables, eggs, anchovies.
1 part grapes, crabapples, fresh fish, breadfruit "spagetti" and black banana mush.
Add tons of garlic, sugar, honey, salt, vinegar, oil, wine, cinnamon to taste. Serve hot from the cauldron. Garnish with musty croutons and wilted greens.
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