Cameline sauce

Cameline sauce () was a cinnamon-based sauce that was widely eaten among the upper class in medieval Western Europe, often alongside roasted meats. Ingredients other than cinnamon varied widely between recipes, though a typical sauce might include ginger, nutmeg, saffron, breadcrumbs, sugar and vinegar. Recipes appear throughout 14th- and 15th-century cookbooks. Cooks stopped making the sauce as simpler sauces made closer to service became fashionable, valuing the flavours of fresh ingredients like herbs over the spiced pungency of cameline sauce.

Etymology Cameline sauces consistently included cinnamon, lending the sauce flavour, camel-hair colour, and potentially, name. Theories of the etymology of cameline include a derivation from the French word for cinnamon, , a reference to its colour resembling the camel. Another theory, that the Oxford English Dictionary describes as "conjectured", tells that "cameline" was a corruption of chamælīnum, the equivalent of the Greek * 'dwarf flax'.

Preparation

Beyond the use of cinnamon, preparations of cameline sauce varied widely. Ginger was a typical inclusion in France, as were cloves in Italy; all had the pungent flavours that were typical of medieval cooking. Around fifty recipes are identified during the 14th and 15th centuries in Europe by the scholar Bruno Laurioux, making it the most cited sauce in cookbooks of the period; such was their prevalence that they could be purchased, pre-prepared from sauciers in France as of the 14th century. One intensely spiced recipe is given in the 1393 text (The Parisian Household Manager), relaying a cameline sauce recipe of Tournai:

The red colour of the sugar here is sometimes translated to mean brown sugar, although some historians speculate red colouration may have arisen from the addition of spices. Sweet flavours in cameline sauces were rare in early French preparations compared to those in Italy, where cameline sauces often included sugar or saba, a syrup made from concentrated grape must. Bread was used as a thickener; in other recipes, chicken livers, eggs, or ground almonds during Lent completed the same role, though never flour. The 14th-century text Le Viandier, authored by the French cook Guillaume Tirel, is traditionally credited with the technique of straining sauce to produce a smoother texture.

Sugar featured more often in French preparations from the 15th century, as seen in the Du fait de cuisine, written in 1420 by the master chef of Amadeus VIII, Duke of Savoy. The cameline sauce in Du fait de cuisine was flavored with expensive spices, including mace (made from the aril of nutmeg), and grains of paradise imported from Africa.

English cameline sauces were distinct too. In the cookbook The Forme of Cury, compiled , a recipe for the sauce appears under the name "Sawse Camelyn", distinct from the cameline sauce of Le Ménagier de Paris by the avoidance of boiling and the unusual inclusion of currants and nuts:

Flavour contrasts such as the sweetness of raisins and the bitterness of some nuts (for instance, walnuts) was typical of English cameline sauces. Theirs were also more heavily spiced than French or Italian versions, often including ginger, cloves, nutmeg, and saffron, the last intensifying the colour already contributed by cinnamon.

Like the English, Catalan cooks spiced their cameline sauces with ginger, cloves, and nutmeg and used their cameline sauces to emphasize flavour contrasts. Rather than mixing their spices with wine, broth was often used. Cameline sauce was known in the region as , and is mentioned in satirical accounts of Jewish feasts and the 15th-century cookbook . The book's recipe was served with chicken and capon, and like the cameline sauces of Italy, contained sugar and chicken liver, alongside almond milk, chicken broth, and pomegranate wine or red vinegar. The appearance in a late-15th-century Italian cameline sauce recipe of almond milk, broth, and sour pomegranate juice to balance sweet flavours is described by Laurioux as demonstrating clear influence from Catalonia and broader Iberia.

Serving Cameline sauce was common among the upper class in medieval Western Europe, included in diets across England, Italy, Catalonia, Denmark, and France. The sauce was served in deep dishes known as écuelle, as part of a selection of sauces to be eaten with game or roast meat such as crane, rabbit, or veal, or sometimes fish. Historian Melitta Weiss Adamson speculates combinations with fish may have been based on associations under humorism, noting that cinnamon, regarded as hot and dry, may have been seen to aid in the digestion of cold and moist fish.

At feasts, the sauce was sometimes integrated into , a dish between a soup and stew, alongside ingredients including bacon, chicken, spices, and wine. In Renaissance Italy, cameline sauce was served alongside other sauces, to be eaten with small, fried foods, pastries, and cured meat. In one preparation, a fish was kept whole, with the tail boiled, the centre roasted, and the front fried. Each was served with a different sauce, cameline paired with fried meat.

As simpler sauces prepared closer to service with fresh ingredients such as herbs became more prominent, cameline sauce became increasingly rare and eventually stopped being made altogether.

Cameline sauce

Bron en licentie