Medieval culinary glossary: ears

Image details, see below.

Another excerpt from my forthcoming glossary of all the ingredients, equipment and culinary terms found in Richard II’s cookery book, Fourme of Cury (c.1390):

ears eerys. Pigs’ ears, high in collagen and used in making jelly. Along with the similarly gelatine-producing trotters and snouts of pigs, and calves’ feet, they are an ingredient in the dish ‘Gelee of flesche’, meat jelly (recipe 101, chapter 2). This is the only occurrence of pigs’ ears in Fourme of Cury; however, they are mentioned in the contemporaneous English collection Diuersa servicia, in a recipe for a set, meat-and-poultry ‘gely’ (see CI, p.73, no. 56).

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For those of you who are interested in medieval jelly, you can read my blog post from last year: Jelly in 13th- and 14th-century England

Image at top of page: ‘Pig ears’ by Andrew Grygus, with permission. Please check out the wonderfully informative Pig/Pork Cuts chart from CloveGarden.com