Tansy was a traditional Easter food in medieval English cuisine.[1] Its name came from the tansy plant. The simplest version of the recipe was made by baking a batter flavored with green tansy juice. Later recipes, like the one from the 16th-century Good Housewife's Handbook added more ingredients like parsley, feverfew and violets to an egg batter that was fried like pancakes, though with a slightly green coloring from the addition of tansy and other herbs.[2] Baked tansy could also be given a green color by adding spinach juice. An 18th-century recipe from The Compleat Housewife added sack to the batter and sweetened the fried tansies with gooseberries and a topping of crushed sugar.

The tansy plant

Cakes and wine were a common feature of Easter traditions. Some 19th-century authors believed that the tradition of eating tansy cakes, which had a sweet and bitter flavor, was connected to Jewish traditions of eating cakes made with bitter herbs.[3] Sometimes the tansy was closer to a pudding than a pancake, like Hannah Glasse's 18th-century recipe in the Art of Cookery, an elaborate dish with Naples biscuits, butter, cream, blanched almonds, eggs, grated bread, rose water, orange blossom water and other spices and sweeteners.[4]

References

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  1. ^ "Tansy". Oxford Reference.
  2. ^ "Remembering the Tansy, the Forgotten Easter Pancake of Centuries Past". Atlas Obscura. 30 March 2018.
  3. ^ Notes and Queries. Oxford University Press. 1885.
  4. ^ Table Talk Volume 28. Pierce Publishing Company. 1913.