What happens when you have a cocky rooster who attacks small children?  Dinner.  This rooster got to age for 2 days in the fridge and was fork tender after roasting but I needed the perfect sauce.  Something sweet.  Something sour.  Something best served hot.  I had just the right new recipe to try out on the damn cock who went out with a squawk.

Limonada – Lemon Sauce

Translation:

First make broth of chickens and the broth should be well cooked and flavorful.  And then make of it milk of peeled and minced almonds.  And put this to cook in a good pot, with spices, much ginger, saffron, and lots of white sugar and juice of lemons.   And make it to boil a lot.  And if you wish to enhance it, put in a chicken wing well minced, so that it disappears.  And this sauce should be well colored, and you should give with chickens from the spit or the pot.  And you should have much sugar and juice of lemons, in the stew that the one pull the flavor of the other.  And flavor it with salt and with spice, of sour and of sweet.  And if for chance you don’t want to make it with sugar put in of good honey.

From the 14th c. Sent Sovi.  Translation copyright Edan Rain. From: A Brief Overview of Early Spanish Cuisine. Pg. 30.

Ingredients:

1 tsp ginger

1 pinch saffron

1 Tbsp. sugar or honey

1 C lemon juice

1 C almond milk

1 whole roasted chicken

1 C chicken broth

Redactions:

Roast a whole chicken.

This rooster will offend no more.  So fresh if I squeezed he’d still be crowing.  Gather up your ingredients.  I had to wait till the chicken was roasted for the drippings.  That’ll teach me to get ahead of the recipe!

Take the juice from the roasted chicken and pour into a pot.

This came straight from the roasting pan of the above rooster.  I would suggest saving the drippings from any future chickens just in case you have a period sauce you want to make.  They used a LOT of what we would consider wastage now…i.e. the roasted juice and fat of a fresh cock.

Add the almond milk,

with spices with lemon juice,

and add the sugar.

Give everything a stir till blended then boil.

Once the sauce has thickened and reduced by 1/3, take the chicken and quarter it.  Place on a plate and pour the sauce over.

I had to add a bit of honey because the lemon juice I used was organic, so it was NOT a mellow lemon flavor.  This juice had bite.  So be sure to taste this before you serve over the hot chicken.  My daughter was delighted with the taste of the sauce and her former pet rooster.  The circle of life was had this night!