This December I will offer two redaction challenges to be presented at Myrkfaelinn Yule later this month — one savory and one sweet.

This comes from Book V of The Opera of Bartolomeo Scappi (1570). This Italian-based cook left us over 1,000 of recipes fit for a pope’s table.

61. To prepare an apple crostata or pie.

Get red apples, either pare them or roast them in the coals, and cut them into thin slices. Stew them a little in an earthenware or copper pot in fresh butter, sagar and a little malmsey or white wine. When they are done, take them out and make a crostata with them, with slices of fresh provatura under and over them, pankling them with sugar and cinnamon. Put a few lumps of butter and seeded muscatel raisins in with that.

You can do pink apples and russet apples the same way, and several sorts of pear and even muscatel pears, 1 too, when they are cut in two. Red apples and muscatel pears can be put into a crostata raw as they are without being stewed if you have sliced them very thin.