Wash ribs, trim fat if possible & rub meat with fresh pepper. Place ribs in 2.5-quart pan, cover with water & bring to a boil. While waiting, combine diced onion, parsley, cardamom, mace, sage & raisins; add to pan once it's boiling, along with cloves & cinnamon sticks. Cover, reduce heat, & simmer until the meat is tender & pulls away from the bones. Remove meat & set aside (discard bones). Skim fat from broth, and set aside about 1 c broth; return meat to the remainder of the mixture & keep it on a low heat. Remove crust from bread, and soak slices in the set aside broth, plus vinegar to taste. Force bread through strainer, adding it to the broth, and mix to a gravy consistency. Add this to the main pot, and stir well. Also add ¼ tsp salt, saffron and additional vinegar if needed. Return to boil, reducing liquid so that it is not too watery. Remove cinnamon sticks and cloves (if you can find them!). Serve with hearty bread or toast.

Note: I found it helpful to cook this on the stovetop for around an hour, then transferred everything to a crock-pot for about 4 hours of slow cooking. This made the meat very tender, and I didn't have to worry about keeping an eye on it. This seems a reasonable modern way to "boill soakingly on a fair charcoal til it be enough." (click here for period recipes & two modern redactions I used as a reference)

· This is a breakfast dish?! Yes. 16th century cookbooks specifically list stewed meat as a dish to be served at breakfast, or alternatively at supper (the last meal of the day). The Tudor upper classes consumed as much meat as possible, which probably accounts for the lack of grain fillers and few vegetables in these stew recipes. Sim (1997) reports that up to 80% of the diet of Tudor courtiers was meat. Meat was expensive, and so eating a lot of it showed your high place in society.

· Why would this be served from December through March? According to the writings of Tudor humanist Sir Thomas Elyot, people should eat very "hot" foods in moderate amounts during these cold months. "Hot" does not refer to the temperature of a dish, but to its characteristics according to their medical understanding of the four humors. As raisins, onions, pepper, saffron & cloves are all characterized by him as having 'hot' qualities, I believe the dish overall qualifies as hot.

· Why is this dish called a 'hodgepodge'? The term was given to stewed dishes containing a variable mixture of ingredients. Interestingly, the Oxford English Dictionary (2nd edition, online version) mistakenly cites 1615 & 1622 as the earliest appearances of the word 'hodgepodge' referring a dish of stewed meat, but A book of cookery (1591) uses it to title of one of its recipes.

1. Anon (15th C):

Take fair beef of the ribs of the fore-quarter, and smite in fair pieces, and wash the beef into a fair pot; then take the water that the beef was seethed in, and strain it through a strainer, and seethe the same water and beef in a pot, and let them boil together; then take cinnamon, cloves, maces, grains of paradise, cubebs, and onions minced, parsely, and sage, and cast thereto, and let them boil together; and then take a loaf of bread, and steep it with broth and vinegar, and then draw it through a strainer, and let it be still; and when it is near enough, cast the liquor thereto, but not too much, and then let boil once, and cast saffron thereto a quantity; then take salt and vinegar, and cast thereto, and look that it be poignant enough, & serve forth.

-From Harleian MS. 279 as printed in Renfrow, Take a Thousand Eggs or More, p. 118

2. Anon (15th C):

Take fair ribs of beef, and if you will, roast it until it be nigh enough; then put it in a fair possenet; cast thereto parsely and onions minced, raisons of Corinth, powder[ed] pepper, canel, cloves, saunders, saffron, and salt; then cast thereto wine and a little vinegar. Set a lid on the pot, and let it boil soakingly on a fair charcoal til it be enough. Then lay the flesh in dishes and the syrup there upon, and serve it forth.

-From Harleian Ms. 4016, as found in A Boke of Gode Cookery Recipes, www.godecookery.com. (Spelling modernized by me)

3. A.W. (1591):

To make a Hodgepodge. Boil a neck of mutton or a fat rump of beef, and when it is well boiled, take the best of the broth and put it into a pipkin and put a good many onions to it, two handfull[s] of marigold flowers, and a handful of parsley fine picked and [groce] shreded and not too small, and so boil them in the broth and thicke[n] it with strained bread, putting therein [groce] beaten pepper, and a spoonful of vinegar, and let it boil somewhat thick and so lay it upon your meat.

-From A Booke of Cookrye, p. 12. Spelling moderinzed by me. This recipe clearly shows the use of the word ‘Hodgepodge’ to denote this sort of dish almost 25 years before the first such reference recorded in the OED.

4. Anon (1594):

Take beef and smite it in pieces, and wash it in fair water, and strain that water and put it in the pot with the beef, and boil them together. Then take pepper, cloves, mace, onions, parsley and sage, cast it thereto and let it boil together. Then make liquor with bread and thick[en] it, and so let it seethe a good while after that the thickening is in. Then put in saffron, salt and vinegar, and so serve it forth.

-From The good huswifes Handmaide for the Kitchin, p. 16. Spellings modernized by me.

5. Markham (1615):

To make ordinary stewed broth, you shall take a neck of veal, or a leg or marrow bones of beef, or a pullet, or mutton, and after the meat is washed put it into a pot with fair water, and being ready to boil skim it well; then you shall take a couple of manchets and paring away the crust cut it into thick slices ad lay them in a dish, and cover them with hot broth out of the pot, when they are steeped put them and some of the broth into a strainer, and strain it, and them put it into the pot; then take half a pound of prunes, half a pound of raisins, and a quarter of a pound of currants clean picked & washed with a little whole mace of and two or three bruised cloves, and so let them boil ‘til the meat be enough; then if you will alter the color of the broth put in a little Turnsole, or red Saunders, and so serve it up upon Sippets, and the fruit uppermost.

-From The English Hus-wifee, pg. 48-49. Spellings modernized by me.