By Natasha Saje

italics from The Most Excellent Book of Cookery (France, 1555) trans. Timothy Tomasik and Ken Albala


Counterfeit Snow: First a quart of good rich milk. Make sure it has been a year since the cow had a calf. Add six egg whites, one ounce of rice flour, a quarter pound of powdered sugar, whip together like butter. Skim off what comes to the top. That’s the snow. Put it on a plate. 

Travel the little tunnel that spans from known to un. Run out of air and breathe anyway.

Peacock and Capon Barded Like Porcupines: Find the slenderest cinnamon sticks, cover in sugar like candy, as long as three or four fingers. Pierce them into said game like the spines of a porcupine. Place the sauce at the bottom of the bowl, making sure it does not touch.

Put a finger in the fish tank and an angel brushes by. Or a sharklet.

Milk jasper: Nice rich milk and the same amount of egg whites. Add chopped parsley, white powder, salt. Mix and simmer and when you have stirred it well, squeeze it in a cloth after it has cooked for a day. Then cut it into slices and fry in butter.

Which flowers are edible? You could be frugal and grow your own. Or forage. Constraints are as useful as bones.

A bowl of elderflowers and as many red roses. Put them into boil and then strain them. Add to this some fine flour, eight egg yolks, two or three ounces of sugar, and a quarter ounce of cinnamon. A bit of powdered saffron, a bit of salt. Mix together and fry as you would other fritters.

The Puritans named girls Patience and Tace, which means be silent. Use your tongue for tasting, your hands for cooking and writing. Both for love. 

Take marrow, take rhubarb, take plantain, shepherd’s purse and a little comfrey. Anoint your hands with this and then you can place them into boiling water.

Make a rule. 

There should not be cloves with shad nor with fried eggs.

Then break it.  

The Importance of Arts, Culture & The Creative Process

Making art is what distinguishes humans from other animals. So does reading text. Human contributions to art and humanities make us think and feel in deep and new ways.

What was the inspiration for your creative work?

I read the new English translation of this 1555 cookbook and realized how truly inventive cooking has always been. And that while the rich folk were eating "Counterfeit Snow," the poor folk were eating barley gruel. Differences in income and diet persist to this day. But creativity crosses all kinds of boundaries.

Tell us something about the natural world that you love and don’t wish to lose. What are your thoughts on the kind of world we are leaving for the next generation?

Water. Too little in some places and too much in others, thanks to climate change. Wai means water in Hawaiian, and waiwai means wealth.

Photo credit: Natasha Saje...taken March 2025

Natasha Sajé is the author of five books of poems, including, most recently, The Future Will Call You Something Else (Tupelo, 2023). Her prose books are a postmodern poetry handbook, Windows and Doors: A Poet Reads Literary Theory (Michigan, 2014) and a memoir-in-essays, Terroir: Love, Out of Place (Trinity, 2020). Honors include the Bannister Writer-in-Residence at Sweet Briar College; the Robert Winner and the Alice Fay di Castagnola Awards from the Poetry Society of America; a Pushcart prize; the 2002 Campbell Corner Poetry Prize; a Fulbright Scholarship to Slovenia; a Camargo Fellowship in France; Lambda, IPPY, Foreword, and Pen Finalist prizes. Sajé is professor emerita of English at Westminster University in Salt Lake City, and has been teaching in the Vermont College of Fine Arts MFA in Writing Program since 1996.