2kg rabbit, duck or chicken, jointed and cut up
1 onion, chopped
2 Tbsp. olive oil
250ml red wine
500ml chicken stock
1/2 tsp. black pepper
1/2 tsp. mace
1/4 tsp. ginger
1/4 tsp. cloves
1/4 tsp. cinnamon
60ml red wine vinegar
salt 1/4 tsp.
bread crumbs (2 slices worth)


Seal meat in a large pot and set aside, using olive oil as required. Brown onions in remaining oil until tender. Return the meat to the pot and add wine, stock, mace, cloves, pepper, and cinnamon. Bring to a boil and simmer for 1 hour. Add bread crumbs, ginger, vinegar, and salt just before serving.

12/12/12 seems an auspicious day to reach a major landmark. Even the trees had bedecked themselves with glittering frost this morning in celebration of Matthew's @HistoryNeedsYou Twitter following passing the 10,000 mark. Thank you to all 10,000 plus of you, and here's to more historical knowledge, jollity, and friendships. A cup of tea and a slice of cake for one and all, wouldn't you say?
Of course, one doesn't achieve a large social media following by chance. Success comes from delivering a carefully mixed, appetising cocktail of ingredients, and Matthew most certainly has the recipe. Social media is an increasingly powerful way of connecting with the people you need to influence, yet it is still an alien world to many. 
Happily, Matthew is able to pass on his recipe, adapted for your needs - whether you are a business, a heritage body or an individual - on engaging and interacting with your audience using social media. He will help to demystify it for you and show you how to use it to best advantage for your organisation.

To learn how to TwitterBetter with Matthew, please get in touch to find out more by going to our Contact page or you can email info at historyneedsyou dot com.

Following Matthew's recent radio show about The History of Christmas for EGH Media, he has created a Pinterest board with some of the images he tweeted during the live show. Follow this link to visit the board - it tells the story of how Santa Claus became red.

The History of Christmas radio show can be listened to using the audio player below.

ALITER IN STRUTHIONE ELIXO - original Roman recipe for cooking ostrich, by Marcus Gaius Apicius.

450g ostrich
4 tblsp honey
2 tblsp rd wine vinegar
3-4 tblsp olive oil
4 stalks thyme
2 stalks savory
handful of lovage or celery
2 tsp wholegrain mustard
beef stock
Brown the ostrich in the oil; add spices and cook for a few minutes. Add liquid stock, vinegar, honey, mustard and finely-chopped herbs. Cook gently until ostrich is tender, adding more liquid if necessary.

Ostrich qualifies as fast food - ita vero!

Seafood Fricassee - Minutal marinum - a seafood fricasee by Marcus Gaius Apicius

Ingredients:
500g fish fillet (salmon or whatever you prefer)
250ml white wine
500ml beef broth or stock
3 leeks
100ml oil
Fish sauce or salt
Coriander, pepper, lovage, oregano
Fllour to thicken the sauce

Put the fish in a pan with the fish sauce or salt, oil, wine, beef broth, chopped leek and coriander. Cook approximately 30 minutes on a gentle heat. When done add lovage and oregano and bring back to boil & thicken sauce with flour. Sprinkle pepper on the fricasse and serve.

It is not in the recipe but I add garlic too.

This recipe for Patina de piris was written by Marcus Gaius Apicius. It is effectively a pear soufflé

Ingredients:
1kg pears
6 eggs
4 tblsp honey
100ml sweet grape juice or sweet wine
a little bit of oil
50ml fish sauce (from Oriental supermarket) or 1/4 tsp salt
1/2 tsp ground cumin
ground pepper to taste

Cooking Method & Instructions:
Peel, core and chop the pears. Steam, microwave or poach until soft.
Mash the pears with pepper, cumin, honey, sweet grape juice, fish sauce (or salt) and a little oil. Add eggs, beat mixture and put into a casserole dish. Cook approximately 30 minutes on a gentle heat. Serve with a little pepper sprinkled on the souffle.

I prefer to use salt rather than fish sauce as that is one authenticity step too far!

The original recipe in Middle English from 1390 is as follows:
Take crustes of brede and grynde hem smale. Do þerto powdour of galyngale, of canel, of gyngyuer, and salt it; tempre it vp with vyneger, and drawe it vp þurgh a straynour, & messe it forth.
(N.B. þ is equivalent to th)

Translated into modern English:
Take crusts of bread and grind them small. Add powder of galingale, of cinnamon, of ginger, and salt it; mix it with vinegar, and pass it through a strainer, & serve it.

Pour this onto roasted meats, especially game, beef or mutton. I prefer to make it with claret and red wine vinegar as was more usual in Tudor times. I do like this delicious sauce and may well be cooking it for Christ-tide.

Take a pottle of Cream, and boil in it a little whole Cinnamon, and three or four flakes of Mace. To this proportion of Cream put in eighteen yolks of eggs, and eight of the whites; a pint of Sack; beat your eggs very well, and then mingle them with your Sack. Put in three quarters of a pound of Sugar into the Wine and Eggs, with a Nutmeg grated, and a little beaten Cinnamon; set the Bason on the fire with the Wine and Eggs, and let it be hot. Then put in the Cream boiling from the fire, pour it on high, but stir it not; cover it with a dish, and when it is settlede, strew on the top a little fine Sugar mingled with three grains of Ambergreece, and one grain of Musk, and serve it up.

Original recipe rom The Closet of Sir Kenelm Digby - 1671

A warm welcome, one and all, to what we hope will be an edutaining, and collaborative, new venture for HistoryNeedsYou.

Matthew will be blogging to complement his monthly history radio shows for EGH Media, as well as sharing his insights on other historical subjects. Keep checking back with us to see what's new.

We hope to include occasional guest posts too, so if you would like to contribute, please drop HistoryNeedsYou a line. 

If there's a subject you would like to hear about (perhaps something Matthew has mentioned on Twitter, or an historical subject that particularly interests you), please let us know.

You can email HistoryNeedsYou using our Contact page, or by emailing info at historyneedsyou dot com.