Middle Earth Ranger Forum

In order to replicate the run of the 3 hunters, I'll need a LOT of sustenance. I won't want to cook, either--the 3 hunters didn't, and it would take both time and additional equipment.
Of course, Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli had a solution: Lembas, the elven Waybread of Lothlórien.

It's generally recognized to be a type of hard-tack or biscuit, but while one can survive on such fare, it hardly fits the description of Lembas in the books:

...more strengthening than any food made by Men, and it is more pleasant than cram, by all accounts...better than the honeycakes of the Beornings, and that is great praise, for the Beornings are the best bakers that I know of...One will keep a traveller on his feet for a day of long labour, even if he be one of the tall Men of Minas Tirith.

So true Lembas should taste good and have a lot of nutritional value--two things hard tack does not. A tall order, but thankfully we're replicating elven magic, not period authentic, pre-columbian ingredients and techniques, so let's see what we can do.

• Preheat your oven to 350°F/175°C
  
  4oz/ ½Cup/ 113g whey or soy protein powder
  2¼oz/ ½Cup/ 64g rolled oats
  ¾oz/ ¼Cup/ 20g chia or flax seeds
  2¾oz/ ½Cup/ 78g whole wheat flour
  4oz/ ½Cup/ 113g brown sugar
  2 eggs
  12oz/ 340g pumpkin puree
  6oz/ â…”Cup/ 175g peanut or other nut butter
  ½Cup/ 125ml apple juice, cider or sauce

Mix the wet ingredients together. Mix the dry ingredients together.



Mix the wet and dry ingredients together.



Spread into an oiled 9"x13" (approx. 23x33cm) cake pan. Bake at 350°F/175°C for 35 minutes.



This recipe is based on Alton Brown's protein bars, but with a few common substitutions made for uncommon ingredients and a whole host of assorted dried fruit left out. The dried fruit is a little faster-burning in its carbohydrate mix than necessary, there's no mention of fruit in Lembas, and it's a pain to gather and prepare all the varieties he stipulates. If you want fruit, add up to 8.5oz of whatever varieties you like, finely chopped.

One of the biggest substitutions is pumpkin puree for tofu. I've made this recipe with both, and while the tofu is much higher in protein, it makes a more bitter, chalky-tasting bread, and leaving out the dried fruit gives us plenty of wiggle room on carbs from the pumpkin.

Ultimately, this recipe makes about one moderately exertional day's worth of food for a tall man of Minas Tirith, at 2800 kcalories. It's got 126g fat, 220g protein, and only 202g carbs (without the fruit). It comes out to about 3kcal/g, which puts it around dried fruit and honey in terms of energy density.

It's not the right color, and not 'crisp' the way lembas is described, but it is a lot more sustaining than hard tack.

For the leaf wrappings, I used grape leaves. Banana leaves are also apparently a good bet.

Looks good.

You might want to incorporate Celtic Sea Salt into the mix in some way. You'll be sweating out electrolytes/minerals for an extended time period. Table salt is garbage--even white/processed sea salt won't replace these. The salt should be colored.

Also, unless it is organic, almost all Soy in GMO. Personally, I would avoid that.

You might already know all this, but I figured that I would post for the benefit of those who do not.

Neat recipe!

I'd like to recommend reading through this thread on the contents of documented Dunedain/Numenorean/Elven "Need-wallets", which goes into a fairly detailed discussion on the actual, documented contents of lembas bread, which might inspire a few tweaks in your recipe. I know I say in the thread that "Men" shouldn't normally have access to lembas, but the three hunters did, and that's what you're trying to replicate, so you can brush that off. I also know you said that you can't replicate elven magic either, so just take the suggestion in the spirit it was intended...authenticity!

All salt is sea salt--that is to say, all salt for human consumption is derived from saline bodies of water, ancient (rock salt, Himalayan sea salt) or modern (Table salt, Celtic sea salt). They're all mostly sodium chloride, with impurities.

Table salt has artificial impurities like calcium silicate and potassium iodide that serve textural and nutritional functions. Sea salt has other calcium and potassium impurities, as well as magnesium and sulfates.

All the electrolytes present in sea salt that aren't present in table salt are present in much higher quantities in the other ingredients of most foods, including this one. To boost them noticeably with sea salt, you'd have to make the bread very salty indeed.

I like using non-iodized (usually kosher) salt for recipes where salt takes a major flavor role, but regular table salt is fine from both a flavor and nutrition standpoint in virtually all other cases, I find.

I do think some added salt would be good for this recipe, especially since you will indeed be sweating quite a bit if you're using it right, but there's (sea) salt in the peanut butter I used and it doesn't have that inadequately-salted-bread taste.


Along similar lines, there is no risk from genetically modified crops, especially not the refined byproducts of genetically modified crops. 'Genetic modification' is substantially safer than conventional hybridization and selective breeding--which are also forms of genetic modification.

Greg--great info on the Lembas. I think it's quite probable that the Professor's mind didn't even go to maize when he called the grain of the elves 'corn'. In my experience, 'corn' most often means barley outside of America (for example, 'korn' in Swedish), but can refer to virtually any grain.

That the halum of Tolkien is described as tall-growing doesn't really imply maize either; I know that as late as the American civil war, regular old wheat grew taller than a man's head. Waist-high wheat is the product of recent intensive breeding.

It might be interesting to replace the standard whole-wheat flour in this recipe with durum or dinkel flour to boost the protein content and simulate halum super-wheat. It would also boost the gluten content and make a sturdier cake, which wouldn't go amiss.

Also, while I'll be using this on my trek as a lembas stand-in, it's not actually very much like lembas in its description. I think instead it would make a very good facsimile of the Beorning-style honey-cakes, if one were to swap the brown sugar for honey. The pumpkin is obviously post-columbian...but then again, Tolkien mentions potatoes in the Shire, so a bit of anachronism is defensible, I think (If one even wants to take the 'ancient Europe analogue' interpretation that far). The whey powder may seem like an inauthentic cheat, but whey is just a byproduct of cheese production, so I figure that's fine. I bet this would taste great with hazelnut butter instead of the peanut.

Iiiinteresting! The pumpkin is a really interesting touch. There are some squash-ish choices that are period if you're so inclined next go round:
http://www.oldcook.com/en/medieval-vegetables

I like the whey- I think it was a better choice than the dried milk I used. Either way subsequent reading implies the powder we have now is a modern process... but I have to think something in that space is technologically possible if not historically documentable.

Very cool!

SierraStrider wrote:That the halum of Tolkien is described as tall-growing doesn't really imply maize either; I know that as late as the American civil war, regular old wheat grew taller than a man's head. Waist-high wheat is the product of recent intensive breeding.

He might have been thinking of sorghum, which grows very tall and he would have known from his time in Africa.

My favorite for this is buckwheat, which has a lot of well-balanced protein for a grain.

And oh, yeah, the whey, I see what you did there...

RECIPE UPDATE:

Another prerequisite for a good Lembas analogue would be longevity. This DOES NOT have that. It goes moldy quicker than any bread I've ever baked, probably due in part to the extremely high moisture content. For an overnight or three-day trip, they'll be fine. For much more than that, I wouldn't rely on them.

Oh no! That's disappointing: will you try dehydrating or second-baking them to see if it will push the preservation time?

I might well try those options. I'm also considering recipes that would be more fat-based instead of water-based to boost calories per gram and delay spoilage.