Chicken in Sage Sauce

from Le Menagier de Paris

"Take your chicken and quarter it and set it to cook in salt and water, then set it to get cold.  Then bray ginger, cinnamon powder, grain of paradise, and cloves and bray them well without straining, then bray bread dipped in chicken broth, parsley (the most), sage, and a little saffron in the leaf to color it green and run it through a strainer (and some there be that run therewith yolk of egg) and moisten with good vinegar, and when it is moistened set it on your chicken, and with and on the top of the aforesaid chicken set hard-boiled eggs cut into quarters and pour your sauce over it all."

For one whole cooked chicken I mixed 1/4 tsp. of ginger and cloves, 1/2 tsp. of cinnamon and grain of paradise, then mixed about a cup of bread crumbs with 1/2 cup of the chicken broth, a tablespoon of dry parsley and a teaspoon of chopped fresh sage.  Fresh parsley would have been better. I added a tablespoon of white wine vinegar, but it took at least 2 or 3 more tablespoons plus some water to thin it after it was cold. More broth would have worked well.

I have no idea what "saffron in the leaf" could mean.  It appears that one species of crocus sativa does have edible leaves, but it isn't the saffron crocus.  To color the sauce greener, I could have added more parsley, or some chard or spinach.

The spices could have been stronger and it would have been good but it was good like this.

This recipe is directly descended from an earlier Anglo-Norman one called Saugee:
"Take good spices, that is, ginger, cloves, cinnamon, and galingale, and grind them in a mortar; than take a handful of sage and grind well in the same mortar with the spices; then take eggs and hardboil them, remove the yolk and grind with the sage; blend with wine vinegar, cider vinegar, or malt vinegar; take the egg white and chop finely and add to the sage mixture; put in pig's trotters or other cold meat and serve."