COOKING. How to cook a red cherry and roses pie

Rewriting a recipe from the fifteenth century is never easy, you can come across ingredients and technics that nowadays can be considered very peculiar.
You can’t compare “baking” to “cooking slowly in a pan ” (“a cocere a bello agio in la padella”), and almost every recipe you find yourself rewriting lacks doses, because it’s the cook’s skills (as it has always been)  that succeed in satisfying the commensals’ tastes.
This pie has a bright colour and an incredible aroma, as the standards of the gastronomy of that time required: cinnamon, roses and ginger create the particularly spicy scent of the pie and the cherries generate that distinctive bright colour sought-after in the fifteenth century.

Original recipe: Per fare torta di cerase rosse e rose
Habi le cerase de le più negre che tu trovi, et cavatene fora le ossa macinarale molto bene nel mortale, et habi de le rose roscie battute molto bene col coltello, con un pocho di cascio frescho et un pocho di bon cascio vecchio, agiongendoli de le spetie, cioè canella, zenzevero, et pocho pepe, et del zuccharo; et mescolarai molto bene tutte queste cose, agiongendovi etiam tre o quattro ova secundo la quantità che vorrai fare, et con la crosta di sotto la metterai a cocere a bello agio in la padella. Et quando sia cotta gli metterai di sopra del zuccharo et dell'acqua rosata.

Source: : Libro de arte coquinaria composto per lo egregio Maestro Martino coquo olim del reverendissimo monsignor camorlengo et patriarcha de Aquileia
Ref: L.Ballerini-J.Parzen ,Maestro Martino Libro de arte coquinaria, pag.56 ,G.Tommasi Editore,2003 Milano,

Modern interpretation: red cherry and roses pie
For the crust: 250 gr of flour, 125 gr of butter, a pinch of salt, water
For the filling: 10 gr of red rose petals, 3 eggs, 350 gr of black cherries (weighed without stones), 300 gr of raveggiolo (an Italian cheese), 100 gr of sugar, a teaspoon of cinnamon, half a teaspoon of grated fresh ginger and an ample amount of pepper.

Firstly, prepare the crust (in this case similar to our pastry) kneading butter, flour, a pinch of salt and a drop of water till it’s soft. Blend in everything and leave it to rest in the fridge for half an hour.
Roll out the pastry, place it in a suitable baking pan and cook it until it has become golden.
Take out the stones of the cherries till you get the right weight, mince the rose petals and add the rest of the ingredients. Stir until the mixture gets fairly liquid.
Pour the filling in the cooked crust, then bake it at 180° for about an hour. When taking out the pie, sprinkle with 2-3 spoonful of sugar and rose water.

Thanks to Anna Fabbri for her help and support.

Italian version :
http://famaleonis.blogspot.it/2013/06/per-fare-torta-di-cerase-rosse-e-rose.html