2 From Pottage to Peacock: A Guide to Medieval Food Nicol Valentin Historyunfettered.com 3 4 In the beginning . There was food, and the food was tasty. Wine from Palestine, olive oil from Spain, tableware from Gaul: these were the things coming into Britain before the fall of Rome. In fact, thanks to the Romans, the British were introduced to a large selection of vegetables like garlic, onions, leeks, cabbages, turnips, asparagus, and those beloved peas. Spices like pepper, nutmeg, and ginger were introduced too. Things were grand, and then in 410 the Romans left. The world became fragmented. Towns disappeared, villas were abandoned, and society was in the midst of catastrophic collapse. No one had time to worry about imported wine or fancy spices. Slowly, however, pockets of stability returned. Chaos turned to order, and someone said, !I think it"s time for a really great dinner.# 5 First, the Bad Stuff ! Unfortunately, food was never a certainty in the medieval world. Starvation was always a possibility, no matter who you were. Crops failed, fields flooded, animals caught diseases, and any of these things could leave your table empty. Sometimes you got hit with more than one calamity. Even in the best conditions, you could still starve. If you found yourself in a town under siege, your choices were to surrender to a quick death by hanging or a slow one by starvation. Neither seems very appealing. If the crops were good and no one was knocking down your door with sword and ax, there was still more to watch out for. When buying at the town market, it was “Buyer beware.” Deceptions could await you at any stall. Although statutes were passed prohibiting things like the selling of unwholesome or reheated foods, crafty salesmen tried their best to cut corners any way they could. Weights or stones were sometimes baked into bread to bring them up to the weight required by law. Meat might be starting to rot, and wine and milk might be sour. Meat pies were hugely popular market fare, and their concealing nature made it easy for devious cooks to pass off rotten and unwholesome foods. Luckily, a buyer had recourse. Anyone with a complaint could appeal to the piepowder courts, which were held specifically to deal with these situations. A London ordinance from 1379 had a fine equal to nearly three weeks of a laborer’s wages for baking pies that were “not befitting and sometimes stinking.” Bakers who wanted to cheat might suffer fines or even have a time out at the pillory. Keep in mind that types, quantities, and the quality of food varied by region, time, and affluence. For example, farm records from 1493 show workers on a Bavarian farm were fed a pretty meager diet. From St. Georges day to Michaelmas, (24 April–29 September), they had a nice water soup made with pork fat, called Rabl. Midday would bring a barley loaf and cabbage washed down with some milk. Fruit, peas, or millet were served at the steward’s discretion if they were available. At night they got another soup, this time with milk, called Graman. Things got a little better during the season between Easter and Whitsunday. Three times a week they received pork and cabbage. Around the same time, shepherds in France were noshing on fish stew, chicken, rabbit, pork and peas, leeks, Brussel sprouts, meat pies, cheese tarts, and more. It was arguably a more varied diet than some modern Americans’. So, when do we eat? All that talk about water soup made you hungry? Well, I hate to tell you, but early medieval peoples only ate twice a day. Dinner, the first and largest meal, would be around noon. One reason for this was practicality. It took a while to get things cooked. Larger and more affluent households had more complicated meals, which naturally took even longer to prepare. 6 Sometime around dusk, when the work of the day was done, supper would be served. This was usually a light meal, many times just a simple soup. In fact, the etymology of supper is the Anglo-French super, to sup, which is related to supe or soup. Breakfast of Champions? So, what about breakfast? Well, in the early days it didn’t happen. People of high status may have had some bread and cheese in the morning, especially if they were setting out on a long excursion. For the most part, however, eating before dinner was considered gluttonous and an act of overindulgence. Doctors believed it was unhealthy to eat a meal before the previous one had been completely digested. Exceptions were made for children, the elderly, and the sick. Field workers and other laborers could take breakfast as well because the calories were needed to give them strength. However, later in the period, when cooking skills became more advanced, dinner was pushed even later. If you were following doctor’s orders, this meant supper couldn’t be eaten until seven or eight. The long waits were becoming tiring, and the thought of a little smackrel in the morning became more appealing. Caution was thrown to the wind, and breakfast was born. It was meager enough at first, a bit of bread dipped in some watered-down wine. However, when people realized they liked that happy feeling of a full stomach, they got even bolder and added a bit of fish, like anchovies, herring, or trout. By 1512 clerks and yeoman were breaking the fast with beer, bread, and boiled beef—not a bad start to the day. Still Hungry? This wasn’t recommended, but a hungry medieval person might sometimes sneak in a fourth meal called the reresoper, or rear supper. Breakfast might be frowned upon as over- indulgent, but reresoper was unconscionable for anyone of a moral and genteel nature. At least, in public. Reresopers were usually enjoyed with a few friends and lots of alcohol. Whether a full meal or a light snack, reresopers were associated with crude jokes, gambling, and flirtatious behavior. All this led to late nights and hangovers, certainly not the hallmarks of pious people. 7 Cooking Methods 8 You only need to know three basic cooking methods to get along in a medieval kitchen. Everything made was a variety of potages, roasts, and pies cooked by boiling, roasting, or baking. The most primitive form of cooking was done directly on an open fire. Ouefs perdus or “lost eggs” are a prime example. To cook these all one had to do was crack an egg directly onto the hot embers and clean them up as best as possible before eating. However, if ashes weren’t really your thing, the next easiest meal was pottage. Pottage In simple terms, a pottage is anything cooked in a pot. Chemical analysis of bones and pottery shards and historical records reveal that pottages were the backbone of a peasant’s diet. These meals were quite economical because nothing was lost in the cooking and no fancy equipment was needed. However, pottage was eaten by all classes in some form or another. A typical one would include vegetables such as red or green cabbage, leeks, onion, and garlic. Upper classes might add almond milk, wine, and a variety of spices such as ginger and saffron. Depending on your means, pottages could be thin and watery or so thick you could almost cut them. Frumenty is a pottage thickened with some type of grain. A nice one might be served with a porpoise, like in this recipe in the oldest medieval cookbook, The Forme of Curry: Take clene whete and bete it small in a morter and fanne out clene the doust, !enne waisthe it clene and boile it tyl it be tendre and broun. !anne take the secunde mylk of Almaundes & do !erto. boile hem togidur til it be stondyng, and take !e first mylke & alye it up wi! a penne. take up the porpays out of the Furmente & leshe hem in a dishe with hoot water. & do safroun to !e furmente. and if the porpays be salt. see! it by hym self, and serue it forth. In today’s English, this reads: Take clean wheat and crush it into a powder. Clean out the dust, wash it clean, boil until tender, and brown. Take the second milk of almonds and do the same thing. Boil them together until it’s thick. Then take the first milk and mix it up with a feather. Take the porpoise out of the frumenty and leave it in a dish with hot water. Add saffron to the frumenty. And if the porpoise be salted, set it by itself and serve it forth. Mortrews were advanced versions of the frumenty, thickened with pureed meat, eggs, and spices. They really were more like paté than soup. Blanc mange, a thick pottage made solely of white ingredients, was a favorite of the day. It consisted of almonds, ground or liquid, rice, sugar, and chicken often shredded with a pin. This dish was not spiced, but it could be colored. For feasts, it might be divided in two with one half being yellow or red, while the other remained white. Like the frumenty, mortrews and blanc manger would have been served with fish on the appointed church fasting days. Perch, lobster, and haddock were common choices. 9 Roasting Roasting was done on a spit over an open fire. It wasn't nearly as easy as throwing things into a pot and letting them boil. Fuel use was inefficient, and specialized equipment was needed.