yeah
ok welcome back in our last three lectures we explored medieval life in a noble household a village in a city each of the lifestyles of the inhabitants of these various spaces had its own unique characteristics and issues but one thing common to all classes was a need for and then delight in preparing food in today's lecture we are going to explore the gustatory habits of medieval people and will discover that the inhabitants of the medieval world could be skilled chefs and discriminating consumers although their taste might be a bit different from ours imagine if you will a world without chocolate now for many of us this is a distressing idea even worse for many of us will be to try and imagine a world without coffee but that was the medieval world was also a world without tomatoes or corn or even potatoes there is no sugar in the medieval world until quite late in the period it is in so many ways a world whose tastes and smells are vastly different from our own at the same time there is no truth to the long-standing idea that medieval food was as a rule foul-tasting swill nor is it true that medieval meats were often heavily spiced in order to cover up any odor of rot people then and people today are largely the same and medieval people would have become ill from eating rotten food spy store not just as any person living in the 21st century would but it is true that spices were particularly prized and sought after and it is true also that medieval European taste buds seem to have preferred taste quite different from those of people living in the Western world today still and anyone who was ever attended an authentic medieval feast can attest there is much in the way of good and even delicious medieval cuisine and medieval cooks were some of the most skillful resourceful and inventive artisans of their time the first thing we have to remember is how little medieval people had in the way of what we might call modern conveniences there are no refrigerators no stoves with burners that could be turned up and down and certainly no microwave ovens most cooking was done over an open flame sometimes in an enormous fireplace and the risk of fire was always significant in great households the kitchen was usually in a separate building perhaps connected to the main house by covered walkway given these constraints one might be forgiven for wondering if medieval people only rarely had a good hot meal yet documentary and archaeological evidence testify both to the cleverness and talent of medieval cooks particularly in terms of preparing dishes both tasty to eat and beautiful to behold as we will see in a moment any study of medieval habits of eating is necessarily skewed or biased by the kind of evidence we have at our disposal first of all from the earlier . we have very little concrete evidence except for that which comes from a relatively new field of Investigation archaeological excrement studies this kind of Investigation can give us some idea of the diet of medieval people based on evidence such as fruit pips or seeds etc but by no means is the picture complete we also have very little in the way of recipes that were written down the earliest manuscripts that we might refer to as cookbooks come from near the end of the 13th century and there aren't many of these even the evidence within these manuscripts must be view cautiously as it in no way can be said to represent the cooking habits of all or even most of medieval so society as you'll recall from an earlier lecture the process of producing even a single manuscript page was incredibly labor-intensive and time consuming so any manuscript pages that were devoted to something as quotidian as cooking would almost certainly be the property of wealthy noble households and even then the recipes included almost certainly did not represent every day eating habits as anyone who has spent any amount of time cooking knows foods that one makes frequently don't require instruction you know the recipe and cooking procedures by heart but dishes that are not made often that are expensive or elaborate or reserved only for feast days these are the recipes that would be written down in medieval cookbooks as it is only when dealing with something unfamiliar or novel them I'm an evil cook would need to consult an authority this would explain why the documentary evidence from medieval cooking seems to emphasize meat dishes with almost no recipes for fruit or vegetable dishes many people once thought that this meant that medieval people ate very little in the way of fruits or vegetables on the contrary the lack of mention of these foods in medieval recipe collections indicates exactly the opposite most households in Western Europe in the Middle Ages even that of the poorest peasant would have a vegetable garden in close proximity to wherever the cooking was done fruit trees and Barry producing plants and shrubs might also be in abundance with no refrigeration and no modern canning or preserving techniques medieval medieval people ate seasonally and most likely prepared fruit and vegetable dishes every day that such foods were in season in order to procure these items all they had to do in most instances was walk outside thus there would be no reason to write down for example how one might cook and seasoned carrots or make vegetable soup because it was something that was done on such a regular basis this the same is true of that most fundamental of foods in the medieval diet bread this food staple is called the staff of life for good reason it might be eaten with every meal and occasionally it was the meal medieval brought however was very different from what we might think of when we think of a loaf of bread today for one thing it was probably significantly denser and chewier than the bread you find at the grocery store because although medieval Baker's did have rising agents that they added to the dough they aren't the same as the dry yeasts used in most bread nowadays the grain would have been coarser and often especially in times of extreme hunger or famine items like beans or nuts and even tree bark would be added to the dough mixture in order to give the bread more heft evidence of the status and power of Baker's guilds from the late medieval period demonstrates that most people did not make their own bread but either purchased it from a baker or paid a fee to bake once own bread in a communal oven the use of communal ovens was a practical matter when one considers the space and oven would take up and how much fuel one needs to heat an oven to the right temperature for baking bread it was far more economical for one person or group of people to maintain
the oven and charge people for using it before one could bring one's dough to the oven for baking however one had to have one's grain ground into flour and this involved a visit to the miller who like the Baker maintain the equipment necessary for this first step in bread baking and charged the fee for its use the infamous soaked which we've already just discussed on a few occasions
there were different types of bread and white bread was considered by many the best bread because it was usually made of finer flower which took much longer to produce since the grains needed to be sifted through an item called a bolting cloth and usually more than once in order to get rid of the bran and germ of the bread and leave behind only the finest white grains because it was more labor-intensive white bread certainly cost more and most most often seen on the tables of nobles or very rich merchants at a feast there would be a few communal loaves at the table and the highest ranking person at the table or guest of honor would get first crack at the loaf usually taking the best portion for himself from whence most likely comes the association of the phrase upper crust with those in the upper echelon of society bread had multiple uses beyond the nutrition it provided often at a feast instead of a plate one might be given a slab of so-called trencher bread this bread would be of lower quality than that meant primarily for consumption and most likely somewhat stale and crusty because diners eight from communal bowls at a feast the trencher was a place where one could place whatever item of food one had taken from one of these communal dishes
the bread acted as a natural absorber or container for the sauces many of them quite strong that accompanied some of the more flavorful dishes at a feast and at the end of the feast one had the option of eating the now soft trencher or else throwing it to one of the many dogs sure to be roaming the feasting Hall so what else didn't evil people eat at these feasts
well some type of meat was usually served but as a general rule very few people except the exceedingly wealthy eight on a regular basis protein was more frequently consumed in the form of beans milk products like cheeses and poultry even at the wealthiest table in the land however the meat would in most cases taste somewhat different than what people today are accustomed to we have to remember that all livestock in the middle ages are pretty much free range even though they might actually sleep inside a farmer's cottage at night for protection against either thieves or the cold or both most livestock raised to provide food in the medieval world scholars estimate that the ratio of fat to muscle was about one to three taste in the Western world today seem to prefer the inverse or a ratio of fat to muscle that is three two one so as a rule medieval meat was the leaner than modern meet however as important as meat dishes were most medieval feast medieval dining moved in step with both the change of seasons and the church calendar which forbade meet on many specific occasions because of this there was quite an industry involved in providing fish for the tables of
medieval people and as a rule people in the Middle Ages seem to have had different tastes when it came to fish eels for example appear frequently and those cookbooks which survived King Henry the first of England is almost always described as having died after consuming quote a surface of Lamprey's and quote a kind of eel to which he seemed particularly partial many great houses kept fishpond stopped so that they would have an ample supply of fish on those religious days when eating flesh was forbidden and one of the clauses of the Magna Carta actually deals specifically with a number of fish Weir's or fish traps set in the river thames there was very little regulation and many boats found themselves entangled or otherwise damaged by coming into contact with these traps and the peers of the realm felt that the implementation of some sort of rules was in order preparation of flesh foul and fish often involved combinations of ingredients and flavors would be unlikely to run across today although most scholars would agree that salt and pepper were the most common spices indeed household account books from the later medieval period keep careful records of quantities and amounts paid for these spices salt was considered so valuable than in the late antique world people were sometimes paid with it the word salt and our modern word salary have the same route because of this salt was also surprised because salted meat was one of the main waves of preserving it for consumption at a later date ginger cloves nutmeg cinnamon and cumin make frequent appearances in recipe books other spices with which modern cooks may not be overly familiar but which medieval cook seem to have used with some regularity include mace Galen Gail carta mom spike in art and what is arguably the mother of all spices saffron saffron was by far the most useful ingredient at a medieval chefs disposal when he wanted to make an impression it has a unique flavor and more importantly the ability to change the color of a dish and it is still to this day in terms of price per pound the most expensive item in any grocery store many of these spices traveled long distances often all the way from the Middle East or beyond and thus they were quite expensive and didn't come into extensive general use until late in the period as far as we can surmise one item that was introduced to the medieval world quite late with sugar for most of the Middle Ages honey perform the task of sweetening dishes which meant that medieval taste buds were not accustomed to the kind of sugary sweetness we associate with most desserts now and it also means that medieval people were less prone to tooth decay when preparing a dish for a feast cooks were expected to provide some sort of Marvel or edible delights with which to amuse and entertain the guests very often these displays of talent would take the form of some fantastic feet of presentation we hear of chefs cooking peacocks or swans and then redressing the cooked foul in their original feathers for presentation to the table and the children's nursery rhyme about four and twenty blackbirds baked in a pie would seem to have some truth to it as there are accounts of live birds usually doves being brought to the table inside a pie crust and then flying out when the host was asked to cut into the pie there were no Forks as we know them in the middle medieval period and when invited to a feast
everyone was expected to bring his or her own knife which could be used for spearing food from a serving platter and bringing it to one's own trencher as well as bringing the food - once mouth two people sitting side by side of the feast might share a single cup for drinking but it was considered bad manners to drink from the cup if one had a lot of grease someone's upper lip or to backwash in the cup that was considered especially bad before the feast there is often an elaborate hand-washing ritual a pair of service might move around the table with a newer of water a bowl and a towel and each guest was expected to wash his or her hands before the feast began although medieval people did not really grasp the concept of germs and we still considered bad manners to reach into a communal dish with unclean hands several important literary works from the Middle Ages described proper manner is that a feast Geoffrey Chaucer's Prioress in the canterbury tales for example is described as being a very tidy eater in a passage that seems to have been heavily influenced by the french poem the romance of the Rose written in the 13th century and this poem includes a lengthy section on proper behavior at the table other texts instruct diners not to dip food directly into the salt cellar cellar but rather to bring salt to one's own trencher neither should one talk with one's mouth full get drunk or fall asleep during the feast as this was considered bad manners as we've already discussed another of Chaucer's characters the Franklin takes great delight in dining so much so that chaucer tells us it snowed meat and drink in his house
it snowed meat and drink in his house the Franklin is also described as having a tabla dorm all a table that was always set and ready for eating something unusual in an age when most people ate it trestle tables that could be easily disassembled this would certainly be the case in the homes of peasants which were often only one room space was at a premium so it was often necessary to be able to move a dining surface out of the way if one had one at all peasant cooking was a great deal simpler than the food scene at the great feast in a noble household and was often of the one-pot variety one of the diet staples for this group of people with something called pottage which we've already discussed and which calls to mind some sad watery grave version of porridge or gruel but which could actually be quite tasty and even creamy into this went vegetables a bit of meat if it could be had and then some sort of grains or on occasion stale bread which when softened cooked and plumped up serve to make this dish quite rich and creamy on the whole enable people ate a fairly healthy diet when times were good even peasants would have access to all kinds of healthy foods simply by walking out the door and into their garden but those good times were precarious and the threat of starvation was always very present and very real
all the more reason perhaps for them to celebrate with a big feast when there was plenty of food to be had and speaking of celebrating we should talk a little bit about what medieval people drank water as a rule was not the safest thing to put in your body unless it had been boiled fermented or obtained from some known pure source like a spring rivers were the medieval garbage dump as we've already discussed it wasn't rivers at all kinds of trades and craftspeople and farmers disposed of waste butchers Tanner's and others use the river as a means of disposing of refuse many medieval castles position there latrines the God home so that they were directly over the river so you can imagine that if you were down river from any of this the river would not be the place from which you want to get your water in fact some medieval recipes specifically occasionally call for spring water as it was understood to be the best and purest communal wells and villages were better sources of water but poor understanding of hygiene and sanitation meant that often the medieval version of the outhouse might be positioned close enough to a well to contaminate the water the safest thing to drink in the medieval world was ale need more wine in fact just as the Baker might do a steady business supplying bread or allowing people to use his communal oven many medieval women found brewing to be a lucrative venture producing ale often out of their own homes and selling it to the public now students always ask me how it would be possible for someone to consume al constantly and not become dehydrated and the answer is that most potent potables in the medieval period had a significantly lower alcohol content than their modern counterparts it was enough to kill all kinds of bacteria even if people living in the Middle Ages didn't quite understand the mechanism behind this but it was not enough usually too severely dehydrated someone and people did drink non-alcoholic beverages water especially if one could get it from a pure source and milk fruits such as apples and strawberries also provided hydration as did some vegetables wine was considered the most desirable and upper class of medieval alcoholic beverages but until the 18th century there was no wine bottling and storage as we know it today the use of quarks to keep wine fresh wasn't common practice until the 18th century
so all wine was drunk when young and usually kept in a large VAT known as a but the wooden butts often helped in part a particular flavor to the wine which sat in it something that medieval people recognized often choosing butts made of particular woods for the storage of particular whines even today many people feel that the proper beverage to accompany particular cuisines such as greek is a kind of wine known as Rhett Cena a name which recalls wine that absorb the flavor of the pine resin from the but in which it was kept in great households there would be a separate storage room known as the buttery where these that's were kept although many people might logically assume that a buttery is where one would keep butter that is not the case this is also the origin of the word butler in more recent times the title of Butler has been used for a male household servant often the head servant in the household originally the butler was the serving man responsible for looking after the butts of wine and a bunch of wine is one of the most famous elements of Shakespeare's play Richard the third as the character of the Duke of Clarence is executed by being drowned in a butt of momsy wine then is now different regions were known for producing different types of flavors of wine the region around what is Germany today was particularly known for its white wines while red wines from the South were held in high esteem wine was perhaps the most popular and common table beverage of the whole medieval period and one thing working in its favor is that great finds would grow in soil that was usually useless for growing other crops and when the climate was right it's fairly simple to cultivate and tend to these crops even after wine had turned and was no longer considered fit four straight consumption at the table it could be used in cooking to impart strong flavors much as one uses vinegar today the third alcoholic beverage after wine & ale
it was commonly consumed in the Middle Ages was meat as for most of the . honey was the primary sweetener used in food preparation sugar bean unknown to many or too expensive due to its exotic provenance beekeeping and honey production or two important occupations after it had fermented honey produced the alcoholic beverage known as meat meat is most frequently found in northern european and scandinavian communities places where grapevines would not easily grow and as we discussed in an earlier lecture the center of almost any Germanic community particularly in the early medieval period was the mead-hall here the drinking of meat was often ceremonial with the drinking horn in many cases this was made from the horns of a huge huge now extinct kind of cattle called an aurochs at this horn would be passed ceremoniously around the hall by the queen or highest ranking noble woman of the community such a moment happens in the Old English poem Beowulf when Queen wealthy I'll wife of Hrothgar king of the Danes brings the drinking horn to the hero Beowulf as a symbol of welcome and of thanks for his assistance in fighting the monster Grendel so as I hope this brief overview has suggested medieval food was far from land or uninspiring in many respects when food was plentiful and crops were not poor due to bad weather or insect infestation medieval people ate a healthier diet than many of us in the West today most of the population ate a diet heavy with fruits and vegetables with beans poultry fish and dairy products providing necessary protein nobles enjoyed an even more varied diet with a variety of meats most of which were considerably leaner than those raised commercially today complementing the typical vegetables fruits and dairy products bread the number one most important food in the medieval world was also healthier in that it had a much higher fiber content in fact some scholars have gone so far as to suggest that medieval people were getting altogether too much fiber in their diets where is in the modern period many people have the opposite problem medieval people ate seasonally and their schedule of food consumption followed a fairly regular calendar dictated both by nature and its seasons as well as the church and its particular feast and fast days although food preparation equipment was rudimentary by today's standards medieval cooks displayed and inventiveness and skill that would be the envy of many famous chefs today the preparation and consumption of food was a huge component of daily life in the medieval world peasant families work together to plant and harvest and those who helped transform crops from the ground into food on the table such as Millers and Baker's held an important place medieval society even if they might often be viewed as taking unfair advantage of that position a medieval feast was an opportunity for demonstrations of hospitality friendship and generosity to the poor who might wait outside the feasting Hall to be given whatever leftovers there were as the event came to a close a medieval feast was not just a time for eating it was a time for socializing and entertaining as well in our next lecture we will discuss some of the ways that medieval people amuse themselves both in large groups as a feast and in smaller gatherings where people might occupy themselves with playing board games and the like next time we will also hear a little bit more of what we might call the soundtrack of the medieval world as we explore the kinds of musical instruments typical of Europe in the Middle Ages and the songs and dances popular throughout the period
No comments:
Post a Comment