Medieval Cookery Seminar

[Inferno!]

Mark CMG requested more information about this seminar. The seminar was presented by Daniel Myers. He's done research into the subject using original French and English cookbooks. He expected about a half dozen people to attend, but the seminar was standing room only. He has a website at www.medievalcookery.com/ Mr. Myers was very knowledgable and entertaining.

I didn't take notes so I don't have exact figures but here are my recollections of the significant points.

Medieval England was the culinary center of the world. The popular image of medieval food has been completely corrupted by Hollywood (imagine that). The wealthy ate white bread, only the peasants are brown bread. Fish was the most common meat followed by chicken, pork and beef. Meat was usually boiled (presumably to kill bacteria and parasites - not that they knew that at the time) then fried, roasted, baked. Sugar was added to nearly everything.

Spices are much more common that we tend to think. An economist researching trade records found that all but the poorest peasants could and did afford spices. Salt, saffron and ginger being the most popular and common.

Recipes remain remarkably unchanged for about four hundred years, until new foods from the New World begin to appear (e.g. chili peppers and peanuts).

I could go on with random recollections, but I'll spare you. If you have specific questions I'll try to answer them.

 

[ssampier]

What about the fact or fallacy of the popularity of trenchers? Basically you take two several day old pieces of bread and lay them out as a plate. On top of the bread is essentially a stew of carrot, turnips, onions and a little meat. You eat the stew, leaving the bread which can be thrown away.

 

[Vascant]

Trenchers were more common among the noble and wealthy, the symbolism behind having enough money to simply toss away the bread (Even though it was as hard as a rock). The poor did not enjoy such meals however the staff and even animals of the household did enjoy the flavored bread afterwards.

 

[tarchon]

I've tried authentic medieval recipes and it quickly dawned on me why we no longer eat medieval food.

 

[Mark CMG]

Thanks, Inferno!


Where does lamb fit in to the Fish, chicken, pork, beef scheme?


Feel free to ramble on with more information. If people aren't interested, they simply won't read it, but I think you'd be surprised how medieval trivia will attract a crowd.

 

[Inferno!]

Thanks, Inferno!


Where does lamb fit in to the Fish, chicken, pork, beef scheme?

I believe it was next in the list.

Another ramble is that raisins were very common in the recipes. The recipe usually called for soaking them in wine to soften them up. Apparently raisins were common because they could be stored for a long time. Sure they get hard like little rocks, but thats were the wine comes in.

BTW I e-mailed Dan Myers and invited him to check out the thread. Maybe he'll stop in and correct anything I got wrong, and add more info.

 

[Umbran]

Mark CMG requested more information about this seminar. The seminar was presented by Daniel Myers. He's done research into the subject using original French and English cookbooks.

Given that, I am rather skeptical some of the conclusions you report...

Medieval England was the culinary center of the world.

If you're only working from English and French cookbooks, then the center would have to be either English or French. You''d have little way of telling if the center were actually Greman, or Italian, or Spanish, because he's not using those sources. Also recall that peasants didn't write a whole heck of a lot. Cookbooks would have been written by servants of the rich, for the rich and their servants. That should skew the source material somewhat...

The wealthy ate white bread, only the peasants are brown bread.

Well, in the Middle Ages, there was no large middle class to speak of. Saying only the peasants ate brown bread is rather like saying only the majority of people ate brown bread.

Fish was the most common meat followed by chicken, pork and beef. Meat was usually boiled (presumably to kill bacteria and parasites - not that they knew that at the time) then fried, roasted, baked.

In England and France, sure. But look at coastlines on those countries! What meats are available will vary from region to region. No refigeration means little transport of perishable meats. Germans and Swiss would have notably less access to fish, for example.

And cooking methods will probably also have varied widely from region to region. My wife is translating a cookbook by Bartolomeo Scappi, private cook for Pope Prius V, dated 1570 (very late middle ages). And while there's seven different words for boiling, that doesn't seem to be the first step in cooking meat most of the time.

Sugar was added to nearly everything.

Sugar was new to Europe at the time, and it was a sign of wealth to use it. So Scappi puts it on everything, almost literally. Vegetables, meats, he doesn't seem to care. It may be that a majority of Scappi's recipes say "it would be good to sprinkle this with sugar and lemon juice". But you can expect that the common folk would not have used it nearly so much, because it was still rather expensive.

 

[ssampier]

I was watching a special about the importance of salt throughout the ages, major traderoutes were based around salt, and possibly the French Revolution had origins in the salt-tax.

I am quite suprised saffron was commonly used. I think the modern day saffron is one of the most expensive spices.

Trenchers were more common among the noble and wealthy, the symbolism behind having enough money to simply toss away the bread (Even though it was as hard as a rock). The poor did not enjoy such meals however the staff and even animals of the household did enjoy the flavored bread afterwards.

strange the poor did not eat it. It sounds like a fairly easy dish to make. Thanks for the info!

 

[Wombat]

I love medieval cookery. I own five or six cookbooks, pluse several recipes scribbled by friends, etc. I keep the poudre forte and the poudre dulce handy, as well as galingale, cubebs, grains of paradise, etc. Basically, I have a very adventursome palate, having been introduced to Russian, Chinese, Ethiopian, and Hungarian food at an early age. Now, I just go for the gold.

Refined sugar, nah, no such thing, but honey, beets, reduced-beets, raisins, apples and the like provide a fair amount of sweet. Cinnamon can spice up anything. And, yes, in general spices were a way to show off.

No chocolate, no coffee, but hypocras is lovely of a cold winter's evening.

 

[caudor]

Wow, my perception of medieval cookery was way off. I thought, since folks ate less often, that a pig with an apple in his mouth was roasted over a fire pit and then eaten for days.

Did medieval folk eat three square meals per day? And how about milk? They did they have a way to keep it cold.

Thanks, good thread