Medieval cuisine

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Allegra

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That's an interesting link, Allegra. I know for a fact that my sister would be very interested in this, given that she does a lot of research for her writing. Thanks for posting it!:)
 
Ah, thank you both for that... this sort of thing holds quite an interest for me... Much obliged!:)
 
Ugh they ate larks, can't imagine eating those. And so, so much dried/smoked fish.
 
They ate just about everything that moved ... and some things that hadn't even been born yet.

Food was not always abundant, and meat was meat -- except during Lent, when they had several ingenious ways of getting around the fish-only rule.
 
The following is a list of foods that regularly appeared upon the table of King Henry VIII and other wealthy noble-folk:

"The English were famous for being big meat eaters ... with plenty of game, hoofed and feathered, heaved on to the groaning banqueting tables. The slaughter of birds for food was both prodigious and catholic in choice: larks, stork, gannets (and other gulls), herons, snipes, bustard, quail, patridge, capons, teal [1], cranes and pheasants ......One of the court's favourites was stewed sparrows. The King was said to be fond of galantines [2], game pies and haggis ..... Impressive quantites of salted and smoked cod, plus herrings, fresh salmon and eels were also consumed after the hot meat course. Most meats and fish, if not downright unpalatable, were heavily flavoured with spices to disguise their lack of freshness. Little roughage appeared .... fresh fruit was widely shunned [3] .... Green vegetables, as well as turnips, carrots and parsnips were also avoided [4] ..... but cucumbers, lettuces and the succulent herb purslane [5] were eaten .... as a first course. Butter was usually rancid and used mainly in cooking."

[1] - a small variety of duck.
[2] - boned and pressed white meat, served cold in aspic (savoury jelly).
[3] - as it was believed to cause diahrroea and fever.
[4] - they cause wind and melancholy.
[5] - a low, trailing plant, portulaca oleracea, having yellow flowers, used as a salad plant and pot-herb.


Source: "The Last Days of Henry VIII" by Robert Hutchinson
 
The Chinese probably still win though with their taste for tigers and snakes and monkey's brains from living monkeys. They eat anything that walks/flies/swims/crawls with it's back to the sun. That is the only rule so aside from man, everything else is fair game.
 
I often wonder what Henry VIII would think about our pre-packaged, freeze-dried, no sodium added, trans fat-free, diet, chemically infused foods. Could the stomach of a 14th century peasant stand up to the digestive assault of a modern Coke and Big Mac? How about a golden-caked, high in base elements Twinkie?
 
Yes, they tended to eat whatever was available at the time - remember no refridgeration as such, and meat was heavily salted to preserve it, especialy over winter when they needed it to last.
 
I think I would prefer the medieval food as a preference to chinese food. Tiger and snake, let alone Monkey's brains does not sound terribly appealing.
I don't see to many problems drinking wine, the water was not to appealing by all accounts. Besides drink enough wine and it the food will taste better!
 
Scotsman.com Living - Anyone for roast hedgehog tonight?

[FONT=&quot]Anyone for roast hedgehog tonight?[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]GARETH LLEWELLYN[/FONT]


If someone offered you a meal of roasted hedgehog followed by nettle pudding the chances are you would turn it down. But that is exactly what our forefathers used to sit down to thousands of years ago.

Such foods can be traced back more than 8,000 years, and are among the oldest British recipes, being first recorded in 6000BC.

A team of researchers scoured the annals of Britain's culinary history to find the definitive list of the oldest recorded recipes.
Records show nettle pudding to be the oldest, closely followed by smokey stew, meat pudding, barley bread and roast hedgehog.



So many of the recipes for food eaten in Medieval times might have been handed down by their ancestors. I think I will pass of the hedgehog though, I used to love watching them when I was a child! I ate many of the Chinese foods but drew the line at a dinner of 'dog' :eek:
 
Roasted hedgehog? I'm not sure I could eat that! I remember hearing ages ago that they used bake a hedgehog in clay to cook it and get the spines off, although I couldn't be certain if they were serious or not.

The barley bread and smoky fish stew sound pretty good, though.
 
Yes Talysia, when you break up the clay, the spines come away with it. You'd have to be very hungry in the first place, though.

(Hedgehogs and Rabbits were common food during the miners' strike of the 1930's as they were the only meat available. I remember my older uncles talking about it.)
 
My favourite is the roasted peacock.
They would cut the skin and feathers off, spit roast the peacock and then sew the skin and feathers back on so that it looked like a live peacock sitting in the middle of the table.
Heath and Safety would go balistic
 
This thread is interesting because we held a Roman Murder Mystery dinner party a few months ago and searched everywhere for some idea of authentic food. No potatoes, tomatoes, onions - I already knew that. The Romans did eat a lot of fresh fruit - interesting that by medieval times it was unfashionable.

Eventually, we just settled on nuts and dried fruit as a starter and a chicken casserole with cous cous as the main course. I would have liked to have done something more exciting.

I find it interesting that foods which we take for granted - Orange Carrots, for instance - are very recently introduced, while other vegetables such as Kale are only fed to animals. This is much more a case of tastes and fashions than availabilty.
 
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