Johnston R.A. All Things Medieval: An Encyclopedia of the Medieval World

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Freedman, Paul. Food: The History of Taste. Berkeley: University of California Press,

2007.

Gies, Frances, and Joseph Gies. Daily Life in Medieval Times. New York: Black

Dog and Leventhal, 1990.

Gies, Joseph, and Frances Gies. Life in a Medieval Castle. New York: Harper and

Row, 1974.

Henisch, Bridget Ann. Fast and Feast: Food in Medieval Society. University Park:

Pennsylvania State University, 1976.

Scully, Terence. The Art of Cookery in the Middle Ages. Woodbridge, UK: Boydell

Press, 1995.

Fish and Fishing

Fish, a staple food since ancient times, took on new importance in medieval

Europe. The Catholic Church declared fast days when ﬁ sh could be eaten,

but not meat. In the upper classes, where meat was the core of their daily

diet, a large quantity of ﬁ sh had to take its place on those days. Both ocean

and freshwater ﬁ sh ﬂ ooded into castle and monastery kitchens. Fish were

farmed, as well as caught wild with nets, traps, spears, and rods. The ﬁ sh

preservation industry, centered on cod and herring, became one of the big-

gest international businesses.

Medieval ﬁ sherman caught the same kinds of ﬁ sh we catch today, with

only a few differences. Medieval lists of ﬁ sh have many familiar names:

trout, pike, bream, perch, plaice, sole, sturgeon, and salmon. The best-selling

ﬁ sh in London was the herring, but second came ﬂ at ﬁ shes like plaice and

ﬂ ounder. They also classed shellﬁ sh as ﬁ sh in terms of permissible fast-day

diets. Lobster, crab, mussels, oysters, and scallops were all popular with

those who lived near the sea. Shellﬁ sh were not easily preserved, for the

most part, so only seacoast nations like Portugal could indulge in them.

One medieval freshwater ﬁ sh that is no longer much regarded is the eel.

Eel were plentiful and easily caught, and they were considered very good

food, both fresh and smoked. Some water mills had to pay rent to the land-

owner in eels.

At sea, medieval ﬁ shermen chased whales in small boats. Whales came

into the Bay of Gascony, in southern France, and lookouts could see the

spouts and alert boats to give chase with harpoons. Unlike the later Victorian-

era whalers who wanted only the oil, medieval ﬁ shers sold pieces of whale at

the ﬁ sh market. They did not have a sense that whales were mammals and

simply considered them very large ﬁ sh.

Two kinds of ﬁ sh required transport from a distance, which meant learn-

ing to preserve them for commercial shipping. The most important pre-

served ﬁ sh were cod and herring. Herring was the most popular preserved

ﬁ sh of the Middle Ages. Herring live on the seabed, but, in the month of

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March, they rise to the surface and swim in great shoals to their spawning

grounds near the coast. The season was short, but it was just in time to sup-

ply the meatless season of Lent. Although small, herring could be netted in

large numbers using drift nets.

Basque ﬁ shermen discovered the cod banks off Newfoundland around

1000. They were in the area pursuing whales and followed the cod to the

Saint Lawrence River mouth. They kept their cod banks a secret from the

rest of Europe until other sailors discovered them in the 16th century. Cod

were also plentiful around Norway, Greenland, and Iceland. They were

ﬁ shed with lines and greedily swallowed baited hooks. The best technique

that developed was to use a strong, long line that had many short lines with

hooks attached to it. A boat pulled the line through the ocean behind it and

then hauled in the cod.

Catching and Farming Fish

Although cod were caught with lines, nets were by far the most common

ﬁ shing method. The seine net was shaped like a bag, with weights along the

bottom and ﬂ oats along the top. Two boats cast it into the water, carried

its ends apart to open it, and then moved together to close it. If they were

working across a river, the current carried ﬁ sh into the net. The seine net

adapted for the ocean was a drift net or a trawl. A drift net had more ﬂ oats,

while a trawl had more weights. The drift net stayed near the surface and

picked up large schools of ﬁ sh such as herring. The trawl moved to the bot-

tom of the water and was pulled by two boats before being raised.

Traps could be used on both river and sea. A ﬁ sh trap in a stream or river

was made of wood and wicker, with a removable net at the point. The ﬁ sh,

ﬁ nding its way up- or downstream blocked, moved toward the center open-

ing and found itself in the net. A stream trap could also be smaller: a wicker

basket ﬁ xed in the current to catch ﬁ sh that came along. Some rivers had

so many ﬁ sh traps that it grew difﬁ cult for boats to pass. Monasteries fre-

quently had large ﬁ sh traps in nearby streams.

A sea-based ﬁ sh trap used the beach and the tide. Posts and wicker

built along the beach in a V shape allowed the tide to pass over and

through, but, as the tide went out, ﬁ sh left behind were trapped behind

the wicker fence. Seeking to remain in the water, the ﬁ sh swam along the

fence until they found themselves in the long net positioned at the point

of the V .

Spears were long wooden poles with barbed prongs and were mostly

used in inland streams. For eels, the prongs had ﬁ ner teeth, like a comb,

pointing up out of the water so the eel would be caught in the teeth and

unable to escape but not necessarily killed or damaged. Most eels were

caught in traps; spearing was a difﬁ cult way to ﬁ sh.

Fish and Fishing

242

This wall painting from the early 14th century shows some ﬁ sherman working to

pull in a net. Net ﬁ shing was the most common kind, practiced in deep rivers, ocean

bays, and coastlines. The men shown here could be in any of those settings, since

the water is depicted with choppy waves. (The red background with a repeating

pattern was a common wall painting style called diaper.) (The British Library/

StockphotoPro)

Fishing with a rod and line was called angling, and, by the 15th century,

it was a leisure sport for gentlemen, as well as a practical means of getting

food. The best rods were made from two pieces of wood, one ﬁ tted into

the other, so the end was thin and ﬂ exible while the handle was stronger.

Fishing line was made of hair from a horse ’s tail, and the line was stronger

depending on how many hairs had been twisted together. Lines were often

attached to a wooden reel so they could be wound in after being cast out

into the water. They had a hook, similar to a modern hook, and a weight.

As the art of ﬁ shing developed, lines of differing weight were available for

smaller or larger ﬁ sh. Fishing poles, too, were developed, and, by the close

of the Middle Ages, they could be made from several different kinds of

wood for strength and ﬂ exibility.

Those who could afford to have a private ﬁ shpond or lake could keep

their ﬁ sh easily caught and alive as long as possible. Manor houses and

monasteries often had artiﬁ cial ponds within their grounds. Some were very

large, as big as 50 yards by 20 yards. In spring, pond owners caught wild

ﬁ sh and moved them live into the pond, where they bred and lived until

needed. The fresh ﬁ sh eaten at feasts was usually farm raised, rather than

caught wild.

In later medieval years, two developments made possible the farming

of ﬁ sh on a scale larger than the monastery or estate ﬁ shpond. First, water

mills had been improved with a vertical wheel, and their technology had

Fish and Fishing

243

become very common. Many mill engineers knew how to build and main-

tain a good millpond with a dam and controlled ﬂ oodgates. Second, around

the middle of the 12th century, a ﬁ sh native to the Danube River migrated

into central and northern Europe as the rivers warmed at the end of the

Medieval Warm Period. The carp is related to both the minnow and the

goldﬁ sh, but the common European carp can grow up to ﬁ ve feet. It toler-

ates a variety of conditions, including low oxygen in the water, and it will

eat nearly anything. It can survive in a frozen pond, and it spawns several

times a year. It was an ideal ﬁ sh for farming.

Fish farms turned into multi-pond operations. Carp spawn in warm,

muddy ponds with plenty of water plants, so the farms kept such ponds

and placed adult ﬁ sh into them to breed. When the eggs had hatched into

fry, the adults were removed and returned to a fattening pond. The fry re-

mained in a warm, muddy growth pond for a few years, and then spent a

few more years in a pond with other growing ﬁ sh. It took ﬁ ve or six years to

raise a carp to the right size for eating. When it was time to harvest the ﬁ sh,

the pond could be drained so they were easy to remove. Some pond sys-

tems were constructed by damming a stream; others were raised and built

into descending steps. A large carp farm in the middle of the 14th century

could have several dozen ponds that separated the carp by age. The ﬁ sh

farmer always knew which ponds to harvest each year.

Carp was a very proﬁ table product. Monasteries bought carp in great

numbers, as did nobles. So many carp farms were built through France,

Germany, Poland, and Bohemia that some areas began to suffer mosquito-

borne illnesses from all the new, boggy, wet ponds that were not natural to

their environments. Carp farming boomed for about a century and then

began to decline.

Preserving Fish

Fishermen who wanted to sell their catch close to home sometimes kept

the ﬁ sh alive as long as possible by carrying them in boats with netted wells

in the water or wagons with water tanks. But for the ﬁ sh that had died in

the process of being caught, or for ﬁ sh caught farther away, preservation

was necessary.

The simplest way to preserve ﬁ sh was to dry it in the wind. The cold,

windy coasts of Norway and Iceland were perfect for quickly drying cod.

The cod were gutted and laid on wooden racks or laid out ﬂ at on stones.

In a few days, they were completely hard and dry, and they kept for a long

time without spoiling, perhaps years. Dried cod was called stockﬁ sh, and it

was the only export of Iceland. Although it was healthful and cheap, stock-

ﬁ sh was not easy to cook. Stock meant a block of wood, which is what a

stockﬁ sh was like. In order to make it tender enough to eat, the cook had

Fish and Fishing

244

to pound it with a hammer, soak it for at least a day in water, and then cook

it for a long time.

Fish could easily be smoked. Before the invention of the chimney, houses

normally had thick smoke above head level, slowly ﬁ nding its way to the

smoke hole. Hanging gutted ﬁ sh on the rafters lightly preserved it by dry-

ing and partially cooking it. Fish could also be soaked in saltwater ﬁ rst so

it was salted and smoked. Smoked ﬁ sh did not keep as long as dried ﬁ sh,

unless the ﬁ sh became as thoroughly dry as stockﬁ sh. Later, when ﬁ sh was

processed commercially, special smokehouses created higher temperatures

and thicker smoke; the ﬂ avor of the smoke was controlled by the type of

wood used in the ﬁ re.

Salting was the primary way of preserving ﬁ sh, and its methods became

more reﬁ ned throughout the Middle Ages. Obtaining enough salt was the

ﬁ rst problem, and getting adequate coverage of the ﬁ sh to kill bacteria was

the second. Salt could be evaporated or boiled from seawater or salt springs

or mined in salt caves. Most salt was evaporated from seawater, and the

best salt came from the Bay of Biscay. Its common name, bay salt, came to

mean any sea salt. Fishermen had to buy this salt as cheaply and plentifully

as possible.

Dry salting meant gutting and ﬂ aying the ﬁ sh so it was as ﬂ at as possi-

ble. Layers of ﬁ sh were spread thickly with salt, and more layers of ﬁ sh and

salt were pressed on top. It was difﬁ cult to ensure the salt reached every

bit of the ﬁ sh. The salt drew liquids out of the ﬁ sh, and the layers had to

be turned to create an even cure. It took about 15 days to create properly

cured salted ﬁ sh. Dry salting worked best with cod; they were sometimes

salted at sea to preserve them as freshly as possible. Dry salting was not as

effective with herring because their oily content prevented the salt from

soaking in properly. Dry-salted herring could still turn rancid.

Fish could also be preserved using a saltwater solution, or brine. Soaking

the ﬁ sh in heavily salted water ensured the salt soaked into all parts of the

ﬁ sh, and it was more effective with herring. The last step in preserving her-

ring was the development of salting and brining at once, in barrels, which

pickled the herring and kept them best of all. Barrel making was an estab-

lished art by the Middle Ages. Coopers could make strong, tight barrels

with a lid that could be fastened down and a hole drilled in one end—the

bunghole. Barrels were ideal for herring, which were so small that hundreds

could ﬁ t into a single barrel.

Pickling herring was mass-produced around the Baltic Sea and the North

Sea. When a herring catch arrived, teams of women gutted the herring rap-

idly and rolled them in salt. They laid the herring in layers on the bottom

of a barrel, with each closely packed layer at a right angle to the next. More

salt was sprinkled on each layer. When the barrel was full, they sealed it and

set it aside for 10 days. Opening the bunghole, they drained off the liquids

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245

from the salting, shrinking ﬁ sh. They opened the barrel’s lid and combined

the contents of another barrel to keep the contents packed full. Some brine

was added, the barrel was sealed, and it was ready for sale.

By the late 11th century, herring was shipped in huge quantities all over

Europe, ﬁ rst to areas within a day’s journey of the seaports. Great Yar-

mouth, in England, had a special Fish Fair every fall. It lasted seven weeks

and drew international trafﬁ c. As time went by, herring was available far-

ther inland. It was the most sought-after ﬁ sh because it was easily carried

in large barrels. It became the normal rations for an army, the Lenten food

for nearly everyone, and the daily fare at many monasteries. Herring was

even used as currency in some places and times. Since all of it came from

far-off places, its processing, shipping, and marketing came on an increas-

ingly large commercial scale.

Brine picking of herring was ﬁ rst done in southern Sweden, where rock

salt from German mines combined with plentiful herring in the Baltic Sea

to create a booming ﬁ sh market. They packed the herring in salted layers

in a cask, allowed the ﬁ sh to dry in the salt, and then repacked it with fresh

brine. The North Sea was another good source of herring, and English and

Dutch ports also developed the industry. Scarborough and Yarmouth, in

England, had ﬁ sh processors working with ﬁ shing boats coming in from

the North Sea.

The need to import large quantities of salt, to make sure barrels of her-

ring coming out of a port would uphold the port’s reputation for good

herring, and to control shipping all contributed to the development of an

international, regulated, organized commercial ﬁ shing market unlike what

Europe had seen before. During the 12th century, the cities of Hamburg,

Cologne, Danzig, and Rostok contracted with Lübeck to control salt min-

ing and herring packing in the Baltic Sea. The alliance became known as

the Hanseatic League, or, in its own time, simply the Hanse, which meant

“alliance.”

The Hanseatic League standardized their products. Pickled herring had

to use good salt from Portugal, and every barrel had to be properly cured

all the way to the bottom. They created a monopoly on pickled herring and

extended it to other commodities such as timber, grain, and Norwegian

stockﬁ sh. They combated piracy and enforced common regulations on any

businesses that wanted to work with them.

The league also developed the cog, a simple, boxy ship that maximized

its cargo potential. Its deck was designed so seawater that splashed on deck

would drain into the hold, where it would add weight and stability. Since

the cargo was entirely barreled, it could get wet without damage. Cogs

could carry 5 or 10 times what other ships of the time could carry, and they

made possible the huge volumes of herring and stockﬁ sh that supported

Europe’s monasteries, armies, and poor.

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246

The Hanse operated aggressively and created monopolies where pos-

sible. For example, they began trading in Bergen, Norway, where grain was

scarce and local merchants would not turn away ships ﬁ lled with grain.

Because the Hanse cogs could carry more cargo, they quickly dominated

the Bergen market in exporting stockﬁ sh. Fish processors sold directly to

the Hanse merchants, instead of trying to compete. Iceland’s stockﬁ sh all

came to Bergen, and the Hanse, which controlled this port, forbade trade

in other Norwegian ports or with Iceland directly.

In the 15th century, Dutch herring ﬁ shermen on the North Sea devel-

oped a larger drift net, and, around the same time, they began processing

herring right on the water, in a large cargo ship called a buss. Because the

busses could follow the ﬁ shing ﬂ eet, the Dutch could go farther in search

of herring shoals, and they began to compete with established herring ports

such as Skänia. They also began to use a new gutting method that made the

pickled herring keep even longer. But after 1400, herring catches dimin-

ished due to overﬁ shing and climate change. Arctic pack ice increased, and

ocean temperatures dropped. The international ﬁ shing industry’s boom

years were over.

See also: Climate, Fasts, Food, Salt, Ships and Boats.

Further Reading

Buller, Frederick. Fish and Fishermen: In English Medieval Church Wall-Paintings .

Ellesmere, UK: Medlar Press, 2009.

Fagan, Brian . Fish on Friday: Fasting, Feasting, and the Discovery of the New World.

New York: Basic Books, 2006.

Kurlansky, Mark. Cod: A Biography of the Fish that Changed the World. New York:

Penguin, 1998.

Milne, Gustav. The Port of Medieval London . Stroud, UK: Tempus Publishing,

2006.

Reeves, Compton. Pleasures and Pastimes in Medieval England . New York: Oxford

University Press, 1998.

Smyllie, Mike. Herring: A History of the Silver Darlings . London: Tempus, 2004.

Squatriti, Paolo. Water and Society in Early Medieval Italy, AD 400 –1000. Cam-

bridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002.

Szabo, Vicki Ellen. Monstrous Fishes and the Mead-Dark Sea: Whaling in the Medi-

eval North Atlantic . Boston: Brill Academic Publishers, 2008.

Flowers. See Gardens

Food

The food culture of the Middle Ages varied widely by region, century, and

social class. A few general statements are true for most places throughout

Food

247

the period. People ate a limited, unvarying diet. They had two meals a day,

at noon and around sunset. Breakfast was unknown, except for invalids and

babies. Food was scarce; most people did not get enough to eat. The poor-

est were hungry all the time, and there were sometimes regional famines.

In some unfortunate years, all of Europe was plunged into famine. To-

ward the end of the Middle Ages, food became more plentiful. The meat-

based food we know as a typical European diet did not become typical until

after 1400.

Emperor Charlemagne helped establish some food customs by regulat-

ing agriculture on his many farms. As the king ordered, so many lords

and barons imitated. Charlemagne required that chickpeas and broad beans

must be grown, in addition to grains. These legumes became widespread

in the diets of French and German peasants. He required that every manor

must keep at least 100 hens and 30 geese because this number of poul-

try could maintain the ﬂ ock’s size and still have eggs left over for eating.

He mandated beekeeping on every manor and required two-thirds of the

honey to go directly to his table. These measures must have stabilized and

enriched agriculture even outside his farms. On the other hand, he set high

ﬁ nes for any peasant who snared a hare on his property, and he outlawed

the killing of wild ducks, pheasants, doves, and other birds. With this prec-

edent, Europe’s poor lived on a mostly meatless diet for many centuries.

Raw Materials: Grains and Vegetables

Medieval Europe’s grain ﬁ elds were not sown with pure seed. Many

ﬁ elds grew wheat and rye together, and they were harvested and milled

together; the mixed ﬂ our was called maslin. Maslin with more wheat made

ﬁ ner bread and went to the tables of the wealthy. Barley, a staple grain from

Roman times, and rye, which grows in harsh conditions, were the most

likely grains for the poor. Some regions also grew millet, which keeps lon-

ger than wheat and could be stored in case of famine or siege. The worst

soil could grow buckwheat, an edible grass imported from China. During

the 12th century, medieval farms began to grow oats, too, but they fed

horses, rather than people. Rice was the latest and rarest entry; it could not

be grown north of Italy. It was imported from Muslim Spain and North

Africa and was only a luxury food for the rich, usually ground into ﬂ our and

used as dainty food for the sick.

Grain had to be ground at an ofﬁ cial mill, and the miller was the local

lord’s employee. Farmers who brought their grain to the mill could ex-

pect the miller to keep a portion as tax and payment. One way the poor

got around the fees of ofﬁ cial millers was to eat porridge, which could be

ground roughly at home from anything on hand: barley, millet, chestnuts,

buckwheat, or dried peas.

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248

The people in this picture are crushing grains, kneading dough in a trough, and

placing round loaves in an oven. The oven’s heat had to be stoked as hot as possible

in advance, so the baker must use a long stick to slide the dough into the hearth.

They are working in outbuildings; the manor house can be seen in the background.

The bakery buildings are falling into disrepair, but the highest priority was distance

from the main house, not the baker’s comfort. Near the bakery, there is a walled

garden and some fruit trees. Every estate had to provide as much of its own food as

possible. (Paul Lacroix, Moeurs, Usage et Costumes au Moyen Age et a l’Epoque de la

Renaissance , 1878)

Vegetables formed a central part of Mediterranean Europe’s diet, but it

is difﬁ cult to know how much they were eaten in Northern Europe. They

are rarely mentioned in medieval recipe books and are used only as ﬂ avor-

ing to meat. Physicians were suspicious of their wholesomeness and insisted

they must all be cooked, if eaten at all. However, vegetables may have been

a daily part of the diet, even so. Recipes were written by cooks for other

cooks, and something as simple as stewing cabbage did not need any in-

structions.

The chief vegetable type of medieval Europe was the root crop: onions,

radishes, leeks, turnips, beets, carrots, and parsnips. Carrots were not or-

ange; they were purple-red or greenish-yellow. Both red and yellow beets

were a very common food, both root and leaf.

Food

249

Cabbage was native to Europe. It did not grow in tight round heads,

like modern cabbage; it was loose-leaf, like kale. All over Europe, peasants

ate cabbage as an everyday food and often made it into sauerkraut. In Italy,

types of cabbage were cultivated into what we know as broccoli and cau-

liﬂ ower. Lettuce, too, was grown, but it was not eaten raw as it is today.

Physicians considered raw vegetables unhealthy, and lettuce was too cold

and wet to be recommended. Lettuce was cooked like spinach, another

leaf crop of medieval Europe. It was only eaten as salad in the later Middle

Ages, and only in Italy.

A few kinds of legumes entered Europe through the Mediterranean re-

gion. Broad green beans, also called fava beans, were a common crop; chick-

peas, too, were present in many gardens, including Charlemagne’s. Peas,

always dried for later boiling, were the other common kind of legume. All

these beans were the diet of poor peasants and monks. Although modern

dieticians would consider beans the ideal food for the Middle Ages—easy

to grow, easy to preserve, and nutritious— castle folk rejected the universal

pease porridge of their servants and farmers.

They also grew cucumbers, melons, asparagus, and eggplant, the last two

only in the Mediterranean countries. Many of today’s common vegetables

were not yet cultivated or had not yet been imported from the Americas:

iceberg lettuce, string beans, orange carrots, tomatoes, potatoes, and pep-

pers. None of these were known in medieval Europe.

Medieval fruits are familiar to us: apples, pears, peaches, plums, apricots,

cherries, strawberries, and grapes. The actual fruits, of course, were smaller

and not as sweet as today’s. Although the poor must have eaten wild and

windfall fruits in any way they could, including raw, ofﬁ cial Europe ate its

fruit cooked. Apples were always cooked and might be found in soups and

meat dishes, as well as in tarts. The most common type of pear was the Cail-

lou pear; it was hard and needed to be baked. Plums were dried into prunes

and then cooked; peaches and apricots were stewed. Grapes, strawberries,

and cherries had not yet been cultivated into our large, sweet eating variet-

ies. Finally, a major use of these fruits was in seasoning. Vinegar was spoiled

wine or cider, and it was a universally prized ﬂ avor, as was concentrated

sweet apple or grape juice.

Oranges had been imported to the Mediterranean from Palestine, and

the Romans grew them in North Africa and Sicily. They remained a Medi-

terranean fruit, not much known outside their growing region during the

Middle Ages. Figs, too, remained a Mediterranean specialty. Preserved,

sugared ﬁ gs were among the luxury desserts of medieval nobility. Pome-

granates, citrons, and lemons grew in the Mediterranean, while the Arab

culture of Spain cultivated dates. Some of these exotic fruits were exported

to Northern Europe as a luxury food.