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

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Nut trees grew all over Europe. Walnuts provided cooking oil for many

parts of France, while hazelnuts, ﬁ lberts, and, above all, chestnuts were

roasted and boiled or even ground into ﬂ our in times of famine. The Medi-

terranean region provided almonds, pistachios, and pine nuts. Almonds

were used extensively in aristocratic recipes. They were not eaten raw or

roasted, as we eat them; they were pressed for almond milk or almond oil

or ground into marzipan, one of the ﬁ rst candies.

Last but not least, medieval Mediterranean Europe grew olives. Italy and

Spain were the chief olive-growing regions. Where olives were plentiful,

they were preserved in salt brine or pressed for cooking oil. Olive oil ex-

ported to Northern Europe was very expensive and could only be used for

religious rituals or medicine.

Raw Materials: Animals

The most important medieval animal was the pig. Short-legged pigs were

kept in sties, while long-legged pigs ranged like sheep and were tended by

swineherds. Pigs are omnivorous and could forage among forest acorns or

street garbage. They were easy to tend, although probably disease carriers

and shunned by Jews and Muslims. Medieval people made ham, bacon, sau-

sage, and lard. They ate the feet, ears, head, tail stomach, tongue, and liver.

The intestines and bladder became sausage casings. Pork fat was the single

most common cooking fat; it was more plentiful than nut oils and butter.

The next most important farm animal was the sheep. Sheep provided

both cheese and meat. They were not as easy to keep as pigs because they

had to move between summer and winter pastures, but they made good in-

vestments for monasteries, estates, or butchers. Sheep were not cheap, as

meat, because of their other uses. One ewe could produce enough milk for

about a half pound of cheese per week, not to mention the wool. So while

spring lambs and worn-out older sheep were sometimes eaten, mutton in

general was too expensive for the common man.

Cattle, domesticated from the wild ox, had been raised all over Europe

from early times, but peasants raised far fewer cows than pigs. Cattle pro-

vided dairy products, and then all parts of the animal could be eaten: meat,

fat, tongue, brain, heart, liver, and even the udder. Beef was not popular

with the aristocracy because it was considered coarse and common.

Most milk, from both sheep and cows, was quickly turned into cheese

and butter to keep it from spoiling. Cheese making became a skilled art

during the Middle Ages, mostly developed in French monasteries. The ﬁ rst

Roquefort cheese was made of sheep’s milk and served to the Emperor

Charlemagne at an abbey. It was veined with mold, but he liked it, and

he required the abbey to send two crates of it to his palace every year. He

also requisitioned two crates of a similar cheese from an abbey at Brie.

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Large cheeses, often made in large round wheels and sold in cut sections,

developed during the 12th century in France and Italy. They were com-

munity projects because they required about 25 gallons of milk at a time.

These 12th-century large cheeses included Parmesan, Gruyere, Beaufort,

and Emmenthal.

Butter was not known in the Mediterranean regions of medieval Europe,

but it was widely eaten in the regions settled by the Norse: Scandinavia, En-

gland, and northern Germany and France. Butter was the main cooking fat

for these regions, which became a problem during Lent and on other fast

days, when animal products could not be eaten. In the later Middle Ages,

some Popes gave personal dispensations to permit eating butter on fast

days; sometimes these dispensations were sold. In 1495, the Pope granted a

dispensation for butter to all of Germany, Hungary, Bohemia, and France.

Pigs, sheep, and cattle were large animals that required large-scale slaugh-

ter, so butchers handled all the meat for towns and cities. They often had

to raise their own animals in places where country folk were reluctant to

sell to towns. They grew very rich, forming corporations and controlling

all slaughter and meat sale. Butchers’ shops were a cause of pollution and

infection, since they created large amounts of offal and attracted ﬂ ies, rats,

and pigs. Most medieval town plans restricted butchers to outside the town

walls, but slaughterhouses came within the walls as towns grew. Meat sales

were restricted to daylight hours to prevent fraud.

Not only the best cuts of meat, but nearly everything else, could be

sold and eaten. Animal organs such as the liver, kidneys, heart, and lungs

were delicacies used as stufﬁ ng and in pies. Stomachs were used to roast or

boil mixtures of meat, eggs, nuts, and spices. Other entrails were termed

garbage in medieval English and were prized as ingredients for meat pies.

The medieval hog pictured here has long

ears, a long snout, and the razorback line

of stiff hair that we associate with wild

boars. The butcher’s work was messy; the

man in the picture may be wearing

leather chaps over his legs to protect his

clothing or skin. (Paul Lacroix, Moeurs,

Usage et Costumes au Moyen Age et a

l’Epoque de la Renaissance , 1878)

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Blood made sauces, bone marrow made puddings, and feet were boiled for

jellies. Animal fat was used for cooking and other purposes such as grease

and lamp fuel.

Farms and towns also raised poultry. The most popular bird was the

goose, eaten roasted. Even in medieval times, geese were force-fed to make

their livers grow too large. These fatty livers are the basis of pâté de foie

gras (“pudding of fat liver”). Medieval farms and towns also raised chick-

ens and ducks, as well as small birds we hardly think about in modern

times: peacocks, pigeons, and doves. Turkey was an unheard-of luxury in

the late Middle Ages; the ﬁ rst roast turkey was served to Philippe of Bur-

gundy in 1385. The king of birds, for aristocratic palates, was the pea-

cock. Its appearance was exotic, although its meat did not really taste good.

Hunters brought home wild birds: pheasant, partridge, quail, heron, crane,

and swan.

Chickens, geese, and ducks produced eggs, which were even more im-

portant than meat. Eggs were an important part of the diet, except on fast

days. Eggs were forbidden during Lent, the 40 days before Easter. For

these 40 days, eggs had to be collected but not consumed. They could be

hatched, or they could be boiled for better keeping and then eaten at Easter

when Lent ended. The custom of decorating eggs for Easter comes from

the Lenten fast.

Three wild animals were commonly eaten during the period: boar, deer,

and hare. Boars were hard to hunt and much prized as food for the aristoc-

racy; a boar’s head was roasted at Christmas. Deer came in three kinds in

Europe: roe, fallow, and red. The stag, also called a hart, was most prized,

and only skilled hunters could bring them down. Deer could be kept wild

on enclosed tracts of forest so they could be more easily hunted for feasts.

Venison was usually roasted or chopped to make venison pastries. The hare

is native to Europe; it is larger than a rabbit, and its ﬂ esh is darker and

tougher. Rabbits are native to Morocco and were brought into Europe dur-

ing the Middle Ages, so they were much less common. Both rabbits and

hares were roasted, stewed, or put into pies.

Last and far from least, there were ﬁ sh. No animal products could be

eaten on fast days, including the 40 days of Lent, but ﬁ sh were not consid-

ered animals and could be freely eaten. Estates and monasteries included

ﬁ shponds, so most freshwater ﬁ sh was farm raised. Sea ﬁ shing provided cod

and herring; these were only seen in salted form in most of Europe. Eels

were typically smoked for a few hours above the cooking ﬁ re and then later

boiled to soften them. Smoked eel was a common food year-round, but

especially on fast days and during Lent. Eel was a common daily food for

monks; available in streams all over Europe and easily caught, eels and lam-

preys were perhaps the best-known ﬁ sh of the poor man.

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Preservation

Meat and ﬁ sh were preserved with salt, by drying, and by smoking. Salt

preservation was either dry (done by packing salt closely on all surfaces of

the meat) or in brine (a water and salt mixture). Some salt and brine op-

erations became large industries, particularly for ﬁ sh. People living inland

needed preserved ﬁ sh for fast days, especially during Lent. Herring and cod

became a huge industry for ﬁ shermen around the North Atlantic and the

Baltic Sea, and salt preservation became an even larger operation of factory

production and shipping.

Fish could also be air-dried. In Scandinavia, the sea breeze was cold and

dry, and gutted ﬁ sh dried quickly on a rack. Both meat and ﬁ sh could be

preserved by smoking. This was the commonest method in peasant homes,

where meat or ﬁ sh could be soaked in brine and then hung in the smoky

rafters to keep for a few months.

Cooking with salted meat or ﬁ sh required multiple soaks to remove most

of the saltiness and then long cooking. Recipes for salted ﬁ sh must offset

the saltiness with a bland ﬂ avor. Spices, fruit, or cream sauces helped mask

the intense salt taste. Most people did not really enjoy eating preserved

meat and ﬁ sh, but it was the only way to maintain their diets through long

winters or fasting times.

Cooking Methods

Cooking depends on what kinds of fuel and utensils are available. For

most of Europe during most of this time, wood ﬁ res and iron or copper

pots were the only cooking materials available. Northern European cooks

used a nearly continual ﬁ re under a cauldron and kept the contents from

one day to the next, adding what came to hand. As the southern forests

of Italy were depleted by the metalworking industry, Mediterranean cooks

had to use enclosed charcoal stoves and learned to make quick stovetop

meals.

The most common foods were boiled: porridge, stew, and soup. A pot-

tery or metal pot with a lid could be placed in hot ashes to bake, and some

villages had ovens. Baked goods were primarily bread and, secondarily, pas-

tries consisting of a crust ﬁ lled with meat. Last, and most rarely, meat could

be roasted over a ﬁ re; this was generally restricted to castle kitchens. Fry-

ing was unknown in most regions, since it required large amounts of costly

cooking oil or fat.

Porridge meant any grain or nut that could be coarsely ground and

boiled: wheat, rye, barley, millet, buckwheat, chestnuts, or dried peas. As

the nursery rhyme about “pease porridge hot, pease porridge cold” sug-

gests, porridge did not come to the peasant’s table hot, sweetened, or with

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milk, like modern oatmeal. It might be one or two days old or worse, ﬂ a-

vored with the leftover stew that hadn’t been fully cleaned from the caul-

dron or mixed with other foods. It was the peasant’s daily food for both

meals.

Brewet was the medieval name for a stew-like food—meat cooked in a

cream sauce. The poorest peasants never saw brewet, but since a brewet pot

could stretch a small amount of meat to feed many, it was a common food

for town families. Real brewet did not include vegetables, as modern stew

does, but it seems likely peasants would put anything at hand into their

common stews, including beets, turnips, onions, and even ﬁ eld nettles.

Dumplings (boiled lumps of dough) were easy to add. Soup was mostly liq-

uid and was served with bread, called sops, to soak it up. Those who could

afford better foods also made sweetened boiled puddings.

The medieval oven was heated by lighting a ﬁ re inside the main chamber.

Once the oven walls were hot, the coals and ashes were raked out, and pies

or lumps of bread were placed into the oven. The basic oven utensil was a

wooden tool with a long handle and a ﬂ at surface for lifting and sliding the

food in the oven. Although castles and manors had their own baking ovens,

huts and houses in villages and towns did not have ovens large enough to

bake bread, if they had ovens at all. In the early Middle Ages, before 1200,

the village baker’s oven had to be freestanding and built outside of town,

often near a river in case of ﬁ re.

Cooking: Staple Foods of Peasant and Town

Most of our medieval sources tell what rich people ate. These are de-

scribed in stories of lavish feasts and are preserved in recipe books writ-

ten by their professional cooks. We know much less about what the poor

ate. One of the few primary sources, the poem “Piers Plowman,” says that

when peasants are starving before harvest, they have only green (new and

uncured) cheeses, curds, oat cakes, bread made of beans and bran, leeks,

peas, apples, and cherries. When the harvest comes in, says the poet, they

feast on wheat bread, brown ale, ﬁ sh, and fresh meat. It also mentions por-

ridge made of “milk and meal.” Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, written around

1400, describes the diet of a poor widow: milk, brown bread, bacon, and a

few eggs. In addition to the foods common to all of medieval Europe, the

poor gathered wild things scorned by the rich: nettles, sorrel, lupin seeds,

and other edible weeds, ﬁ eld mushrooms, and wild fruit.

Through most of the period, the poor ate few animal products. They

could snare hares on common land, and some kept pigs. They might trap

eels, and all but the very poorest could afford the cheapest salted ﬁ sh. Oth-

erwise, they lived on rye, barley, and beans. This changed during the 14th

century because, after several outbreaks of plague, there were more animals

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per surviving person. Europeans began to eat the animal-rich diet we rec-

ognize today, ﬁ lled with egg, cheese, milk, and meat dishes.

Villages and towns offered bakeries, where both professional bakers and

local women could bake their bread. The baker took a piece of dough as

a fee and added it to his own batches. Dough was made from the ﬂ our at

hand, usually a mix of wheat and rye. It was not leavened with brewer’s

yeast until the Renaissance; medieval bread was sourdough, leavened with

fermented dough from the previous batch. The loaves were round, simply

lumps baked on a ﬂ at shelf. They were large, heavy, and often hard; salt was

expensive, so bread was not commonly salted.

Professional bakers in cities turned out more sophisticated bread prod-

ucts than individual or country bakers. Bread, like other foods, could be

colored (yellow with saffron, green with parsley, or red with sandalwood).

Loaves could be shaped into taller, ﬂ atter, braided, or twisted shapes. They

could be rolled in spices or salt. Pretzels were a medieval invention; legend

says they were invented in a monastic bakery and are supposed to represent

praying hands. As bakeries prospered and towns grew, larger towns began

to have cookshops. Here people could buy cooked food: ﬁ rst only cooked

meat, and then a larger array of dishes.

During most of the Middle Ages, imported spices were out of reach of

the common man’s budget. Two pounds of nutmeg were worth the same

as a cow; a pound of mace cost the same as three sheep. Common season-

ings were only what could be found locally, such as onions, garlic, and gar-

den herbs like parsley, mustard, and thyme. Mustard was the poor man’s

favorite spice. Salt was generally available, but the poorest could not afford

salt, either. Toward the end of the Middle Ages, the cheapest imported

spices became available for those of middle income. Pepper was most com-

mon, to supplement salt. Cinnamon, ginger, saffron, and cloves were at the

next rung of affordability. They could be purchased by well-to-do town

dwellers and were used sparingly for special dishes. Meat pies were com-

monly spiced, particularly pork pie.

Fruit juice and honey were the only sweeteners for anyone under the

rank of prince. Even local honey was too expensive, since it was a cash crop

for any peasants who might keep or ﬁ nd bees. The average medieval towns-

man or peasant did not eat sweetened food even once a year.

Recipes: Cooking for the Aristocracy

Large aristocratic houses belonging to dukes, princes, and bishops em-

ployed several cooks who had been trained in cities or in other aristocratic

kitchens. In large cities, these professional cooks belonged to a guild that

required apprenticeship for two years and then a year as a journeyman for

another master cook. When they were employed in a wealthy household,

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they had as many as 25 helpers, such as saucerers, larders, roasters, pottagers,

bakers, spicers, and fruiterers, not to mention spit turners and scullions.

Some of these professional cooks wrote recipe collections; their reading

audience was narrow, since it consisted only of other professional cooks in

similar houses. In order to use these cookbooks, a cook must be literate and

have access to exotic ingredients. Recipes did not explain how much of an

ingredient to use because they were only notes, from one cook to another.

Training and skill were assumed. A list of spices could mean they were used

in pinches or in cups, and the results probably varied greatly from one cook

to another. Spices were fresher or staler, depending on how long they had

been shipped and stored, and every cook had to judge how piquant his

spice supply remained. Without clocks, cooking times might be estimated

by how long it took to say well-known prayers, such as 10 Pater Nosters, or

how long it took to walk a mile.

A popular image of a castle’s kitchen in which the main activity is turn-

ing venison on a spit—or a castle’s feast tables, mostly loaded with roasted

meat—is completely wrong. Nothing could be more different from this

image than the actual cuisine of ﬁ ne castles. Medieval cookery was all about

difﬁ cult and impressive techniques, exotic ingredients, artiﬁ cial coloring,

and breathtaking showpieces to carry into the hall. Every prince or bishop

wanted to impress and astonish his guest, and cooks carried their art to

heights of conspicuous consumption and artiﬁ ciality.

Castle cooks had access to the most expensive, rare foods. They had rice,

almond milk, sugar, purest wheat, raisins, dates, exotic meats, and, most

of all, spices. Every dish was centered around meat (or ﬁ sh, during Lent).

All exotic ingredients were put to the service of seasoning and presenting

the meat in as many ways as possible. The meat itself was cooked in com-

plicated ways, although sometimes it was merely roasted or boiled. Most

recipes, though, stipulated that the meat be pre-boiled before roasting, or

skinned, chopped, boiled, and restuffed into its skin, only to be roasted

again. Sometimes, the same piece of meat or ﬁ sh would be cooked in dif-

ferent ways: the head fried, the body roasted, and the tail boiled.

Cooks loved to make one food look like another. Chopped meat could

be pressed into a mold, such as a turk’s head, a popular turban-like shape.

Foods were colored artiﬁ cially so diners might not recognize what they

were eating. Raisins or prunes made something black; dark green leaves

provided green; grape juice or red herbs made red color. Lichen or black-

berries made food blue.

Aristocratic diners dipped their roasted meat into spiced sauces and

found their boiled meat ﬂ oating in highly spiced brewets. In large towns,

there were professional sauce makers, and, of course, castles had their own

saucerers. Sauces were often vinegar based, with breadcrumbs added, or

bread was soaked in vinegar and then squeezed out. Black pepper sauce

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was a simple and popular sauce made from this base, with large amounts of

added black pepper. Cameline sauce used large amounts of ginger, cinna-

mon, and garlic and perhaps other spices such as mace, pepper, and carda-

mom. There were also yellow sauces based on ginger and saffron and green

sauces of green herbs with ginger, cloves, and cardamom. Pieces of meat

came to a medieval table ﬂ oating in green, yellow, or black sauce that tasted

like cinnamon, ginger, or pepper. Almost nothing on an aristocratic table

tasted like the original meat.

There were other dishes to accompany the meat. Frumenty was a thick

boiled pudding made of wheat ﬂ our and almond milk. It sometimes in-

cluded egg yolks or was seasoned with saffron, sugar, or salt, or it could be

made with ﬁ nely ground chicken or rice. It was a common accompaniment

for venison. Rissoles, another side dish, were made of chopped meat, ﬁ sh, or

even fruit mixed with spices and ﬂ our and rolled into balls and fried. They

were served piled onto a platter, with a spicy sauce poured over them.

A staple of the castle kitchen was the pie, usually made with chopped

pork. One medieval recipe directs the cook to mix the pork with egg yolks;

sauté pine nuts and currants with ginger, cinnamon, saffron, sugar, and salt;

and then put all the ingredients into the piecrust. The top crust was deco-

rated with nuts, currants, and egg yolks. Similar meat pies would have been

served in castles all over Europe.

During the 40 days of Lent, when no meat could be served, wealthy

diners grew tired of salted ﬁ sh. Cooks varied the menu with imitation meat

dishes. Fish or ﬁ sh eggs were chopped and pressed into molds like meat or

funneled into blown egg yolks. Because meats like pork and venison were

so heavily associated with spices like cinnamon and ginger, cooks could

serve ﬁ sh rissoles with cinnamon sauce, and the diners would exclaim they

tasted just like meat rissoles. Ground ﬁ sh, baked in a mold, went into

cameline sauce to fool the diners into believing, for a moment, that it was

venison.

While there were some fruit dishes, such as fruit puddings, tarts, and frit-

ters, a medieval diner would never expect apple pie for dessert. One reason

for the heavy spicing of each meal was that it was considered medically nec-

essary, and so a proper meal closed with even more spices. Candied ginger

or cloves, and whole nutmegs, also boiled in sugar syrup to candy them,

were the most common desserts. Exotic fruits, such as oranges, ﬁ gs, dates,

and pomegranates, also could be candied and spiced. A properly healthy

meal must close with hot, spicy sweets.

Regional Differences

At the beginning of the Middle Ages, there were enormous differences

between regional cuisines. The olives and vegetables of the Mediterranean,

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the spices of Muslim Spain, and the heavy meats and butter of Northern

Europe bore no relationship to each other. As wealth and trade increased,

regional foods spread, either as transplanted farm products or as goods

transported to market. Regional recipes traveled into other regions, at least

among the upper classes. British cookbooks of the 14th century explain

how to make ravioli, lasagna, and classic Arab dishes. Spices traveled widely

and inﬂ uenced the regions to share tastes.

Medieval Spain was dominated by the Arab culture of Andalusia. Mus-

lim food followed rules of halal—the rules set down by Mohammed about

what foods could be eaten. Pork, blood, improperly slaughtered animals,

and alcoholic drinks were not halal. Beyond these rules, the dietary likes

and dislikes of the Prophet became a secondary rule, since Muslims wished

to imitate him as closely as possible. He was a desert Arab who had eaten

a restricted diet. His favorite food was a meat stew thickened with bread-

crumbs, which became the center of many Islamic recipes that added new

ingredients to the original concept. Mohammed also loved sweets, when

they were available, so Islamic cooking did not scorn to use honey, dates,

and sugar. The Christian ideal of self-denial was not a Muslim ideal. Me-

dieval Muslims were advanced in the development of sweets; they worked

more with reﬁ ning sugar, and they invented caramel, nougat, marzipan,

sweetened fruit juice, cake, and the deep-fried sweet dough that became

Italian cannoli and carnival funnel cakes.

Muslims also used the art of pickling and pickled not only cucumbers but

also turnips, beans, and even locusts. Pickles, yogurt, and spicy sauces were

common condiments. Fish was very popular in Andalusia, although it was

harder to obtain in Baghdad, the center of Islamic culture.

Christian culture was concentrated in the north of Spain, along the Pyr-

enees mountains, and it spread south as the Arabs were gradually defeated.

Christian Spain’s cooking was inﬂ uenced by Arab traditions and the sea.

Recipes were heavier on ﬁ sh and seafood than in other parts of Europe.

Like other Mediterranean regions, Andalusian and Catalonian cooking also

used more vegetables than did Northern European.

Medieval Italy did not yet have the tomatoes we now associate with Ital-

ian food, although even the poor ate more vegetables, more bread, and less

porridge than in Northern Europe. But pasta, the signature food of Italy,

has its roots in the Middle Ages. Some claim that Marco Polo brought

pasta back from China, while others say it was a native invention of Italy.

Early pasta was simply dried unleavened dough, brought back to eating

texture with boiling water, and sometimes baked or fried afterward. Pasta

could be small hand-rolled balls of dough or rolled-out ﬂ at shapes. By the

12th century, Italian manufacturers in Sicily, Sardinia, Pisa, and Genoa were

drying pasta for later use and selling it dry.

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In the 13th century, written references speak of lasagna and vermicelli

(little worms). In the next century, we read of meat-stuffed pasta, even

then called ravioli, which were deep-fried or boiled in broth. Even sim-

pler, “tortelli in the Assisi manner” were just chopped meat rolled in ﬂ our,

which created a thin noodle-like cover when boiled. Cheese ravioli devel-

oped for fast days when meat was prohibited. An illustration from around

1400 shows women making pasta at home; they have rolled and cut the

dough and are drying it in tiny strips on a wooden rack, the way modern

home kitchens would make pasta.

France’s cuisine divided into north and south, and the key dividing line

was the use of oil, rather than butter, in cooking. Northern France was a

dairy-producing butter economy, while Southern France was dominated by

the Mediterranean and centered around olive oil. Southern France’s reci-

pes also used oranges and pomegranates. The signature dish of Northern

France was the brewet, or brouet, made with broth, pieces of meat or ﬁ sh,

and spices. French aristocrats seemed to eat raw fruit, according to house-

hold records, but there were few recipes for cooked fruit. German and Pol-

ish food was similar to other Northern European food but focused more on

roasts and pies and less on sauces.

English cuisine was somewhat isolated and distinctive. It used local ﬂ ow-

ers and ﬂ avors, and it used wheat ﬂ our as a thickener for sauces, while French

cuisine did not. Because spices were even more expensive in England than

in France, English recipes used fewer of them and leaned more on the most

common: pepper, cinnamon, and ginger. The English had many recipes for

cooked fruit and also favored meat pastries. Recipes for aristocratic tables

did more with changing the food’s appearance by grinding, blending, shap-

ing, and coloring it. Food could be brightly and artiﬁ cially colored red, blue,

yellow, or green. Egg glazes made food shiny.

See also: Beverages, Fasts, Feasts, Gardens, Kitchen Utensils, Medicine,

Spices and Sugar.