After the Barbarians overran the Roman Empire, the well-organized Roman kitchen and the elaborate Roman cuisine all but left. Life in most of Europe was degraded to mere staying alive. People lived gathered in and about the noble manor or the monastery and ate what the nobles or the monks prepared. Quantity cooking, far from dying out, was more meaningful than ever.
The Food was cooked outdoors, or over fires built in the middle of a great hall with a hole in the roof. Many a manor hall was dining room, living room, and bedroom for all the people. The food was boiled in cauldron or roasted on hand-turned spits. It was served on slabs of hard-bread, called trenchers, and eaten with the fingers. Kitchen workers were serfs, the medieval equivalent of slaves, so the labor supply was unlimited.
Food supplies were meager - whatever could be grown in the fields with ancient plows, raised in the barnyard, or caught in the streams and forests. All in all, the early Middle Ages did not offer the cook much chance for notoriety and wealth.
After several hundred years times began to improve. Trade revived, new methods of farming were perfected and kings, and nobles and monasteries grew richer. The later Middle Ages were a time of magnificence and grandeur, and the great halls of the manor houses and castles were scenes of lavish feasting. In fact, eating and drinking were the chief forms of entertainment. Often there would be music and dancing between courses. It was the day of the juggler, the jester and the wandering minstrel.
Kitchens by this time were segregated rooms or separate buildings. They had fireplaces with chimneys, ovens for baking, high vaulted ceilings for carrying away the smoke. But the spit and the cauldron at the open fire were still the means of food production and the knife and the mortar and pestle were the primary processing tools.
The cook now had more and better raw materials to work with. Spices from the Far East were now available, along with raisins, currants, almonds and sugar from Near East. The cook still struggled, however, with problems of taste and texture. The salt taste of winter meats was reduced by soaking and boiling, by stewing meat with tasteless starchy foods or with honey or wine, or by hiding the taste with spices and sauces. Tough meats-and most was tough-were minced or pounded. Fresh meats, poultry and game were spit-roasted and brought whole to the serving table. There they were carved into small pieces with two knives and tasted for poison before being served to the king or noble. Forks were not invented yet.
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