Lesson 2: Ingredients and techniques
Medieval cookery was not quite as basic as you might think from the movies. Yes, there were big roasts, but there was also a complex variety of gourmet dishes.
This lesson aims to give you a better appreciation of just how varied Medieval food could be.
Cookery as just as much an art form in the Middle Ages as it is today, with specialist chefs in high demand. Open fires were the main cooking zone, but ovens were used, and special stovetops designed for making sauces. Cooks baked, roasted, fried and broiled – they did not just spit roast. Vegetables were often dressed (e.g. with an oil based dressing). Most people would have enjoyed soups and stews and bread more than any other single dish. And the flavours ranged from bland to highly seasoned – a lot depended on the cook, and on the family. The very wealthy might use spices and fruit imported from abroad, the very poor used mainly what they could grow or gather for themselves. All of which just reinforces the underlying fact that medieval food was very varied.
Spices
Not all spicing depended on expensive imports: mustard and savoury for instance, were local herbs which made foods more interesting, both in colour and flavour. The cheapest of the imported spices were probably cassia, ginger and pepper. Saffron was popular, but expensive, and safflower could be used instead.
Some spices: Sugar, pepper, cassia, cardamom, nutmeg, cloves, mace, zedoary, galingale, grains of paradise, cinnamon, ginger, saffron, cubebs, grains of paradise and spikenard.
Spice mixtures were popular, though what was in them varied from place to place and even from household to household. For mild spicing, a cook might use a mixture called powder douce (mild /sweet powder) or a householder might pick up a mix often referred to as powder merchant from their local spicer.
Colouring food:
- Reddish-brown – alkanet
- Yellow – saffron
- Yellow/brown – saunders
- Blue – lapis lazuli (for very wealthy only)
- Metallic – silver or gold leaf, finely beaten
- Blue – orchil lichen (alkaline food)
- Red – orchil lichen (acidic food)
- Green – parsley
- Yellow – egg yolk
- To darken a dish – burnt toast, blood
For more on spices, see The Sirene Website.
