Researching Medieval Recipes

Physicists sometimes refer to "The Arrow of Time" - the apparent directionality of how time flows. Apparently there are some sub-fields of physics where this is a big thing. To those of us outside of that academic world, this seems like a "Duh!" kind of thing, and one wouldn't think it is worth considering in the area of historic research.

It is.

When people look at medieval cookbooks, there seems to be a strong desire to ignore the inherent directionality. I think it's part of a built in human need to generalize - to make sense of something that does not fit in with the current world-view.

Ok, that's a bit too philosophical. Let's try some examples.

Let's say you've got this recipe that's been in your family for many generations. One day while serving it to some family or friends the thought hits you that all the ingredients in it were available in medieval Europe. "This might be medieval," you think, and decide to look into it. You then spend months digging through the cookbooks, trying to find recipes with the same ingredients, where similar methods were used, and where the end result sounds similar to the dish you know and love. If you're really really lucky you find an exact match. More likely though is that you find a few "kind-a, sort-a" recipes from widely varying times and places, and then you give up in frustration and tell people that researching medieval recipes is hard.

It's not, really. It only seemed hard because you ignored the directionality of time. You latched on to a piece of modern information and tried to push it some 500 years into the past. You assumed that because all of the ingredients were available in the middle ages, that there must be a cook somewhere back then that made this recipe. [This kind of reasoning is proven invalid by recipes like mayonnaise - all of its ingredients were present back to ancient times, but it wasn't invented until 1756.]

The easier way to research medieval recipes is to keep the information flowing from the past to the present. Pick up (or download) a medieval cookbook and treat it like you would any other cookbook. Read through it, skipping here and there, looking for something interesting, something that sounds tasty or different or that you have all the ingredients called for. If you can't read Middle French or German then use someone else's translation. If you can't read Middle English, borrow (or download) a dictionary and practice - it's mostly funny spelling and a handful of archaic words.

So you've picked out a recipe. Now gather the ingredients and follow the instructions. It may take a couple of tries (or three, or four) before you get the quantities balanced so the flavor and consistency are so you like it - most medieval recipes inconveniently leave out any measurements). You may even find some recipes that sound good but turn out just plain nasty (I've done this, but I've also found such recipes in modern cookbooks). Once you've found a good recipe though, then you've got a truly authentic medieval dish, and you've also got the original source it came from - documenting it becomes a trivial matter.

Of course every now and then, while browsing through a medieval cookbook, you're reading a recipe and the realization hits you, "That's grandma's recipe!" - and you find out that in medieval times they put raisins in it.

But it could have happened!

The second most annoying thing in researching medieval cooking - the first of course being the myth that medieval cooks used spice to cover the taste of spoiled meat - is what I usually refer to as a cheeseburger argument.  This is usually an attempt to justify a modern dish as being "possibly" medieval, and generally takes the following form:

"They had beef in the middle ages, right?  And they sometimes ground meat, right?  And they sometimes cooked meat on a grill and they had cheese and bread, right?  So they had all the things they needed to make a cheeseburger.  Therefore the odds are that someone somewhere made one in the 500 years between 1000 and 1500."

Um ... no.

Sure, it sounds reasonable, but aside from being research in the wrong direction (choosing something modern and looking for it in the past, instead of looking at what there was and trying to make sense of it) the argument contains a number of logical flaws.

One of the flaws is called "Post hoc ergo propter hoc" (literally "After this, therefore because of this").  To make a cheeseburger you need to have all the ingredients (true), so having the ingredients will inevitably lead to making a cheeseburger (false).  Thousands of people in the US have raw fish and lye in their houses, and the vast majority of them will never make lutefisk.

This could also be a form of an "appeal to probability" (I still can't find the fancy Latin term for this), where it is assumed that because something can happen, it eventually will happen.

Another flaw present is a "fallacy of composition" (again, no cool Latin ... I'll keep looking), which assumes that if something is true for the parts then it's true for the whole.

So, while medieval cooks had all the stuff they needed to make a cheeseburger, and while it was possible that someone would make one, the concept of a cheeseburger (or any kind of sandwich for that matter) simply isn't one a medieval cook had.  Eventually someone did come up with the idea of a sandwich (most historians think it was sometime in the 18th century) and I'm sure a cheeseburger appeared shortly thereafter, so I suppose that given all of human history it was inevitable, but it wasn't in the middle ages.

Sometimes those making a cheeseburger argument tack on a short addendum when challenged, something along the lines of "You don't think they made cheeseburgers?  Prove they didn't."  In terms of classical logic this is called "Argumentam ad ignorantiam" (argument from ignorance), where the only "proof" that a premise is true is that it hasn't been proven false.  If this is allowed than almost anything can be "proven" - Henry the Fifth was actually a female orangutan!  Don't think so?  Prove he wasn't.  See?

Still it's soooo tempting. There's a particularly appealing modern dish, and a recipe or two from the 14th century that has a couple ingredients in common, and maybe even a hint at a method that kind of sort of matches, or maybe just a name that's spelled in a similar way.  That's why we need to practice CONSTANT VIGILANCE!

I'm going to go have a cheeseburger now.

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Medieval Food Myths

Frequently when people I've met find out that I research medieval cooking, they mention something they've learned on the topic. Unfortunately it's frequently one of the following myths. Invariably I'll get thrown into "Teacher" mode and their eyes will glaze over, they start to drool, and finally their heads explode.

In order to prevent future social carnage, I now present these myths along with a brief debunking.


1. They used lots of spices to cover the taste of spoiled meat.

This is so incredibly wrong for so many reasons.

a. The chemicals in spoiled meat that smell and taste bad are so potent that no amount of spice is going to cover them up.

b. They did not slaughter livestock until it was needed, so raw meat didn't stay around long enough to spoil.

c. Considering that spices were more expensive than meat, why would they spend the equivalent of $10 of spices to cover the spoiled taste of a $2 chicken? It'd be much cheaper (and nicer) to just buy a fresh chicken.

d. Meatless dishes from the same time period were spiced just as heavily as meat dishes.


2. Pepper was worth its weight in gold.

A quick check finds this to be far from correct. While pepper was more expensive in the medieval period than it is now - approximately ten times the current cost based on the wages of unskilled laborers - it was not even close to the value of gold.

The price of saffron (which is and always has been the most expensive spice) was about 183 pence per pound in fifteenth-century London. That's closer to gold (240 pence per pound) but still not over.


3. Bread was coarse and brown.

There are numerous descriptions in medieval texts of the bolting process, where ground wheat is passed through linen sacks multiple times to give a fine white flour. There are records of laws specifying the different grades of bread, from coarse and dark to fine white bread. The poor may have eaten coarse dark bread, but the middle and upper classes could and did buy white bread.


4. The wealthy didn't eat vegetables.

I've got hundreds of recipes from the cookbooks of the middle and upper classes that call for vegetables, fruits, and grains. There are many examples of instructions for making and serving salads. There are shopping lists for banquets that call for vegetables. The wealthy weren't just carnivores.


5. The poor didn't eat meat.

Records from medieval prisons and poor houses include weekly menus which feature a substantial quantity of meat three to four times a week. If they were feeding convicted criminals better than the poor outside of prison then prison wouldn't be much of a deterrent to crime, would it?


6. Potatoes / tomatoes / capsicum peppers originated in Ireland / Turkey / India.

All botanical and historical evidence leads to the conclusion that none of these foods existed outside of the Americas before 1492. If anyone can find primary source documentation for these foods being used in Europe before then, I'll be overjoyed to amend this. The same goes for turkey, green beans, pumpkins, cranberries, vanilla, chocolate, and corn.


7. Most vegetables weren't as well developed as they are now.

This can be easily disproved by taking a quick look through medieval paintings that depict food. There you can easily find very modern looking produce.


8. Medieval feasts consisted of bread, roasted meat and wine (or ale).

We have Hollywood to thank for this one. Unlike the popular depiction, medieval feasts were complex affairs which included multiple courses, each with multiple dishes. Meats, fruits, vegetables, and grains were all served. Delicate and subtle dishes were made using a wide variety of spices. Intricate entertainment pieces were also presented - sometimes edible, other times not.