Recipes from the Wagstaff Miscellany - Intro

I recently posted the last month of instructions from La Maison Rustique on "The works that the laborer should do for each month of the year."  That means I should probably find something else to do that's useful.

One of the projects I've been working on for some time is a transcription of the recipes from the Wagstaff miscellany (Beinecke MS 163).  This is the manuscript presented in An Ordinance of Pottage by Constance Hieatt.  That book is currently out of print, but there is a used copy available at Amazon.com (for a whopping $1,550.05).  I figure it's about time there's a freely-available transcription online (with searchable index, etc.).

My current plan is to post two recipes per week, with additional commentary and notes as appropriate.

To start things off though, here's the introduction to the recipe section of the manuscript, along with the table of contents.

---

Recipes from the Wagstaff Miscellany (Beinecke MS 163)

This manuscript is dated about 1460.

The 200 (approx.) recipes in the Wagstaff miscellany are on pages 56r through 76v.

Images of the original manuscript are freely available on the Yale University Library website.

I have done my best to provide an accurate, but readable transcription. Common abbreviations have been expanded, the letters thorn and yogh have been replaced with their modern equivalents, and some minor punctuation has been added.

Copyright © 2012 by Daniel Myers, MedievalCookery.com

-=-=-

Here bygynnyth the chapters of diuers makyng and dytynge of potages and flesch sodyn & rostyde and of sleying and dyghtyng of wylde fowle and of makyng of dyuers sotyltys, wortys, in lentyntyme other in fleschtyme.

Canebens
Canebens with bacon
Buttyrd wortys
Caboches
Hare other gose powdryde in wortys
Jowtys in flesch tyme
Lentyn foyles
Blaunche porre
Pome porre
Gyngaudre
Elys in sorey
Pykys other elys in ballocbrothe
Frumente in lentyn wyth porpoys
Pylets in farcene
To make iussall
To make loche lardes of iij colours
To make iumbelys of a dere
Greuell enforsede
Gawdon of Salmone
Cokkes of byllynge
Leche pernen
Feletys in galentyne
Humbelys of purpoys or of other fysch
Numbelys if vensone
Purpays in galentyne
Purpays or vensone in brothe
Hare in cyve
Hare in papulde
Hare in talbut
Conynge in grave
Conyngys in syve
Conyngys in clere brothe
Oisters in grave
Oisters in cyve
Chekens in gretney
Creteyney
Capons in conseps

Chekens in caudell
Sowpes
Chawdon of veell
Chawdon of pyggys fete
Dowce desyre
Breuet of Lombardy
Bruet of Almyne
Bruet of Spayne
Bruet roos
Chykenes in bruett
Stewe Lombarde
Stewyde colops
Brewett Tuskyne
Brewet Sarcenes
Bruet of kydes
Blanche bruety
Sauce sarceney
Eell in butryade
Pynonade
Kyde stuede
Stuede pertyrygge
A losede beef
Pyke in sauce
Turbut rostyde in sauce
Salmone rostyde in sauce
Brawne in confyte
Blaunchede branie
Leche lumbarde
Tayle
Blaunchede sorre
Blaw maungere
Chykeney
Blanke desyre
Sage
Sipres
Florey
Crem boylede
Lyede milke
Mortruys of flesche
Mortrus of fysche

Blaunche mortruys of fysche
Blaunche mortruys of flesche
Payne fondew
Caudell
Caudell ffery
Charlett
Perys in confite
Pesys in composte
Perys in syryppe
Brawne ryall braune sypres brawn bruse
Brawn ryall
Betreyn in lentyne
Betreyn in fleyschtyme
Storgon for sopers
Cold lech viaunde
Leche lumbarde
Cold bruet of rabets
Diuers desyre
Viauntes ryall
Maumene ryall
Gely of fysch dayes
Cristell gely
Gely of fleysche
Crem of almondys
Hages of almayne
Quistes
Joutes
Rastons
Samarcays
Longe fretours
Payne purdyeue
Peletes of porke in dores
Hattes
In lentyne
Sauce madam
Sauce camelene for quaylys
And other manner of fowlys & for fysche
Caudone of swane or of wylde gose
Wellyde pepyre for rostyde well
Fresche lamprey batone
Farteys of fleysche
Fartlettees
Bakyne purpas
Pyes of flesche caponys and fesauntes
Crustade lambarde

Chauet of beef
Bakyn chikenes
Chauet rial
Chauet of fysche dayes
Porialet
Prennerall
To make posset
Pyes of pares
Brinecy
Losynges opyne
Harbelade opyne
Lesche fryde
Bakyne mete one fysche days
A bakyne mete opyne
A colde bakyne mete
Caudell of almonds
For to sle aner of foules
And reste hem & syne for othure
Crane rostyde
Pertryche rostyde
Quayle rostyde
Heyrone rostyde
Bytore rostyde
Egrott rostyde
Curlew rostyde
Brew rostyde
Conyng rostyde
Rabetes rostyde
Sarcell rostyde
Plouere rostyde
Snyte rostyde
Wodkoc rostyde
Kyd rostyde
Well rostyde
Vensone rostyde
The seydys of a dere
Of his grece
Chikenes farsyde
Chikenes endoryde
Fylets of porke Endoryde
Capons of his grece rostyde
Capons stewede
Pecydaw
Gose or capons farsyde
Pyggys y farsyde

Pestys of motyne in sause
Dyghtynge of al manner of fysche trowghte boylede
Crab lopstere
Breme in sauce
Breme in brothe
Tenche in brothe
Sole in brothe
Sturgeone
Haddoc in gryue
Sowpes chaunlayne
Codlyng lyng haddoc other hake
Base mylet other brem
Congure turbut halibut poilede
Gurnarde othere roche boylede
Plays soles flounders boylede
Welkes boyled
Perche boyled
Fresch makerell boylede
Schrympes boylede
Sowpys endore
Hote mylke of almondes
Colde mylke of almondes

La Maison Rustique - December

From: L'agriculture et maison rustique, Charles Estienne (Rouen, 1658).

The works that the laborer should do for each month of the year.

(Chapter 10)

-=-=-

December

In December visit oftentimes fields, in order to drain the water that will be gathered by the large rains.

Make water courses as close to the old ones as possible, and smoke them if necessary.

Make a supply of hay for smoking the fields.

Cover with hay the roots of trees and grasses that you want to keep until spring.

Top off and remove the branches of the willows, poplars, and other trees, so they can easily branch out and grow when winter is passed.

Cut wood, both for framing and for heating.

Draw up the nets to catch birds, and make the warrens for the hares, for when the fields are icy, or snow-covered, or flooded with rain. So that there can be no need.

Also make while it is raining, a thousand small wooden tools, such as those dishes, trenchers, spindles, tubs, bowls, and other things specific to husbandry.

Similarly, the harrows, rakes and hafts for the tools, repair the poles, yokes, plows and all instruments necessary for the stables of beasts of labor, so that they are in order to be worked.

Also make a supply of hoes, spades, picks, shovels, axes, hatchets, saws and other such tools for the husbandry of the fields.

Food Porn - Molecular Gastronomy

The whole Molecular Gastronomy movement has always made me a bit uneasy, and I wasn't exactly sure why.

For a while I thought it might be the reliance on technology that it encourages.  After all, having spent the last decade or so with my head stuck in the techniques of pre-16th century cooking must have conditioned me towards a more low-tech approach.  But then again, aside from being a medieval food geek, I'm also a science-fiction geek.  I love futuristic stuff, and that includes the depictions of food in movies and novels about possible (or impossible) futures.

More recently I began to suspect it had something to do with the chefs.  They tend to be flamboyant and egotistical, with an attitude that seems to be screaming "THIS IS MY ART, AND AS SUCH IT IS BEYOND CONTESTATION!"  However I have spent an awful lot of time around the highbrow artsy crowd, and I'm pretty comfortable with the fact that art can be quirky, controversial, impractical, and sometimes even downright incomprehensible, and as the art goes so does the artist.

Then a friend (Hi Broom!) posted a link to this video, and another possibility occurred to me.  Go ahead and watch it - it's a bit long (over 8 minutes) but it's fascinating and the music is soothing and pretty.

What I realized is that in this particular ... food product, and pretty much in all of the Molecular Gastronomy movement, it's all about the art.  The cook's cleverness, the use of unusual tools and technology, and unconventional form are all so important that the fact that it's food is almost irrelevant.  There seems to be no concern about whether it will taste nice or be pleasant to eat, or if it has any nutritional value whatsoever.

Compare this to another cooking tradition from the same country: sushi.

Here the presentation is very important, but the food aspects (flavor, nutrition, etc.) are still at the center.  Novelty is desirable, but it's not the only thing that is being supplied.

Really, it's the old argument of form and function.  Function without form is utilitarian, ugly, and dull.  Form without function is just fluff, pointless and useless.

To tie this back to medieval cooking, I feel it's worth remembering that artful food can be produced with surprisingly little in the way of technology.  Throughout most of history, cooks used very simple tools to produce surprisingly complicated and elegant works of art.

In the 17th century painting above, there are two pies that are beautiful examples of the cook's art.  The smaller one, just to the lower left of center, is a traditional straight-walled pie, carefully prepared and filled with all sorts of good things to eat.  In the background on the left is a huge turkey pie, it's sides covered with intricate fine detail, and topped with the stuffed skin of the turkey.

Perhaps I'd feel better about Molecular Gastronomy if I stopped thinking about it as food entirely and reframed it in my mind as only being art - edible art, but art nonetheless.  After all, they did have non-edible food art in medieval Europe.  Medieval cooks would often sculpt plates and goblets out of sugar paste, and then decorate them with limner's paints that were known at the time to be toxic.

The more things change ...

La Maison Rustique - November

From: L'agriculture et maison rustique, Charles Estienne (Rouen, 1658).

The works that the laborer should do for each month of the year.

(Chapter 10)

-=-=-

November

In November put your wine in the cellar, gather the acorns to feed the pigs.

Collect the chestnuts, and the fruits of the gardins which are ready to keep.

Pull up the turnips from the earth, despoil them of their leaves, and put them under the sand to protect them from the frost.

Warm up the artichokes, and cover them well, so that the frost does not assail them.

Make the oils, make hives for the bees, panniers [bread baskets], frails [baskets made from rushes], and wicker baskets for birds.

Cut willow branches for the trellis, and bind the vines, draw the poles of the vines.

Review - Cheese, Pears, and History in a Proverb

  

Cheese, Pears, and History in a Proverb
Massimo Montanari (Author), Beth Archer Brombert (Translator)
Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231152515

When I first heard about this book, all I could think was, "Just how much can someone say about the combination of cheese and pears?"  Perhaps they could come up with a paragraph on the origin of the proverb, and maybe a few more about cookbooks and recipes, but that's it, right?

It turns out that Montanari had a lot to say, and it was all worth reading.

The book not only goes into the history of the proverb and others like it, but it also examines them in the context of class divisions and diet in medieval Europe. It all turns out to be one of those complex, winding tales, full of odd turns and surprising twists.

As an added pleasure, Brombert's translation is clear and flowing, making for a very easy-to-read text.

For anyone interested in words and food and history, this book is guaranteed to be well worth reading.

La Maison Rustique - October

From: L'agriculture et maison rustique, Charles Estienne (Rouen, 1658).

The works that the laborer should do for each month of the year.

(Chapter 10)

-=-=-

October

In October there will be wines, and putting them in casks.

Withdraw the orange, lemon, and citron trees to someplace covered, for the danger of the upcoming coldness.

There will be honey and its wax, and squash the old bees.

Pandoracon 2012 Schedule

Pandoracon 2012 – September 28-30

Pandoracon is a new convention and it's local to me, so when I heard they were looking for programming I figured it was worth a try. I'm currently signed up to run the following panels, though I may end up being involved in more.

I usually enjoy smaller conventions more - everything is more relaxed and there's much more chance of actually being able to talk with the guests of honor.

Medieval Food
Fantasy games and novels are commonly set in a society based on medieval Europe. Learn how medieval English and French cuisine worked as a system. Topics will include medieval ingredients and preparation methods, the structure of medieval feasts, finding medieval recipes (or making them up), and common myths about medieval foods
09/29/2012, 5:00 PM

World Design - Food
Realistic food can add depth to a story, and can also reveal aspects about the climate and culture of a people. Learn how to create food and foodways that are exotic but still believable.
09/29/2012, 10:00 PM

World Design - Language
Panelists will discuss methods that authors and game designers use for creating believable fictional languages.
09/30/2012, 12:00 PM

World Design - Geography
The physical world influences a society’s development. Learn how to let the environment shape your fictional culture.
09/30/2012, 2:00 PM

That's a lot in just two days, though I'm really looking forward to it. We'll see how it goes.

La Maison Rustique - September

From: L'agriculture et maison rustique, Charles Estienne (Rouen, 1658).

The works that the laborer should do for each month of the year.

(Chapter 10)

-=-=-

September

In September give the last working to the tilled ground scattered with wheat, maslin, rye and other similar grains.

Be on the lookout, beat down the nuts, mow the meadows that are late for being renewed, gather the thatch to cover the stables, and for heating the furnace the whole year.

Cut the branches of the madder, and collect the seed for planting at the beginning of the next March.

Collect the leaves of dyers woad, and dress them so that they are reduced into bundles, and will dry in the sun, or by a fire that is not too hot, cut the rice and millet.

AAAARGH! (Time Machine Chefs edition)

This does not fill me with confidence.

 (found in this article about the new TV show, "Time Machine Chefs")

La Maison Rustique - August

From: L'agriculture et maison rustique, Charles Estienne (Rouen, 1658).

The works that the laborer should do for each month of the year.

(Chapter 10)

-=-=-

August

In August, pull up the flax and the hemp by the roots, gather the fruits from the tree tops for storing.

Remove the leaves around the late grapes, to the end that they receive the most warmth from the sun, make verjuice, dig the earth to make wells, or find sources for the springs.

If there is a need, think of preparing barrels, and other things necessary for the harvest.

La Maison Rustique - July

From: L'agriculture et maison rustique, Charles Estienne (Rouen, 1658).

The works that the laborer should do for each month of the year.

(Chapter 10)

-=-=-

July

In July reap the wheat, and soup grains. It will make the grass that one calls the plaster.

Gather the fruit of the apple and pear trees, edible apples and pears, and those that load the tree too much.

Dig the vines for the second time, and root out hereunto the grass, commonly called dog-tooth.

Level and smooth the earth that will be watered so that the sun does not scorch long before the vine.

Cut the wood for heating all year round.

AAAARGH!

(original source)

La Maison Rustique - June

From: L'agriculture et maison rustique, Charles Estienne (Rouen, 1658).

The works that the laborer should do for each month of the year.

(Chapter 10)

-=-=-

June

In June prepare the area, and clean it well of any straw, hay, and dust.

Mow the meadows.

Harvest the barley.

Prune the vines.

Beat the wheat for planting when it's time to sow.

Madeleine and the Mad Cow

Sacred Cow, Mad Cow: A History of Food Fears
Madeleine Ferrières
Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231131925
I haven't had much time to read lately (or post on the blog, for that matter), but if you're curious about what kind of book I keep on the nightstand (and who isn't?) this is it. Yes, I know I'm a geek.

The really cool thing about this book (so far) is that in just the first two chapters, Madeleine Ferrières manages to completely destroy the Moldy Meat Myth™. She does this not through menus or recipes, nor through logic or reasoning. Instead she references several surviving medieval laws and charters.

Some of these laws explicitly forbid the sale of spoiled meat. Others establish an inspection process that rivals that of the USDA. However the laws that most effectively debunk the myth are those that prohibit the sale of meat that was slaughtered the previous day.

So here's a brief recap of medieval meat consumption:

1. On average, urban residents ate three to five pounds of meat each week.
2. Butchers were forbidden to sell day-old meat for human consumption.
3. Livestock was brought into the town alive.
4. Livestock and butchered meat were both inspected for wholesomeness.
5. Butchers were forbidden to sell cooked meat, and cooks were forbidden to slaughter livestock.
6. Meat was a lot cheaper than spices.

So, as the myth would have it, butchers would bring in the huge quantity of livestock needed, butcher it all right away, let it sit around for days, hide it from the inspectors, sell it illegally, and hope that the spice merchants can convince the customers to use £10 worth of spices on a 2p piece of meat.

Yeah, sure.

La Maison Rustique - May

From: L'agriculture et maison rustique, Charles Estienne (Rouen, 1658).

The works that the laborer should do for each month of the year.

(Chapter 10)

-=-=-

May

In May water the newly planted trees, shear the sheep, refill the wines, amass great quantities of butter, and make strong cheese, castrate the calf, begin to take care of the honey bees, and silk worms, which will increase in number.

Weed the wheat, and hoe the vines for the second time, your shoes on the neighboring ground, so that the heat does not offend them, while clearing all the branches and overgrowth which have no fruit.

Clear the unnecessary twigs from the trees, graft the olive trees that need buds grafted and covered.

Gen Con 2012 Schedule

Gen Con is about three months away and I'm trying to get things ready. Unfortunately I'm not part of the Writer's Symposium panels this year, but I'm sure I'll find plenty to keep me busy. As in past years, I'm giving a two hour talk on Thursday evening.

Gen Con Indy 2012 - August 16-19

SEM1229781 - Medieval Travelling Food: The Theory and Practice of Hard Rations
Learn about what medieval soldiers and travelers ate when they were in the wilds, and see what you can do as a game master or writer to make things just that much more believable.
08/16/2012, 8:00 PM, ICC : Rm 243

Additionally, I've scheduled two events for Blackspoon Press.

SEM1229782 - How to Cook Like a Dwarf
How do you write a cookbook for a culture that never existed but everyone knows? The authors of The Dwarven Cookbook talk about the origins of the recipes in their cookbooks.
08/18/2012, 3:00 PM, Crowne Plaza : Victoria Stn A/B

SEM1229783 - Build Your Own Language
This workshop will guide you in creating your own language. With minimal materials and two hours of time, you will have the core a language suitable for adding color to a game or novel background.
08/17/2012, 8:00 PM, ICC : Rm 243

This last one is the most challenging for me to prepare. I want the participants to walk away with something usable and unique, but I don't want to delve too deeply into linguistics (after all, this isn't a college course). What's more, it's a free seminar (as are the others) so any handouts I provide will be paid for out of my own pocket. We'll see how many sign up during early registration.

On the whole, I expect this year to be a lot of fun.

Origins Game Fair

I'm pleased to announce that I'll be at Origins Game Fair this year as part of their new program for writers, The Library.

May 30-June 3, 2012

Greater Columbus Convention Center

Columbus, Ohio, 43215, USA

I'll be taking part on a number of panels, and will have a table with the other authors where I can sell copies of the books. In the remaining time I'll be gaming, schmoozing, and stalking Wil Wheaton and Felicia Day.

I expect the whole thing to be a total blast.

---

Here's the schedule for the seminars I'm participating in:


Thursday

Speak Up! (1:00 p.m.)
Sheeeoot! How ya gonna git yer folks ta talk so’s readers kin understand ‘em ‘n cobble onto jest wut they’s sposed ta sound like? Dialogs, dialects, slang, and more add color and round-out your characters, settings, and stories. Learn how to use them to best effect without making your readers scratch their heads or toss your book across the room in frustration.

What’s in Your Basement? (2:00 p.m.)
From creepy caverns to haunted subways, the underground is a terrific playground for your fiction. What makes the belly of the world ripe for fantasy and horror tales? Why is Hell always below? What monsters lurk in your basement? Panelists discuss their favorite underground settings and how to use caves, tunnels, and more to best effect.


Friday

What’s in Your Literary Kitchen? (Noon)
Origins is proud to host author and medieval chef Daniel Myers. He’ll teach you how to properly feed your characters . . . which in turn will fatten your manuscript into something rich and believable. Characters have to eat, don’t they? What you feed them tells a lot about your fictional society. James Bond liked his martinis shaken, not stirred. Kojak had his lollipops. Tolkien’s hobbits had . . . well anything they could stuff in their mouths. You get the idea.

The Art of the Short Story (1:00 p.m.)
There’s a big difference between writing a short story and a novel . . . and we’re not talking word count. It’s in the approach, the pacing, and character development—or lack thereof. A good short story is a work of art. Our panelists discuss the elements of short fiction and the markets.


Saturday

Setting Your Stage (Noon)
The landscape for your fiction has a personality. It’s a compelling stage for your characters to dance on. It doesn’t matter whether you pepper it with ruins, castles, caves, or soaring cities, you have to choose what details to put in and what to leave out. Our panelists, expert world-builders all, discuss the elements of crafting vibrant settings.

Well-Read Undead (1:00 p.m.)
Vampires are still hot, zombies, too. What is the fascination with corpses-as-characters? How can you pull off a good “dead” tale that isn’t a retread of what’s already out there? Our panelists discuss how to handle undead heroes and villains and where to market your “dead end” fiction.

La Maison Rustique - April

From: L'agriculture et maison rustique, Charles Estienne (Rouen, 1658).

The works that the laborer should do for each month of the year.

(Chapter 10)

-=-=-

April

In April around St. George's day, put out to air the lemons and oranges like all other trees that have been shut up since St. Martins day, in which you will stirr up the earth at the bottom, remove the superficial roots there, and the superfluous branches, and don't allow a single branch to pass another, either in width or height.

Plant, if you did not already plant them, olive trees, pomegranate trees, lemons, and myrtles, and thoroughly clean them.

Enter the fig tree, chestnut, cherry and orange, cut the new vines: for in those days she endures cutting slightly more.

Be careful to give food to the pigeons, because by that time there is little in the fields.

Mate horses, asses, sheep, with their females: clean the hives of honey bees, and kill the butterflies, which abound on the mallow blooms.

The Measure of a Cook

Having recently watched the movie "Today's Special" (2009, Aasif Mandvi), I noticed a recurring theme that I've seen in a number of cooking-related films: the idea that a cook should "cook from the heart".

In the movie, the cook is repeatedly told that he over-thinks his cooking, that his work has no fire, that he needs to stop measuring, and that he should listen to his heart and gut. I don't think it's much of a spoiler to say that in the end, when he throws caution to the wind, his food turns out to be fantastic and the customers are happy and everything is right in the world.

The same basic theme pops up in "The Ramen Girl" (2008, Brittany Murphy).

Here the main character is told to cook from the heart, and to put her feelings into the ramen soup.

Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed watching both of these movies. They're both light-hearted romantic comedies that involve food - fun to watch, easy to forget afterwards. That being said, I think they reinforce a belief about cooking that is inaccurate and that can discourage novice cooks: good cooks never measure.

It may be that some good cooks don't need to measure out precise quantities of ingredients, but they are always measuring. They evaluate the smell, taste, color, texture, and consistency of a dish almost constantly while they work. They have a built-in knowledge of the size of a teaspoon of spice, a tablespoon of oil, or a cup of milk. They weren't born with this knowledge though. They gained it by making the same or similar recipes over and over, hundreds of times, until each bit of information was permanently ingrained.

Because they have internalized all that information, they know which ingredients to be precise over, and which ones allow lots of leeway. To an outside observer, it may look like the cook is just throwing ingredients into the pot haphazardly, but with each one there's a mental note of "That seems about right." That's where the "heart" and "soul" come into cooking.

If an inexperienced cook tried to work the same way, the results would likely be less than ideal. They may get lucky, but sooner or later they'll end up with an inedible mess. Therefore it's vitally important for new cooks (or even old cooks trying new dishes) to follow a recipe. This gives them a basis for comparison, which they can then change as their skills and experience allow.

Unsurprisingly, this also applies to cooks who try recipes from medieval sources. To make the challenge more difficult, such sources typically not only lack measurements for quantities or temperatures or times, but they can even lack the common basis of experience that a cook can use to measure these things. The cook must rely on their modern experiences and constantly question their assumptions. Sometimes it works and the dish turns out well. Sometimes not, and the cook has to dig in to figure out where it went wrong. In those cases it really helps if they've measured the ingredients.

Most importantly, if the cook has measured, they can write the recipe down and share it so that others can learn.

La Maison Rustique - March

From: L'agriculture et maison rustique, Charles Estienne (Rouen, 1658).

The works that the laborer should do for each month of the year.

(Chapter 10)

-=-=-

March

In March sow in the first days the flax, dyers woad (if it was not sown in February), oats, barley, millet, fleabane, hemp, peas, lentils, bitter vetch, lupins, small corn, vetch, beans, and other similar marks.

Give a second work to the fallow grounds, which are well rested, and smoke that which are prepared for sowing.

Weed the corn, take the grafts to fasten when the trees are in sap, and before the buds emerge. Plant the fruits of chestnuts, almonds, hazelnuts and filberts, and the stones of olives, and apricots, and diverse other fruits.

Draw up several seed plots of apples, pears, mulberries, and other similar fruits: Plant the plants of foot herbs, like asparagus, artichokes, required cardoons, sage, lavander, rosemary, strawberries, gooseberries, roses and lillies, gourds, cucumbers, mellons and pumpkins.

Dress all the gardens, as well kitchen gardens in beds, and sow there the necessary seeds: prune and bear the roots of the vines and fruit trees, so that they bear more fruit: saw away the tree roots: gather together the branches for heating.

Hoodwinked

As an example of how far behind I am on things, last night I watched the 2010 movie version of Robin Hood. I'm generally a big fan of movies set in the middle ages (no surprise there), and since the film had Ridley Scott for a director I was expecting something impressive.

By the end of the film I was just sitting there thinking, "Wha?"

I thought Russell Crowe and Cate Blanchett were both too old for their parts, but I was willing to ignore that; they're big-named stars, after all. The acting was passable, the dialogue was decent, and the sets and costuming were much better that what Hollywood usually foists off on the unsuspecting public. I could even tolerate the fight scenes - though every time I see a film that uses the high-speed, choppy style of editing for fight scenes I find myself thinking, "Pity they couldn't afford a fight choreographer and had to cover it up by shaking the camera a lot."

The real problem was the incoherent story. It wasn't just the historical inaccuracies. The whole film seemed to be doing things at random. It's hard to evaluate how well the writer and director accomplished their goals when I can't even tell what they were trying to do in the first place. This suggested trouble with the film on a whole different level, so I turned to IMDB for clues.

The answer came pretty quickly: there were five writers. Here's a note from IMDB about the original story:

"Ethan Reiff and Cyrus Voris's original script "Nottingham" turned the traditional story on its head by portraying the Sheriff of Nottingham in a more sympathetic light and Robin Hood as more of a villain." [IMDB]

Right there is the first problem. Note for writers and producers: if you're going to turn a well-loved story "on its head", then you're writing an artsy film and not a summer blockbuster. Universal ignored this and tried to find a director who could make it into a blockbuster anyways, looking at Bryan Singer, Sam Raimi, and Jon Turteltaub before finally betting on Scott to make it work. They'd have done better if they'd gone with a much lower budget film, some new and edgy director, and a limited art-house release.

"The script was extensively re-written by Brian Helgeland because director Ridley Scott wanted the Sheriff of Nottingham to be a more conflicted character." [IMDB]

In the new story where Robin is the villain and the Sheriff is the hero, the Sheriff wasn't interesting enough? Maybe likable enough? It's hard to tell because in the final version of the film the Sheriff is hardly there at all. That is probably due to subsequent rewrites.

"New rewrites were done by British playwright Paul Webb ..."

The rest of the sentence is the real kicker:

"... and later by Tom Stoppard, who reworked the story while the movie was already being filmed." [IMDB]

Somewhere along the line they scrapped the whole premise that Robin was the villain and tried to go back to a more traditional Robin Hood story, but it still wasn't working so they hired a big-gun like Stoppard to fix the script while they were shooting. I think if I were a writer called in to work on it, I would have asked that my name not be associated with the film.

Now for those interested in action scenes, the film isn't bad. I'm not sorry I saw it but at the same time, when the closing credits started to roll, I found myself thinking that I'd like to see a movie about Robin Hood.

La Maison Rustique - February

From: L'agriculture et maison rustique, Charles Estienne (Rouen, 1658).

The works that the laborer should do for each month of the year.

(Chapter 10)

-=-=-

February

In February, in the crescent moon, transplant the vines of two or three years, which will thus take root, and do not touch those of a year, which do not wish to be shaken, for they have little vigor yet.

Maintain the hay fields, vineyards, meadows and gardens.

Make the pits to plant new vines: cut out the roots of vines, and equip them with stakes, prune and weed trees of all superfluities, clean of worms, dirt and worm-eaten material that is found in dry leaves.

Prepare the soil of the gardens to sow and plant all kinds of herbs.

Give the second working to the earth to receive beans, barley, oats, hemp, millet and other similar seed in March.

Visit the vines, especially those that are known to be weak and delicate.

Dress the hedges of the gardens: build the beds of the gardens with hay.

Plant the woods for great trees and forest.

Plant also the shoots of olive trees, pomegranates, quince trees, fig trees, poplars, dwarf willows, elms, osiers, and other trees, as well wild fruit trees that will root.

Clean the dove cote, hen house, and the retreat of the peacocks and gees: because these beasts at the end of the month begin to sit to hatch.

Visit the warren to repopulate it and there re-run the burrows.

Buy honey bees, thoroughly clean their hives and kill their kings.

Buy hawks, sparrowhawks, and other birds of prey: which at the end of this month will moult.

Food Fads

This post may put some people off, but sometimes you’ve just got to speak out.

People often assume that because I’m a food geek then I’m all over the latest food trends. The thing is that in addition to food geek, I’m also a food snob and a bit of a food luddite. I feel that traditional foods exist for a reason – they fill a need for a given culture, and they fill it well. This means that when a food fad becomes too prominent and is given far more exposure than it’s worth (in my opinion, of course) I start to become … irritated.

So here are the food-related trends I’m sick of – in no particular order:

Grilling
Yes, with enough work and specialized widgets you can probably prepare anything on a grill. I think I had enough of grilling many years back when I tried grilled lobster. It had that great, smokey flavor you get with a barbecue. The problem was the one thing I couldn’t taste – lobster.

Single-Use Appliances
Panini grills, juicers, veg-o-matics, ice cream makers, dehydrators, infusers, a thousand new things every year to spend money on to "save time in the kitchen." Most of the time there is a multi-purpose tool which will achieve the same end and take up a lot less space. The multi-purpose tools are usually easier to clean as well.

Bacon
I like bacon, really I do, but I like things that don’t taste like bacon too. I don’t want to hear about bacon salt, bacon ice cream, bacon clothing, chocolate-covered bacon, bacon mayo, baconsicles, bacon soda, etc. If I want a dish to taste like bacon then I’ll add bacon, but most of the time I’ll skip it.

Deep Frying
Twinkies, Oreos, Mars bars, macaroni and cheese, butter – this one’s almost as bad as the bacon (in fact, people are batter-coating and deep frying bacon as well). Look, it’s nice to have something fried now and then. The frying process makes things crispy, adds the fat that people naturally crave, and even caramelizes natural sugars in foods. However, like grilling, it can also obliterate subtle flavors. What’s more, too much of this stuff will turn you into the Pillsbury Dough Boy.

Superfoods
Like clockwork, some agricultural collective will fund a health study which ends up showing that their product is packed full of something that conclusively reduces risks of somesuch or helps promote someother. Then for the next year or so that product is put into everything from floor wax to dessert toppings … until another study comes out and shows that the product works almost as well as a sugar pill.

Molecular Gastronomy
I suspect this term appears in a scientific dictionary and is defined as "overprocessed and overpriced". I suppose it could be considered to be edible art, but it also could be considered as food porn.

Dinner-in-a-Bowl
A biscuit, covered in mashed-potatoes, sprinkled with fried meat, gravy, and a ton of cheese. I’ve seen ads for all sorts of these from a variety of restaurants. Most (all?) of the time they’ve just taken the ingredients they already had on hand and plopped them down in a heap. I suppose they could just give us a trough or feed bag.

"Foodie"
I simply hate this word. It just screams "dweeb".

La Maison Rustique - January

From: L'agriculture et maison rustique, Charles Estienne (Rouen, 1658).

The works that the laborer should do for each month of the year.

(Chapter 10)

-=-=-

January

As of January, mainly at the end, cut the wood he would like to dedicate to framing or other work, when the moon is under the earth: for the moonlight makes the wood softer, and wood to be cut this will last a long time without being corrupted.

Smoke the trees that bear fruits, without affecting their roots.

Among the trees and shrubs that flourish early: such as roses, damask plums, avant-peaches, plums and others; in cold and wet country during the first two quarters of the Moon; cut the vine in good weather and sunny, plow the land dry, light and white, slender, sandy, full of tall grass and roots, which will not be plowed until October: second will be to work to the salt land and spread straw on top of beans, or wheat and barley.

Cut poles of willow for vines and hedges; prepare good stakes to support the vines; cut and prune the trees, the Moon being waning; turn upside down all the manure made from St. Martin's day, so that is cooked when it will be spread on the field, and the like: mend make new the chariots, wagons, plows, and other instruments necessary for cultivation, provide sufficient irons for pruning and clearing trees and vines.

Throughout will be no seed, because the earth is still too rare, heavy, full of steam, and similar to badly carded wool.

TV Interview

Last week I had a brief interview with "Goodday Sacramento" on the Sacramento CBS affiliate.  The fact that this was my first TV appearance meant that I had no idea what to expect.  It turns out that for morning news shows the operating word is "fast" - I don't think I was on the air for more than a minute.  Obviously that's not enough time to go into any significant depth on a subject (and I know I can get awfully wordy), so I thought I'd take some time to give more leisurely answers here for the questions I was asked.

The first question was along the lines of "Why cook medieval recipes?"  My answer was that one could just as easily ask, "Why cook Chinese recipes?" or "Why cook Indian?"  Medieval European cuisine is a unique style of cooking, with its own balance of flavors.  I also noted that the flavors of Medieval English cooking are surprisingly similar to those of modern Indian, leaving out the capsicum peppers.

In medieval England - especially in the 14th and 15th centuries - spices like cinnamon, ginger, cumin, and saffron were used, especially in meat dishes.  The combinations of these spices gives a flavor that is very similar to that in modern cooking in the Mediterranean and India.  On a side note, the word "curry" itself comes from Middle-English, and means "cook".

I was then asked about how hard it is to find recipes.  I said that when I started researching, 20 years ago, it was very difficult.  You needed to be near the right library or know the right people.  Now many of the texts are freely available online, and I have a list of links for them on the website.

This has really changed medieval cooking research an incredible amount.  Not only are libraries now putting images of the original manuscripts online, but researchers (both amateur and professional) are transcribing and translating the documents into multiple languages.  In just the past five years the number of medieval recipe books that are readily accessible to the average geek has gone from a handful to hundreds.  Medieval English and French cookbooks have even been translated into languages like Russian and Japanese.

Finally, I was asked about Thanksgiving dinner.  Given that they didn't celebrate Thanksgiving in medieval Europe (for the most part they still don't, but I've heard that's changing), what medieval foods could be served in it's place?  I responding with a menu that most would find surprising:  honey mustard barbecue chicken, macaroni and cheese, collard greens, and peach pie.

I unintentionally described this as a "traditional menu", but it's more accurately a "menu of traditional foods".  No, I have no record of any medieval cook serving exactly that meal, but all those foods can clearly be traced to England in the 14th century.  I often use that fact to pull people out of the mindset that medieval food was all about huge chunks of roast meat and tankards of wine.  The recipes we have from back then are surprisingly sophisticated and exhibit a wide range of flavors.

There is a copy of the video online.

From a technical viewpoint, I have a few observations.  First is that I look and sound like a total goob.  I'd like to think that it's the fault of the camera angle and the cheap microphone built into the computer - please don't tell me otherwise and ruin my happy delusion.  If I should end up with another interview via Skype, I'll make sure the ambient lighting is better.  The room was fairly well lit about 15 minutes before the start of the interview, but it then clouded up outside and things got too dark.

Levels of Medievalness

Whether it is dinner at a "medieval-themed" restaurant, a feast held by a historic recreation group, or a home-cooked dinner made for a school project (or even just for the fun of it), a question that might arise is "How medieval is this meal?"

Really, it's a very tricky thing to work out. There's all sorts of things that can enter into it, including such diverse elements as the type and source of the ingredients, the atmosphere (both ambiance and air quality) of the dining area, and even the time of year in relation to the foods served. In fact, considering all the extended variables, I suspect the answer to "How medieval is this meal?" is "Not very."

However, there are some aspects that are more easily controlled and which have a much larger impact on the ... medievalness? ... medievalosity? ... medievalery? ... ok, authenticity.  Let's look at them in order from least medieval to most medieval.

1. Medieval Ingredients

There are a number of foods that weren't available in medieval Europe. Some are things from the Americas (e.g. turkey, potatoes, capsicum peppers, peanuts, vanilla, chocolate) and weren't imported into Europe until after 1500.  Some are from other places (e.g. bananas, tea, coffee, yams), but were still not in common use in Europe.  Some are things that were invented well after 1500 (e.g. baking powder, mayonnaise).

The presence of any of these marks a meal as being modern.  It doesn't matter what recipe was used or how the food was cooked, they're simply not medieval.

2. Real Recipes

Even if all the ingredients used to make the meal were available in medieval Europe, that doesn't mean the resulting dishes would have been familiar to a medieval European.  Bread, ground beef, cheese, lettuce, and pickles are all reasonably medieval foods, but there's no account of any medieval cook ever making a cheeseburger (or any other type of sandwich, for that matter).

Fortunately there are a large number of medieval European cookbooks available, both in print and for free online. What's more, many have been translated into several different languages (for the benefit of those who don't read Middle-French or whatever), and there are even recipes that have been worked out with modern measurements and instructions.

3. Menu Consistency

Given both medieval ingredients and recipes, the consistency of the menu becomes an issue. By this I don't mean that the menu is too runny or somesuch, but rather that the individual dishes on the menu make sense to be served together.

While a World Fusion dinner can be fun, most people would be confused to be served a dinner menu of curried beef, Szechuan vegetables, tamales, poi, and hot chocolate. It's too strange a mix of cultures and cuisines.  The differences within regions and time periods in medieval European cultures can be very subtle, but they are there.  Twelfth century English food is very different from sixteenth century German.

Sometimes there are menus along with the recipes in many of the medieval cookbooks, which makes this part a lot easier. However there is still a lot of uncertainty to this aspect, and it's a great area for research.

It is only when the ingredients are medieval, the recipes are medieval, and the menu is medieval, that other aspects become important (like the apple variety, the quality of the spices, the shape of the serving vessel, the way the food is served, the color of the walls).

It's also important to work things in the above order.  Using non-medieval ingredients or modern recipes is kind of like building a ten-million dollar home and skimping on the quality of the materials or workmanship.  The final product simply won't hold together.

Dwarven Cookbook now available!

It took a bit longer than expected, but the book is now available online. The proof copies looked really nice and Stephanie and I are happy with the way it turned out.

A Dwarven Cookbook: Recipes from the Kingdom of Kathaldûm
Stephanie Drummonds and Daniel Myers

Paperback: 132 pages
ISBN-10: 0615549616
ISBN-13: 978-0615549613
Price: $8.95

We're going to take a bit of time to work on other projects, but we've already got plans for a follow-up cookbook of halfling recipes.

The Big Quince Harvest

Yesterday I picked 8 quinces from the tree in my back yard. Not only is this a big improvement in quantity over last year's harvest of two, but these quince are full-sized - over 4 inches (10 cm) in diameter. There were also an additional four quince that were too bug-eaten to keep, so next year I'm going to try the trick with putting nylon covers over the growing fruit to protect them.

Of course I now have a bunch of quince to work with, and will have to decide what to do with them.

I could make some of the recipes I've done in the past, like Chardquynce, Quince pie, or the ever popular Marmelade of Quinces. I could also try out something new, like connates perhaps.

Even more exciting though is that Cindy, having seen this year's crop, said she's now convinced that planting the trees wasn't a waste of time and money, and she's even willing to have another fruit tree in the back yard. So now I'm looking through my lists of Medieval Fruit Varieties trying to decide which tree would be the best addition.

Apples
For apples there are a couple of really good varieties that are readily available. The Old Pearmain sounds good, and dates back to the 1300s.

Old Pearmain apple

There's also the Rambour Franc and the Calville Blanc, both of which date to the 16th century.

Pears
There are fewer medieval pear varieties that are readily available. The Red Pear dates back to the 16th century, and the Barland to 1600.

Others
There are some other options - plums, medlars, cherries - that are worth considering, though there aren't many of them that have varieties which are both readily available and known to be medieval.

I'll have to keep looking and see what else I can find.

Alan Coxon and Alegar

One of the big news stories among the bunch of geeks into Medieval European cuisine is the puff piece that's going around online about a new product being launched by "celebrity chef" Alan Coxon.

"This passion is what led him to reinvent a classic and historically valuable recipe from Medieval England, which he has calls the Ale-Gar, putting him in the rare league of chefs who have invented food products of great value. A versatile and uniquely flavoured form of vinegar, to put it very broadly, Ale-Gar can be put to a variety of uses as well-known chefs in many restaurants in the West are attesting to."

Now what makes me cranky about this whole thing isn't that he has "reinvented" a medieval recipe, or even that he's marketing it (and himself) in such a painfully irritating way. No, what bugs me are some of the horribly incorrect and inaccurate things in the article and on Coxon's website.

First, let me make a note about the name of your product: "Ale-Gar". The word alegar is the Middle English term for ale vinegar or malt vinegar. Given that you talk about your product being "infused" with flavors and that it would be a good substitute for balsamic vinegar, you're not making alegar. Instead of giving it such a misleading name, I suggest you change it to something else. "Medieval Themed Vinegar", perhaps. As long as you call it "Ale-Gar", food historians will need to keep reminding the public that "Ale-Gar" isn't alegar.

If a medieval recipe calls for alegar, use this stuff.

"I am proud to be the creator of a historic food range and the globally unique Medieval Old English Ale-Gar – a product that has all but disappeared from our culinary repertoire for over 300 years. After ten years of painstaking research and development, I have managed to bring it back for the world to enjoy."

No, Alan. You are not the creator of a historic food range (whatever that means). You are the creator of a line of products with a historic theme. There's a big difference. Further, malt vinegar has been widely available for the past 300 years, and can easily be found on the shelves of common grocery stores. Any research you've done over the past 10 years had nothing to do with understanding medieval production of alegar. You didn't bring anything back.  You've been doing modern product development, that's all.

"How is Ale-Gar made? Without giving too much away, it is made using a 15th-century Medieval Old English recipe that took me ten years to recreate. The mixture is then placed in acidulation tanks, infused and matured."

I've read the available 15th century recipes for making alegar (one of them is reproduced below). Now maybe you've got access to a source I haven't heard of (possible, but I doubt it), but from what I can tell, the alegar produced back then wasn't that much different from the malt vinegar of today. It didn't take you 10 years to recreate alegar. It took you 10 years to work out something like balsamic vinegar that you thought you could market.

To torne Wyne to Vyneagyr or Ale to Aleger or syder to Aysell. Take a pott and fyll hit Full of wyne Asell or gode Ale And stoppe well the mowth that no thyng cum yn nor owte And do hit in A vessell full of water and set the vessell on the fyre And let the pot of wyne boyle in the same A long while tyll hit be turnyd. [MS Pepys 1047, (England, ca. 1500)]

Oh, and just so you know, the phrase "Medieval Old English" is nonsense. Old English was spoken by the Anglo-Saxons from around 450 to 1066. Middle English was spoken in England from around 1100 to 1500. Pick one. Given that you keep talking about the 15th century, I suggest Middle English.

"In Mediaeval England, wine was limited to Royalty and nobility, ..."

A minor quibble, but this is plain wrong. While it is true that there was less consumption of wine in England by the working class, it wasn't limited to "Royalty and nobility". The growing merchant class imported significant amounts of wine from France, and England had its own (declining) wine-making industry throughout the middle ages.

"For my Ale-Gar, I have used a traditional mediaeval ale recipe, but I have incorporated Chocolate Stout Malt, to tantalise today's more sophisticated and adventurous palate."

So you use a traditional medieval ale recipe, but you add completely non-medieval ingredients to it to make it taste different, which means you don't use a traditional medieval ale recipe. Right. Please also note that any talk about the modern palate being "more sophisticated and adventurous" is complete marketing BS and has no basis in reality.

One last note from the article:

"Of his school life, Alan says he wasn’t a remarkably bright child as he preferred to be engaged in athletics."

It shows.

A Dwarven Cookbook

I'm pleased to announce the upcoming publication of A Dwarven Cookbook.

A collection of 54 authentic Dwarven recipes, including such favorites as Dwarven Journeybread, Jellied Mushrooms, and Turnip Stout.  There's also a bit of commentary here and there which provides some insight into Dwarven foodways.

What's surprising is that there is some real medieval context to this book.  Using the cuisine of a real medieval society we've carefully constructed a plausible fictional cuisine, and then put together workable recipes for it.

Co-author Stephanie Drummonds and I have been working on this book for the past several months, and everything is on track for it to be available in October.  Rather than try and get this through a mainstream publisher when the publishing market is so slow, we're self-publishing through our newly set up publishing house - Blackspoon Press.  Keep an eye on that site ... or this one ... or both ... for links to where you can buy the book, as well as information on the other books we've got in the works.

Gen Con 2011 Schedule

It's now less than three weeks (yikes!) before GenCon.  As in past years, I'm on discussion panels as part of the Writer's Symposium and will be giving a two hour talk about medieval cooking.  Below are the descriptions for this year's events.

SEM1118008 - Medieval Feasts and Food: Making the Fantasy Match Reality
Are you curious what medieval cooking was really like? Do you want your fantasy characters' dinner to be plausible? This seminar takes a look at medieval European cuisine as a whole, and discusses the misconceptions and misunderstandings that pervade the popular view. Some of the topics to be covered are food preservation, medieval dining on the road, common medieval food myths, and some of the strange things you can find in medieval books.
08/04/2011, 8:00 PM, ICC : 243

SEM1119600 - Fictional Food
(Daniel Myers, Linda Baker, Steven Saus, Anton Strout)
Real spacemen don't eat grilled cheese! Little details help make your fiction real and add depth to your characters. Fictional food can also reveal important information about the climate and culture you are crafting. Learn how to make up food and diets that are exotic but still believable.
08/05/2011, 12:00 PM, ICC : 245

SEM1119621 - Category 4 Brainstorm
(Kelly Swails, Daniel Myers, Anton Strout, Steven Saus)
Sometimes ideas don't come easy. It may take a lot of work and rumination to cull a workable idea for a story or book. We offer techniques for brainstorming and discuss the resources we turn to when our thoughts go stale.
08/06/2011, 10:00 AM, ICC : 245

SEM1119622 - Worldbuilding: Men, Monsters, and the Creatures Between
(Linda Baker, Sabrina Klein, Daniel Myers, Ramsey Lundock, Bob Farnsworth)
Men, elves, and the like cannot live in isolation, and monsters don't materialize out of nowhere. People and creatures need to fit into the world's ecology and have a life cycle that makes sense, otherwise your readers will see your world as unrealistic and not worth reading about. Find out what makes creatures and races believable.
08/06/2011, 11:00 AM, ICC : 244

SEM1119640 - Pick Our Brains
(Anton Strout, Jason Sizemore, Daniel Myers)
How dare you consider sleeping in on the final day of this year's Gen Con! We bet there're still questions whirling in your brain about worldbuilding, the publishing industry, sprucing up your manuscript, and whatnot. We're here to provide as many answers as possible.
08/07/2011, 8:00 AM, ICC : 244

At this point I'm a bit frantic (as usual) in trying to get everything ready.

Cooking "In Vain"

As a bit of a disclaimer, I'll start off with a note that the editor of the books mentioned below was kind enough to send me a copy of each. Had he not done so I probably wouldn't have mentioned them, mostly for two reasons: first because I generally don't read historical fiction, and second because I have a lousy memory.

In Vain
Barbara Reichmuth Geisler

Many many months ago I received an email asking for details about a particular medieval recipe. This happens fairly often, and I try to give as useful an answer as time allows. In this particular case the author was interested in including a few recipes with her most recent book, and was asking about one recipe in particular - Towres. In a brief email exchange, I helped make sense of the Middle English and work out what type of recipe and such, and then promptly forgot about the whole thing.

As it turned out, Barbara Reichmuth Geisler's third book (a prequel) in The Averillian Chronicles includes a few authentic medieval recipes at the end. That combined with the positive reviews of her two earlier books is enough to catch my attention. In spite of my predisposition to Science Fiction and Fantasy, these books are now in my "To Read" stack (that's the short stack, as opposed to my "To Read Someday" stack, which is much bigger).

Other Gods Barbara Reichmuth Geisler

Graven Images Barbara Reichmuth Geisler

Graphing Meats

Last week I wrote a post about a news story about an article in Food and History, noting my skepticism towards some claims about medieval beef consumption.

Since then I've added a handful of pages of data to the Statistics from Medieval Cookbooks. That's all well and good, but I wondered if I could graph some of the data and see if it made any trends more apparent. The graphs, along with some comments are below.

First though, I'd like to note again that this data comes from medieval cookbooks, and there is very likely some disconnect between the number of times an ingredient appears and the frequency of consumption. Second, the data set is small and there seems to be a lot of "noise" in the sample. Third, I am not a statistician. That being said, let's take a look at the graphs.


Fish / Seafood

In this graph it looks like there may be a slight downward trend in fish consumption overall. There's a pretty clear downward trend for France, and a slightly smaller one for England.

Poultry

I think the data point for Du fait de cuisine in this graph is an outlier and should be ignored. Everything else looks like a reasonably flat trend line.

Pork

The decreasing trend here is pretty clear, even if Du fait de cuisine is an anomaly. What's more, the trend for the English cookbooks is very clear.

Beef

Finally, the crux of the matter, there appears to be a rising trend for beef, with a very low starting point. The spike from Du fait de cuisine is echoed in Le Recueil de Riom, so it could be valid. When England and France are taken separately, the rate of increase is higher for France.

Overall, this supports the claim that pork consumption in Europe declined during the 14th and 15th centuries, but it still doesn't do much for the ideas that beef was the most popular type of meat in France and England, or that it appears in Viandier or Forme of Curye more often than other meats.

Uncertainty and Doubt and Beef

On Monday I came across an article referring to a paper on medieval beef consumption.  This article contains the following eyebrow-raising statements:

One of the key conclusions of this article is that cattle and sheep were the main sources of meat throughout Western Europe, and that consumption of pork went into general decline during the 14th and 15th centuries, which López attributes to changes in farming after the Black Death.

... in northern France and England beef was the most popular type of meat.

... medieval cookbooks, like the Viandier and the Forme of Curye, had beef in their recipes more often than other meats.

I haven't yet read the paper that the article is referring to - "Consumption of Meat in Western European Cities during the Late Middle Ages: A Contemporary Study", Food and History, Vol.8 No.1 (2010) - but I'm certainly trying to get a hold of a copy.


What makes me question the quotes above (aside from the fact that the economics of the situation make heavy beef consumption unlikely) is that it doesn't mesh with the statistics I've extracted from various medieval cookbooks.


First, the statement that beef appears in the recipes in Viandier and Forme of Curye more than any other meat is just plain wrong.  Beef appears in 3% of the reciped in Forme of Curye, which is plainly less than the 13% of recipes that contain pork.  In fact, beef is sixth on the list in descending order of frequency - it appears just below rabbit (4%).  Fish / Seafood has the top spot, appearing in 22% of the recipes.


Beef does appear higher up in the statistics from Viandier.  There, it's in the second spot with 14%.  It's still below fish / seafood with 29% though.  What's more, poultry (13%) and pork (10%) aren't very far behind.


Note that there is some wiggle-room in these statistics.  For example, I've lumped together a lot of different kinds of aquatic life into the category "fish / seafood", and "pork" includes "ham", "bacon", and any part of a pig.  Still, browsing through the recipes I still find way more references to "pork" than "beef" in Forme of Curye.  Additionally, the number of recipes for a type of meat doesn't necessarily correspond to how often that meat was consumed.


The statement that beef was the most popular type of meat is possibly true, but the data I've seen doesn't support it.  In the dozen cookbooks I've pulled information from, only three (Ancient Cookery, The Good Housewife's Jewell & Ouverture de Cuisine) have beef appearing most often in recipes.  Fish / seafood has the top spot in the vast majority.  I suppose if you don't consider fish to be meat (e.g. as the church dictated) then beef's position improves, but it's still not the most common going by the numbers.


Lastly, the statement about cattle and sheep being the main sources of meat seems to be a real stretch.  Before 1500, sheep / mutton recipes are not that common - generally appearing in less than 10% of the recipes in French and English cookbooks (Du fait de cuisine being the exception).


There are all sorts of possibilities here.  It could be that the paper's author compiled the data differently than I did, and that lead to different conclusions.  It could also be that the article, which was written for a popular (sort of) audience, misinterpreted the author's conclusions.  Either way, I want to see the actual paper.  Something's off somewhere, and I want to make sure it isn't me.

Thoughts on "Medieval Japan"

Every now and then I get asked for recipes or information about medieval cooking outside of Europe, and each time it happens I end up mulling it over for days trying to work out an answer.  I suppose I could say that I focus on Europe (and sometimes I do), but that answer is an evasion.  It doesn't address the question of why I don't research medieval cooking from other cultures.

The first problematical point rests in what is meant by "medieval".  Webster's defines the word as "of, relating to, or in the style of the Middle Ages," and goes on to define the middle ages as:

"... the time in European history between classical antiquity and the Italian renaissance (from about 500 a.d. to about 1350): sometimes restricted to the later part of this period (after 1100) and sometimes extended to 1450 or 1500."

This goes back to the origin of the word, which is from the Latin medium aevum - the middle age, or the time between the classical era and the Renaissance, and most definitions I've seen of "medieval" look something like this.

Europe during this time period had a surprisingly consistent culture.  Yes, there were stylistic and political differences for different regions and countries within Europe, but there was also an amazing degree of uniformity in terms of technology, clothing, and (most significantly) food.

These definitions are rather Roman-centered.  They clearly make sense when applied to Italy: it's the time between the fall of the Roman empire and the Renaissance.  With the extension of years they also make sense when applied to northern Europe (England, France, etc.) as it took much longer for the Renaissance to percolate that far north.  It's a bit of a stretch to get it to mesh with places on the edge of Europe though.

When someone then asks about cooking in medieval Japan (or China, or India, or Central America, etc.) I'm first stuck trying to figure out what "medieval Japanese cooking" means.  Are they asking about Japanese cooking between the years 500 to 1350?  What about 500 to 1500?  Maybe some other date range?  To the best of my (limited) knowledge of Japan, there isn't that much difference in the culture and cooking in Japan between 1000 and 1800, so just where is the dividing line?

Now if they asked about cooking in "feudal Japan", or "India before the British empire", or "pre-1500 Central America," those are concepts I can deal with.  Of course my answer would simply be something like "I just don't study that."  I also suspect that answer would be no more surprising than the response to a car dealer's response to "Why don't you sell bicycles?"

It's not that I don't like Chinese or Indian or other cuisines - as my somewhat padded outline will attest, I like a wide variety of foods.  It's not even that I don't like the history of the other places.  It's just that medieval European cuisine is, in itself, a distinctive cooking system, and since I don't have time to research everything about food and cooking to any real depth, I choose just that one part.

Supersizers Eat Medieval

I recently watched "Supersizers Eat Medieval" ... I know .... I really should do this to myself. Every time I go in hoping for a realistic portrayal of medieval food, and almost every time I'm disappointed.

This time wasn't as bad as it could have been. While they did repeat and reinforce some of the usual myths, they did get some things reasonably close to right. Below are some comments on things that were said, done, or shown in the episode - in no particular order.


Trenchers

The show did depict the use of trenchers as a sort of disposable plate, and noted that they would have gone to the poor when the diner was through with them. That's reasonably accurate, though trencher use was not prominent until the late 15th century - which is much earlier than most of the other stuff depicted in the program.

It's also worth noting that, from the accounts I've read, trenchers were made from three-day-old bread (rye?) specifically baked for that purpose. One description of trencher loaves has them as being rectangular, flat, and about 4" x 6" in size. This is in contrast to the show's hosts cutting slices off of a round, apparently fresh loaf.


Lack of Vegetables

Where are the veggies? Contrary to popular belief, and to what was depicted in the program, the wealthy did eat vegetables (and the poor did eat meat, but that's a whole different matter.


Size of Meals

There is definitely something strange going on about the size of the meals - but it's not necessarily the fault of the program. Even medieval accounts had each diner sometimes receiving absurd portions of meat (e.g. 10 pounds). I suspect a large portion of that was passed on to the poor as an act of charity, or it was shared with members of the diner's household, or some such.


Water

The popular belief that nobody ever drank water in the middle ages is repeated. It's simply not true. We can thank the Victorians for this myth.


Beer

I have no idea where the bit about spitting in the beer came from. If someone can point me to a reliable source, I'll accept it (after all, that's one of the ways they (used to?) make fermented beverages from corn in South and Central America (e.g. "chicha").


Average Lifespan

This is one of those ideas that seems to be unkillable. People are always confusing "average life expectancy" with "maximum life span". Yes, the life expectancy of people in medieval Europe was pretty low (e.g. 30 years), but that doesn't mean that no one lived long enough to get old, nor does it mean that 35 was considered old.

The average life expectancy was brought way down due to infant mortality, but if an individual survived childhood then they stood a decent chance of making it to their 60s.


Peacock

At one point in the program, they make a big deal about how nasty peacock tastes, with the implication that medieval people had to be nuts to eat it. It was relatively common though to use a peacock's feathers to dress a capon - thus making a good tasting bird look really fancy. I've also seen a recipe in a medieval French source that called for the roasted peacock to be dressed with the capon's feathers - not to be enjoyed by the noble, but to be served to some unsuspecting diner as a prank. The implication is that medieval Europeans didn't like how peacock tasted either.


Turkey

At one point in the program they are served turkey. Since turkey is a new world bird, it would not have been available for most of the middle ages (possible for any of it, depending on how you define "medieval").


Gilded Gingerbread

This is a strange one. I've seen lots of recipes for gingerbread, but none that call for gilding. There are recipes for sugarpaste that might have been gilded, and I think there is one (late medieval) case where sugarpaste was called "gingerbread" (it was flavored with ginger). I'm curious where they got this.


Leach

At one point they translate "leach" as "licking". Um ... no. Leach (or leshe) is "slice" - both as a verb and a noun.


Marzipan

Marzipan is described as being expensive. This is sort-of true, in that it is made from almonds which were imported, and that (in 1438 for example) a pound of almonds cost almost twice what an unskilled laborer would be paid for a days work. However given what was also being bought for medieval feasters, that's not that extravagant. Marzipan shows up a *lot* in medieval cookbooks.


Barnacle Geese

The stories about what was and wasn't considered to be "fish" in the middle ages are quirky and fun, and it's tempting to say "Look how daft they were!" However I'm inclined to think that the whole bit about beaver tails, barnacle geese, and the like were just a sort of culinary "technicality" to get around religious dietary restrictions.

For this particular claim, the Wikipedia page on Barnacle Geese has the following note:

At the Fourth Council of the Lateran (1215), Pope Innocent III explicitly prohibited the eating of these geese during Lent, arguing that despite their unusual reproduction, they lived and fed like ducks and so were of the same nature as other birds.

Like I said, it could have been worse. They didn't bring up rotten meat at all.

Behind the scenes on the Website

Over the past couple of weeks I've made some major changes to the website, but those changes aren't very obvious.

The most recent changes were also the most noticeable:  I've added a bunch of recipes by Jennifer Marshall-Craig and Diana Hart (To Make a Tart, Cinnamon Brewet, Roast Hen, Mushroom Tart, Cherry Sauce, Beef Pie, King's Chicken, Cabbage).

What doesn't show are the changes I made that make maintaining the site much easier.  The recipes page is now dynamically generated from a database, as are the pages that list recipes by country and category.  This means that when I add a new recipe, I make one entry into the database and the recipe is listed on all the appropriate pages.  If I need to make a correction (and I often do), then that correction is also automagically propagated through the site.

For everyone living outside of my head, the benefit of these changes is that the various pages will not become outdated as new recipes are added.

Similarly, the Online Medieval Cookbooks, Recommended Books, and Menus From Medieval Sources pages are also generated from databases. Exciting, isn't it? I know you're just thrilled.  I'll try to do something more ... fun (?) ... in the near future.