Mideival Cooking
Cooking in the medieval times was performed on very big scale, and food was cheap and plentiful. Foreign goods had to be bought at the nearest large town. Food trade was a primary business. It was also a way of determining class. The nobles would eat meat, white bread, pastries, and drink wine. This sort of diet caused many health problems, such as skin troubles, digestive disorders, infections from decomposed proteins, scurvy, and tooth decay. A peasant would eat porridge, turnips, dark bread, and in the north they would drink beer or ale. Women were the expert cooks, and they seasoned their food heavily with pepper, cloves, garlic, cinnamon, vinegar, and wine. They paid close attention to the appearance of their meal. For instance, they might spread the feathers of a peacock that they are serving. Also, if a the eggs of a batter didn't make it yellow enough, they would add saffron (saffron is orange of yellow powder obtained from the stigmas of the saffron flower). Meat was expensive, so it was considered a luxury. This made butchers prosperous. The most common and least expensive was sheep. They would also eat birds: gulls, herons, storks, swans, cranes, cormorants, and vultures, just to name a few. Animals were cut up immedi
We could say that the maniple had a great big job on his hands on the trip to Canterbury because he had to get enough food to supply thirty people. People spent more on bread and grain then anything else, even though England had a national bread tax, which fixed the price of bread. And maybe the monk drank just a little too much mead. Most people grew their own vegetables. It also took a lot of time, effort, and spices to cook. Because medical opinion advised that fruit shouldn't be eaten raw, it was preserved in honey and cooked into pastries. Also, almonds were often cooked with the meat for flavor. So much was cooked that there was enough for seconds, and there was still some left over. Also needed was: six pounds of nutmeg, six pounds of cloves, six pounds of mace, six pounds of galingale, 30 loaves of sugar, 25 pounds of saffron, two charges each of ginger, Mecca ginger, cinnamon, grains of paradise, and pepper, six charges of almonds, one charge of rice, 412 gallons of wheat flour, 120 quintals of cheese, 30 pounds of amydon, 12 baskets of candied raisons, 12 baskets of candied figs, eight baskets of candied prunes, 110 pounds of dates, 40 pounds of pine nuts, 18 pounds of turnsole, 18 pounds of alkanet, 18 pounds of gold leaf, one pound of camphor, and one hundred ells.
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