Guest Post from Elizabeth Chadwick, author of To Defy a King

I am very, very excited to have a guest post today from Elizabeth Chadwick, author of the new book To Defy A King. I will have my review of this book tomorrow. Ms Chadwick has also written The Greatest Knight, The Scarlet Lion and For the King’s Favor (my review HERE.)

I was able to ask a question and I asked:

I love to cook and often blog about cooking. What would an everyday meal have been like in the time of To Defy a King? What spices were popular; what meats, etc? Would my passion for all things sweet have been satisfied then?

Many thanks for inviting me to guest on the blog about Medieval food. It’s a subject I’m interested in myself. All of the meals mentioned in To Defy A King have been thoroughly researched – and sometimes tried out – by me.

I am often asked what food was like in the 12^th and early 13^th century. My answer is that it would depend on who you were and where you lived and what time of year it was. Food in the 13^th century was seasonal and often local. You would perhaps only get strawberries for a few weeks a year, and what a treat they would be. They would be a lot smaller than our strawberries too, but bursting with an intensity of flavour. Poultry was eaten throughout the year but the consumption increased at times of celebration because chicken was seen as a high status food. Doves, contrary to the myth that they provided fresh meat in the winter, were actually eaten between April and November and ‘Dove feasts’ were held in the month of May. Rabbits were farmed in warrens called coney garths, and were in great demand in midwinter. All depended on the seasons. If possible, surplus foods were preserved in salt or smoked or dried in order to be available in leaner times. Religion played a major part in dietary considerations. In Lent, some butchers’ quarters in the towns would close down as the populations eschewed eating meat (this happened in Leicester for example). Presumably the butchers had to find employment or income elsewhere during that time.

Medieval food was all organic and it tasted of the land on which it was grown. That it might also contain the odd grub and slug chew-marks was a hazard to which you took as the norm. Medieval society always had one eye cocked to crop failure, because that meant higher prices and possibly starvation. Medievals tended to be more practical than we are, down to issues of enough food to go round. No part of an animal ever went to waste, and the variety of foods consumed was much broader. All manner of songbirds were trapped and eaten. Thrushes were very popular for example, as were herons, gulls and lapwings. Hedgerows were trawled for their bounty, and roots dug up. Most folk would have had a much better working knowledge of fungi than we do today.

So, what are typical meals on a normal day in the first decade of the 12^th century? Let’s say in the late summer or early autumn when there’s been a decent harvest and there’s enough to go round. In the Bigod village of Cransford, two and a half miles from the castle at Framlingham, the villagers are going out to work in the fields in the early morning or attending to their trades. Breakfast – literally the breaking of fast, will not have been much, if anything at all. Perhaps some bread and a drink of ale. Any children or elderly in the household might have receive a cup of buttermilk, which is the liquid left over after butter has been churned. The main meal of the day, eaten around late morning, might typically consist of a pottage made with beans, onions, garlic and carrots with the addition of some chopped fatty bacon from the smoked bacon flitch hanging in the rafters. If the children have been foraging, there might be a bowl of blackberries to share afterwards. At the end of the day, an evening meal might consist of bread and milk, or bread with a smear of honey or some curd cheese. If the foraging had produced mushrooms, these might be fried in a little bacon fat and served with bread, or perhaps the luxury of an omelette if the hens are still laying well. This sort of food would be repeated throughout the year with seasonal ingredients popping in and out of the diet.

At the busy Bigod port of Ipswich, the Earl’s harbour master probably wouldn’t bother with breakfast unless he had a strenuous journey ahead. His children, however, would do the same as the village ones and have bread and milk or similar. His late morning meal might consist of fish – perhaps plaice which was readily available freshly caught, served with bread of a lighter texture than the village field workers. Or he might eat roasted mutton served with mint sauce. The latter, still around today, has its roots in Anglo Saxon culinary traditions. He might also have curd tarts on his table, sweetened with honey, or else marrow tarts made from the rich marrow inside beef shinbones. His food might be flavoured by spices, which, although expensive, were within the reach of a comfortably off middle class man. Pepper, cumin, galangal, mustard, and even sugar (then a condiment of the spice cupboard) might all find their way into his dinner. Again, his evening repast would be similar to the villager, except that a wider range of foods would be available and richer. If he wanted a mushroom omelette, he could have one without having to worry quite so much about how many eggs his wife – or their cook – was using. For a snack he might eat ‘cryspes’. These are strands of deep-fried flour batter, which would have been served hot and crunchy, perhaps dusted with a little sugar and spice. He would be more likely to drink wine with his food rather than ale.

At Framlingham Castle itself, breakfast would have followed the same pattern as the above i.e. a quick snack, seen as useful to those about to embark on hard labour, a necessity for the infirm and children, and an indulgence to those not so burdened. The main meal would be late morning and would consist of several courses, but by no means be gargantuan. The first course might consist of baked custards of eggs and cream, boiled beef and chicken, roast goose and roast sucking pig, bacon with peas. People would not be expected to have something of everything (although they might), but to choose from the dishes put on the table. The next course would be more of the similar. This time there might be frumenty, a type of spiced porridge made with wheat grains, that was often served with venison. It was often made with almond milk in aristocratic households. Almond milk was made by soaking ground almonds in water and then squeezing them through a cloth to produce a mild, almost sweetish nut milk. If there is one ingredient that runs throughout medieval middle and high status cookery, it is this item. There might be roast rabbit, or a stew made with beef, heavily flavoured with black pepper and cumin, (the two most frequently used spices. Rents were sometimes paid in pepper or cumin) and tasting not unlike the flavour today of Chilli con carne. There would be fritters (batter with perhaps fruit inside, or cheese). There would be spiced fruit, bread and cheeses. Finally would come spiced cakes and wafers, served with drinks such as mead and morap (a kind of sweet mulberry wine).

The evening meal would again be of less importance and more in the way of a filling snack, the same as the other two. Something else we have to take into account when looking back from our modern, well lit perspective is, that come sunset, light to cook by was going to go down to candles and firelight, and the cook wouldn’t want to be organising complex banquets while hardly being able to see what he was chopping and stirring!

In conclusion, Medieval food was a lot more varied than we often think. Lower status people had to eat what they could get and were always looking over their shoulders in fear of starvation. The middle and higher status folk had more choice when it came to luxury foods. Their diets contained a lot more meat and were often enlivened by spices and more exotic commodities.

I would like to thank Ms. Chadwick for this wonderful post on the eating habits of the medieval classes. Sounds like it might not have been too bad if it wasn’t a time of war or famine. Tomorrow I will have my review of To Defy a King and as a bonus a recipe for Cryspes provided by Ms. Chadwick.

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Guest Post from Elizabeth Chadwick, author of To Defy a King

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