FOOD & DRINK

MEDIEVAL FOOD

Traditionally, two meals were eaten every day. Breakfast would usually consist of soup, and the main meal in the evening would consist of more soup followed by fish and vegetables. Meat was only eaten by the wealthy, and then only about once a week. The very wealthy, such as nobles and powerful priests (and in role-playing games, powerful magicians and highly successful adventurers) could afford a considerably wider and more varied diet.

Through the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, bacon, beef, pork, chicken and eggs became increasingly part of the diet. The common cereals were corn and millet and were eaten in the form of bread, cakes or dumplings.

The culinary arts, in so far as they existed at all, consisted of mainly of the skill of producing sauces, which were used widely with meats, and to a lesser extent with other foods. Salt was also a valuable commodity, as was honey, which at the time was the only sweetener. Pastry was very crumbly, since it did not include any butter.

Food was generally cooked in pots hanging from chains or supported on tripods.

RENAISSANCE FOOD

By the sixteenth century, it was relatively common, although by no means the rule, to have an additional, third, meal, at midday. Spoons were also becoming more popular as cutlery, although there were as yet no forks.

Buckwheat, oatmeal and turnips were all introduced into the diet in the fifteenth century. One meal often eaten by the poor in the Renaissance was dredge corn, which consists of a mixture of barley, oats and rye eaten while still green. Cress, radishes, carrots and parsnips also made an appearance. Pasta was a sixteenth century innovation.

Simple cooking fires were to some extent replaced by stoves. Spits for cooking meat were often mechanised with dogs or servants being used to operate wheels while winded them round.

Besides pickling, fish can now also be preserved by first salting it and then placing it in a very smoky room. The result is known as a 'kipper' because of its coppery colouring.

Sugar was known as an alternative to honey, but was still too expensive to be popular.

Coffee was discovered in the fifteenth century, supposedly by a goat-herd who observed that his charges stayed up all night after eating the seeds of a certain bush!

ALCOHOLIC DRINKS

Wine and ale were the predominant drinks during the middle ages. They were certainly a lot safer to drink than water.

Wine was often sweetened by the addition of must, and was generally a drink for the relatively wealthy. Verjuice, a wine made from unripe fruit, was used for cooking.

Beer was the drink of the less well off, and beer-yeast was often used to leaven bread. In the early middle ages beer was unflavoured, but in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, three additives were introduced. Heather was the first beer flavouring to be used, with the later alternatives being hops (which was also used as a vegetable) and a mixture of rosemary, bog-myrtle and yarrow called 'gruit'. By the sixteenth century, only hops was still in use. Unflavoured beer was generally called 'ale', although this specific meaning has since been lost.

Cider and perry (pear-cider) became popular in the fourteenth century, although mostly among the poor. An even cheaper alternative was depense, which was made from sliced apples and grapes.

Distilled spirits became available in the fifteenth century. Gin was the most popular of these, while brandy was another, slightly later, invention. In warm climates, a very sweet spirit called rosoglio was produced from raisins and sundew. In some areas, distilled cereals were used to produce whiskey.