User:Peter Isotalo/rewrite

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Contents 1 Dietary norms 1.1 The Church 1.2 Humoral theory 2 Meals 2.1 Everyday meals 2.2 Feasts and banquets 2.3 Etiquette 3 Fruit, nuts and vegetables 4 Drink/Beverages 4.1 Beer and ale 4.2 Other beverages 4.3 Destillates 5 Herbs and spices 6 Notes

[edit] Dietary norms

Main article: Medieval dietetics

• digestion seen as cooking (stomach as cooking pot); easily digested foods go first, followed by subsequently heavier food; if violated, the heavy foods would sink and block the digestion tract (?) and cause putrification and gen. nastiness; never mix foods of different properties^[1]
• stomach should be opened with an apertif (lat. aperire "to open"); confections of seeds of anise, caraway, fennel, cumin steeped in honey/sugar or wine, sweetened milk drinks
• stomach should be closed with a digestive; medieval dragée, spiced sugar(/honey?) or hipocras^[2]

[edit] The Church

[edit] Humoral theory

• Redon et al. suggest the following outline for a typical banquet: begin with fruit or salad to "open" the stomach (acid foods), were followed by potages and brewets that would take a long time to "cook" in the stomach, then roast meat, then a pause for entertainment, a sweet dessert, and cheese/preserved fruit/small cakes with hypocras to "close" the stomach again.

[edit] Meals

• hand-washing water scented with sage, camomile, marjoram, rosemary, orange peel, bay-laurel leaf^[3]
• banquets could consist 2-20 courses/servings of several dishes each; banquets were hugely inflated meals with subtleties marking one course from another^[4]
• order of dishes determined by digestibility; start with fruit like apples; follow up with lettuce, cabbage, purslane, peas and etc. "herbs", moist fruits, light meats (chicks, chicken, kid), pottages and broths come first; later on, heavy fruits like pears, chestnuts and heavy meats (beef, pork); finish with cheese commonly recommended^[5]
• dessert usually just dragées, hipocras, but by LMA could be fruit fresh or dried in sugar/honey syrup, boiled-down pastes; often spices are included; also various fritters, crêpes with sugar, or sweet custards, especially dariol; milk (usually almond milk) and eggs in a pastry shell, could include fruit, bone-marrow or fish^[6]

• They also mention that part of the reason men were expected to help women was that only men would be expected to know how to carve.

[edit] Everyday meals

[edit] Feasts and banquets

[edit] Etiquette

[edit] Fruit, nuts and vegetables

• The section on fruit and vegetables should probably mention that while medieval cooking lacked the New World vegetables we are familiar with today, it often contained a variety of herbs and greens that have largely fallen out of favor today: borage, pellitory-of-the-wall, and whatnot.

[edit] Drink/Beverages

[edit] Beer and ale

• Mediterrenan (and Arab) influence favored wine, olive oil (camel's milk, gazelle meat) made beer deprecated^[7]
• beer was an acceptable alternative, but usually not more, claimed to lead to longer intoxication Sienese Aldobrandino: "But from whichever it [the beer] is made, wheter from oats, barley or wheat, it harms the head and the stomach, it causes bad breath and ruins the teeth, it fills the stomach with bad fumes, and as a result anyone who drinks it along with wine becomes drunk quickly; but it does have the property of facilitating urination and makes one's flesh white and smooth.", on the other hand beer did not creat "false thirst", like wine^[8]
• the table drink in England, Lowlands, Germanic states (Scandinavia?) and was drunk by noble/royal courts as well, towns with hundreds of breweries in Lowlands; England had ale, Lowlands beer, latter became more popular in England by the end of the MA, hops used in Lowlands for "hundreds of years" before 1525 (introduction in England), godale in France (barley, spelt, no hops); poset ale from hot milk and cold ale, spiced ale (brakot, braggot) similar to hipocras or claret^[9]

[edit] Other beverages

• mead often made without alcohol, just water and honey boiled, more elaborate recipes in Germanic states, similar to n. France (usually fermented and with spices), wound up as an almost totally medicinal drink by LMA^[10]
• juices and wines of various fruits known since Roman antiquity: perry, cotignac from medlars or quince, wines from pomegranate and mulberry/blackberry; cider (from pears or apples) popular in northern parts; perry (poiré) from pear juice, fresh or fermented; prunellé from wild plums, blackthorn berry, sloeberry (esp. pop. in England/France): survived as slivovitz, mulberry gin and blackberry wine; pomegranate juice/wine from strained seeds pop. in Italy; kumis, fermented milk drink (of mares and camels), known in Europe mainly for medicinal purposes^[11]

[edit] Destillates

• syrups of boiled down wine used in cooking and as medicine (potion for sick), often mixed with sugar/honey and spices^[12]
• destillation practiced from 800 BC by Chinese on rice, known by ancient Greeks and Romans, known in Eur. since 1st, but not practiced in scale until after 8th and 12th (water cooling around the head of the alembic) after influence by Arabic techniques; at first referred to as aqua vitae "water of life", a generic term for all destillates and believed to be "a mysterious sublimation of matter"; initially only a product of monasteries and homes, but by LME commercially produced^[13]
• as varied in usage as spiced wines and wine syrups; profane, non-med uses include usage for "English claret and spiced ale" and for fire-breathing subtleties; renowned physician Arnaldus of Villanova wrote 1309: "It prolongs good health, dissipates superfluous humours, reanimates the heart and maintains youth.";^[14]
• moonshine existed in LMed Germany by the 13th as Hausbrand; apothecaries sold destillations at markets, sick or well; Nürnberg regulated that apoth. were principal tradesmen in refined alcohol (brandy: gebrannter wein, bernewein, brandwein); purchased by all classes ^[15]
• 1496 Nürnberg had restrictions on on selling of aquavit on Sundays and official holidays; had become ingrained in general population by the close of the period^[16]
• rose water was also refined for medicine, cooking and perfume by LMA^[17]

[edit] Herbs and spices

• Use in Italian cuisine?

• spices for spoiled meat = myth; good variety of domestic meat and game, fresh- and salt water fish, good preservation methods; potentates too picky to allow rotten flesh ^[18]
• domination of pepper until 14th century, saffron & sugar; also ginger, cinnamon, cloves, grains of p, long pepper, mace, spikenard, galingale, nutmeg, cumin; sage, parsley, herb bennet, sorrel, vine sprouts, currants, newly sprouted wheat as green colorants^[19]
• few recipes (all over Europe) with just one spice^[20]

[edit] Notes