User:Peter Isotalo/rewrite
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[edit] The Church
It is the nature of man to build up the most complicated cage of rules and regulations in which to trap himself, and then, with equal ingenuity and zest, to bend his brain to the problem of wriggling triumphantly out again. Lent was a challenge; the game was to ferret out the loopholes.[1]
- 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] Feasts
- banquets could consist 2-20 courses/servings of several dishes each; banquets were hugely inflated meals with subtleties marking one course from another[2]
- hand-washing water scented with sage, camomile, marjoram, rosemary, orange peel, bay-laurel leaf[3]
- wild meat proportion uncertain and most likely small, when preparing for feasts, game orders would be less precise than domestic meat, as "much as possible"[4]
[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] Meats
- blablabla [5]
[edit] Fish and seafood
- recipes for pike, pickerel, barbel, bass, carp, perch, trench, bream, roach, loach, chub, eel, trout, pimpernel, waymel, small fry, lamprill, lampern, bleak, crayfish, fresh-water shad, dace, gardon, porpoise, gurnard, conger, whiting, dogfish, mackerel, salmon, gray mullet, cod, haddock, whale, garfish, brett, coalfish, salmon trout, sea shad, seal, smelt, sturgeon, cuttlefish, oysters, cockles, mussels, lobster, lamprey, red gurnard, also skate plaice, limanda (dab), sole, rayfish, turbot, hake, flounder, etc[6]
[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)[7]
- perry (poiré) from pear juice, fresh or fermented; prunellé from wild plums, blackthorn berry, sloeberry (esp. pop. in England/France): survived as slivovitz; pomegranate juice/wine from strained seeds pop. in Italy; kumis, fermented milk drink (of mares and camels), known in Europe mainly for medicinal purposes[8]
[edit] Distillates
- believed to be "a mysterious sublimation of matter"[9]
- as varied in usage as spiced wines and wine syrups; profane, non-med uses include usage for "English claret and spiced ale"[10]
- However, in the Middle Ages, grapes were grown everywhere possible, even in areas where no one would think to plant them nowadays. For instance, in France, the region around Paris was famous for its wine, although today grape growing has been almost completely abandoned there (the remaining vines are mostly symbolic), and the local wine produced is considered to be of very low quality.[11]
[edit] Herbs and spices
- Use in Italian cuisine?
- 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[12]
- few recipes (all over Europe) with just one spice[13]
