Food and Drink in Medieval England and my Saracen Stew

If you've ever attended a medieval festival or dined at a "medieval" feast, you've probably had your fair share of giant roasted turkey legs, "Viking ale," and faux dragon eggs. As one article describes it, the food at these events "is the culinary equivalent of the classic stereotype that casts medieval people as belching, rugged simpletons." 

What many people fail to realize is that the Battle of Hastings in 1066 brought more than Norman swords—it brought Norman cookery as well. These conquerors were men and women who had traveled far beyond Europe, and they brought foods and cooking techniques with them from the far East and South. In the Middle Ages we begin to see the formation of a truly “English” cuisine, characterized by complex and colorful recipes, a love of meat, and exotic spices.

Medieval Myths

ready to make soup, a photo by hans s on Flickr.

There are several popular myths about English cuisine in the Middle Ages:

1. It was completely rustic. This is an era before egg slicers, right? Therefore, medieval food had to be little more than meat on a spit, perhaps accompanied by some overcooked veggies from the cauldron. Wrong!  Medieval feasts were spectacles for the eyes as well as the tongue. Sometimes peacocks were skinned, cooked, and then slipped back into their skins for the sake of an elegant presentation. Medieval chefs adored brightly colored foods and utilized saffron, sandalwood, rosewater, and other colorful ingredients for the sake of creating beautiful dishes.  
2. It was bland. The Medieval English loved their spices, and much of the food at this time was heavily influenced by Eastern cuisine, complete with expensive seasonings imported from the Orient: nutmeg, mace, cloves, grains of paradise, ginger, saffron, cinnamon, and sugar. The Middle Ages produced such remarkably complex dishes as sage and onion ravioli, meat jelly poached in spiced white wine, veal stew thickened with rice flour, nut tarts with saffron and spices, and pottage made from almond milk, sugar, and rose petals. Does that sound bland to you?
3. Much of their meat was rotten. The alternative to the "bland medieval" view is that their food was terribly over-spiced in order to cover up the taste of rotting meat. This is just silly. Medieval men and women would have fallen ill from eating ruined meat, just as we do today, not to mention the fact that they did have effective ways of preserving food that our refrigerator-reliant generation wouldn't know about. This is just a piece of chronological snobbery that really steams me up (if you couldn't tell). 

The Hierarchy of Bread and Lenten Eggs

So, now that we have a few of those myths out of the way, let's move on to something that the medieval English really did eat. To be perfectly evenhanded, the fancy dishes described above would not have been the norm for most people. Bread, pottage, salted meat, and fish were stables for all social classes. The quality of these foods varied greatly, however. Hierarchy was incredibly important to the medieval mind, and this social philosophy extended into the realm of food. For example, the bread of the wealthy was white and fluffy, while peasants ate coarse rye loaves.

One of the most fascinating aspects of food during this era is the fasting days. The church required people to abstain from eating animals for at least one day per week, and this meant that cooks had to come up with incredibly intricate dishes to liven up their diet. During Lent, for example, they would create “eggs” made of blown egg shells filled with spiced sweet almond milk—some of it colored bright yellow and some left white—layered in the shell to mimic a real egg. Meat may have been off the menu, but delicacies were still enjoyed.

making soup, a photo by hans s on Flickr.

Saracen Stew

The oldest English cookbook we've discovered is called The Forme of Cury, and it was developed by King Richard II’s head cook  in the 1200s. I decided to take the plunge and recreate a dish from this ancient piece of parchment: Bruet of Sarcynesse, or “Saracen Stew.” What makes this dish “Saracen”? The most obvious answer is the spices, but the cooking method is also Eastern. Rather than follow the old Anglo-Saxon method of preparing meat—boiling it in a cauldron of liquid—the chunks of meat are first seared to lock in the juices and then slowly simmered in wine.

Here is the original recipe from The Forme of Cury:

For to mak a Bruet of Sarcynesse—Tak the lyre of the fresch Buf and bet it al in pecis and bred and fry yt in fresch gres tak it up and and drye it and do yt in a vessel wyth wyn and sugur and powdre of clowys boyle yt togedere tyl the flesch have drong the liycoure and take the almande mylk and quibibz macis and clowys and boyle hem togedere tak the flesch and do thereto and messe it forth.

This is actually a rather basic dish; the hardest part is knowing when your beef has cooked tender before it gets tough. Despite the use of so many spices, the flavors are subtle. A few spoonfuls of this saucy meat would be a wonderful accompaniment to sautéed string beans with almonds, buttery noodles, or pears poached in wine.

What are your preconceived ideas about the Middle Ages? Have you learned anything new?

Bruet of Sarcynesse
This modern redaction was inspired by a recipe found in the book Pleyn Delit: Medieval Cookery

INGREDIENTS:

• 2 lbs. boneless stewing beef (cut into chunks)
• 1/2 cup breadcrumbs (about 4 slices of dry bread, finely ground)
• 1/4 cup oil or butter 
• 1 cup red wine
• 1 tbsp. sugar
• 1/2 tsp. cloves
• 1/2 tsp. ground allspice
• 1/2 tsp. pepper
• 1 tsp. mace
• 1 tsp. salt
• almond milk (to serve)

METHOD:

1. Heat oil in a pan until very hot, then roll the chunks of meat in breadcrumbs and sear on all sides, just until brown. Place your meat on paper towels to soak up any excess oil.
2. Place your meat in another pot with wine, sugar, and half of the cloves (1/4 tsp.). Cover and gently simmer for about 40 minutes. 
3. When done, the meat should have “drunk the liquor” and not much wine will be left. If there is more than a couple spoonfuls in the pot, boil uncovered until it has reduced.
4. Add the rest of the spices and some almond milk, then “messe it forth!”

If you liked this post, you'll love my eBook, Cooks and Queens. Get it now to find out more about what the Middle Ages were really like, and to find out how to make wine poached pears the medieval way!

Sources:
Spencer, Colin. British Food: An Extraordinary Thousand Years of History. New York: Columbia UP, 2003.

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