FRENCH BREAD HISTORY: Late medieval bread

This is the fourth in a series of posts on the history of French bread. The preceding post was on early medieval bread; the next one is on late medieval bread outside Paris. Further information on bread history can be found on Facebook in the Bread History Lounge.- If you want to MAKE medieval bread, click here.

Around the time of the First Crusade (1096–1099), French mentions of bread began to reflect something taken for granted today: variety.

A modern French bakery presents a visual experience that is almost musical in its contrast of long baguettes with round pains de compagne, torpedo-like bâtards, braids, croissants, etc. For centuries, such variety has, to a greater or lesser extent, been typical of French bread bakeries, even when the bakeries themselves were (until the nineteenth century) rustic and sparse. But this variety has developed over time and only begins to appear in records in the late Middle Ages. After the Romans and before the Crusades, mentions of bread are repetitive and monotonous and only scattered images suggest any variety at all.

This was probably all the more true in the century before the Crusades, when Hugh Capet (c. 940-966) founded the last major French dynasty. Overall, the Capetians (whose reign ended with Louis XVI) ruled a more sophisticated and settled France than the two dynasties before them. But soon after their reign began, France experienced some of the worst famines in its history. Claims of cannibalism, of human meat sold in markets, have been questioned, but there is no doubt times became dire in the tenth century. Ironically, some scholars believe that the very desperation of this period spurred improvements in agriculture. Whatever the case, even if famines and shortages would recur throughout French history, nothing like the horrors of this period are mentioned after it.

For many, simply getting bread was problematic.

A rare glimpse at what variations did exist at this point comes from the Abbey of Cluny, where monks used hand signals at meals in order not to talk. These are believed to date to the tenth century, though they are mainly documented slightly later. A round bread of one pound was indicated by thumb and index finger touching in a circle; a “better bread” (panis melior) was indicated by making a hollow with one hand, and “pouring” with the other, suggesting that this was a type of bread poached in water (like the later eschaudés). Other signs show a rye bread (turta) divided into four parts with a cross and a tortula, possibly a bread cooked on the hearth. This is a narrow range of variations and most were already known in the early Middle Ages (though this may be one of the first references since Roman times to a poached bread).

By the thirteenth century, if many records still referred to "bread" without description or qualification, bread was no longer just a generic term; there were already, as today, various breads, intended for different uses and purposes. If the soccer-ball like shape seen in innumerable medieval images remained the standard bread, the names at least of different breads were recorded and very probably some, though unknown to us, had different forms.

In the seventeenth century, the great philologist Du Cange (1610-1688) included a long list of breads in his Latin glossary, drawing on various histories, charters, donations, etc. He does not give dates for all of these and no doubt many of his sources have disappeared since. What is more, it is rare that his sources provide anything more than the name of each bread, so that it is often impossible to know exactly what each term corresponded to and whether different terms from different sources in fact refer to the same bread. Still, what can be gleaned from Du Cange's glossary shows that different terms for breads already appeared in documentation around the time of the Crusades.

One of his terms, panis asper, comes from Rudolph Glaber, the same historian who recorded some of the dramatic accounts of tenth century famines. Glaber writes more specifically of panemque admodum asperum; that is, very rough or harsh bread. Du Cange takes this to mean black or bran bread.

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Here in a somewhat summary fashion are references from Du Cange going into the late Middle Ages:

1050 Panes Coronati [Crown Breads] – Perhaps a circular bread?

1106 Panis Ecclesiaticus [Church Bread] – Probably a finer bread

1130 Panis de Cambio [Trade or Exchange Bread] – This was a rye bread used as a kind of currency (in Italy): “In northern Italy, bread loaves of a determined size (panis de cambio, exchangeable bread) were ascribed a specific monetary value as fractions of the gold coin, thus making up for the lack of coins usable for small transactions.” (Postan)

1188, 1214 Panis Natalitius [Nativity bread] (also tourte)

1190, 1209 Panes Curiales [Meeting or Banquet Bread]

1201 Panis de Mait [“trough or tub bread”]- The name suggests one of a number of breads which were poached in water, though it might simply have been made in a tub, presumably in larger quantities.

1224 Panis de Paribus [“Equals' Bread”] - A shared bread, apparently.

1235 Panis Emendationis [“Compensation Bread”] - Given as payment to a worker. and so very likely to have been made of rye, barley or maslin.

1242 Panis Biscotus [“Twice-cooked Bread”] - Biscuit, basically (but this had already existed for some time).

1248 Panis Falsus [“False Bread”] - Not of statutory weight or form.

1248 Panis Panetarie [“Storehouse Bread”]

1248, 1270 Panis Militis/Armigerorum [“Soldier/Squire's Bread”] - This was probably an inferior, bran-heavy bread as was true of later military breads.

1254, 1270 Panis Conventualis [“Conventual or Meeting Bread”]

1271 Panes Festi [“Holiday Bread”] - Probably a finer bread.

1284 Panis de Aula [“Hall Bread”] - For the abbot or guests of an abbey; thus finer.

1291 Panis Francicus [“Frank/Frankish Bread”] - Apparently a finer bread, possibly even a pastry.

1296 Panis Medianus [“Middling Bread”] - Probably between dark and the finest bread.

1303 Panis Foliati [“Leafed Bread”] - Puff pastry, or something very like it.

1308 Panis Orationis Sancte [“Bread of Holy Prayer”] - Possibly a Communion wafer, which would later be called (among other things) a “bread for singing” (the Mass, that is).

1309 Panis Paganus ['Village or Peasant Bread:”] - Du Cange says this was bread made by peasants; probably of barley or rye.

1339 Panis Focagii [“Hearth Bread”, foccacio] – Bread made on the hearth; this was known by a variety of names – fouace, fougasse, etc. - all corruptions of the Latin for hearth bread. However, the term was soon used for a finer white bread that was probably oven-baked, so its meaning is never certain.

1392 Panis Ferratus [“Iron Bread”] - Wafers or waffles; that is, bread made between two hot irons.

1460 Panis Moly [“Softish Bread”, corruption of pain mollet] - A very fine white bread which in later centuries would be the first to be leavened with yeast instead of sour dough.

Note that it is  relatively rare here to indicate anything particular in the making of each bread. Most of these breads are named for the circumstances under which they would be used and many may have been the typical ball-shaped bread made more or less fine. But even this variety in the names is a new development at this point.

And now, the BOOK:

Before the Baguette: The History of French Bread

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John de Garland's Dictionary

John de Garland (Johannes de Garlandia) (c. 1190? - c. 1270?), an Englishman who lived and taught in Paris, left a curious dictionary which gives an overview of Parisian trades in the thirteenth century. He says that bakers at that point sold bread of wheat, rye, barley, oats, maslin (mixed grain) and bran, but says nothing of specific loaves. Still it is interesting that such a range of grains was used for bakers' bread; whether they were used or not, most are not named in subsequent statutes, etc. Barley and rye were more typically used for servants' bread; oats are rarely named for bread at all.

He also describes regrattiers (resellers or grocers) selling items which a period commentator glossed: placente (usually "pastries" or "cakes") said to be simenians (that is simnel, a very fine white bread still found in England much later); flammicia, or flamiches, today a tart, a regional specialty, but apparently a bread or pastry then; ignacia, said to be fouace, which originally was a hearth bread, but is sometimes cited in ways that suggest it was something finer in this period. (He does not however say which professionals made these.)

If these glosses are accurate, they show that several items were made which were still known in later centuries, but rarely mentioned in documents of this period. It also suggests that bakers sold some items not named in statutes, though Garland's observations also precede Boileau's 1268 statutes, which may simply have eliminated certain items from the bakers' repertoire.

Bread in statutes

Municipal statutes for bakers first record which breads were in standard use in cities. These above all were the ancestors of the baguette, the pain de campagne and other breads found in Paris bakeries today.

When Boileau wrote down statutes for the different trades in 1268, he began by addressing the tameliers (“sifters”) who were the first municipal bakers. At this point, the standard size for a bread seems to have a denier's worth (neither the weight nor the quality of the flour are mentioned). This is sometimes referred to as a denrée ("good", as in "goods"), though the term is also used in a way that suggests a unit or an item. The loaf twice the size, a doubleau, sold for two deniers; one half the size, a demie ("half"), sold for an obole (that is, half a denier). Normally, it was forbidden to make a bread larger than a doubleau, unless it was a gastel (cake) made for special occasions (early uses of the word gastel/gâteau imply a special bread rather than a sweet cake). It is striking that the statute also mentions echaudés, “of which one can give 14 denrées for 12 deniers” (the implication seeming to be that these were roughly the size of a standard loaf, but could be made slightly smaller). This bread/pastry has existed in various forms since this time, but above all is characterized by being poached (like a dumpling). It may be the bread dipped in water referenced at Cluny. It would already become less common under the Old Regime, but at this point seems to have been counted as one of the more common breads.

Note that there is nothing here about the weight, quality of the flour, or degree of fineness (bran extraction) of each bread. The bread in commerce, at least, seems to have been roughly standard in its make-up and the Parisian consumer initially had very narrow choices.

The statute's restrictions on price (the first since Charlemagne) assume a correspondence between weight and price, so the statute, rather than forbidding false weight directly, forbids sales under certain prices. Three doubliaux normally sold for six deniers; they could not be sold for more, nor for less than five oboles (that is, two and a half deniers). Breads normally sold for twelve deniers (presumably in quantity) could not be sold for less than eleven.

The largest of these was sold by three; the denrée was sold by the dozen or half-dozen. In giving a discount of one obole on a half-dozen or a denier on a dozen, the tamelier effectively offered a thirteenth bread for each dozen; that is, what English-speakers would later call a “baker's dozen”.

The price of breads sold in shops was carefully controlled. More leeway was allowed on price on market days, as long as the doubleau did not cost more than two deniers. This marginal freedom resulted in its being called a pote loaf, "pote" being from the Latin word for power or "being able to".

Note that these were the breads in commerce. In households, for instance, servants no doubt still got bread of rye, barley or maslin.

Boileau's statutes also mention bakers from outside Paris. The medieval French word fors (now hors) means “except” or “outside of” and these bakers were called boulangers forains. Parisian bakers objected to these “outsiders” selling bread in Paris and the statutes limit them to selling rejected or damaged bread and then only on Sundays. Some towns beyond Paris had a more specific reputation. The fourteenth century Menagier de Paris mentions bread from Corbeil (today a major metro stop) as inferior (and so dark). Bread from Chilly (today Chilly-Mazarin) was known as “bread of Chailly” [sic] and considered finer and whiter.

In 1305, Philip the Fair established statutes for the bakers. But though these prescribed punishments for making defective bread, they gave no details at all on the proper weight or price of bread. In 1350, John II (John the Good) was the first to do this. These statutes make it clear that in the decades since Boileau's statutes, bread-baking had developed in ways they did not address. Not only had pain de Chailly gained a good reputation, the term was now used for the finest bread made in Paris itself. What is more, bread was now priced by quality.

The new statutes established a hierarchy which would be found, under different names, throughout France and for most of the Old Regime: fine bread, the whitest sold; a good but less fine bread, typically that of the greater part of the population; and a dark bread for the poorest people. The 1350 statutes name these, respectively, as pain de Chailly, pain coquillé and pain bis. Coquille simply means “shell” and the term would later refer to a swollen crust; in the seventeenth century, Cotgrave defined pain coquillé as "a kind of hard-crusted bread, whose loafs do somewhat resemble the Dutch Buns of our Rhenish Wine houses." In this case, however, it seems simply to have referred to a bread of average quality, between the best and the worst; in later centuries this would be called bis-blanc (“dark-white”). Pain bis means “dark bread” and would be the term most commonly used for poor quality bread.

Note that echaudés are no longer mentioned, though bakers were still making these in 1438 (Bourgeois de Paris).

The price of bread would later vary for the same size loaf, but at this point it was the weight of the loaf which varied, while the price (a denier or a multiple of it) remained constant. As an example, when a septier of wheat cost forty sols, the statute specified:

The dough for a Chailly bread of one denier weighs five ounces, and baked four ounces, five estellins [20th of an ounce]. The dough for bread of two deniers [that is, the old doubleau] weighs ten ounces, and baked six ounces, five estellins.

The dough of bread of one denier coquillé weighs six ounces five estellins; and baked five ounces and a half...

The dough of dark bread of one denier weighs nine ounces and a half; and the baked bread eight ounces.

As the price of the septier varied, the weight of a one or two denier bread was to vary with it.

Apparently bakers only approximately followed these guidelines and in 1372 Charles VI issued new statutes. These were very similar, but the three types of bread were now pain de Chailly, pain bourgeois and pain faitis, also known as pain de Brode.

In the eighteenth century, Le Grand d'Aussy wrote that pain bourgeois (city-dweller or burgher's bread) was the same as the pain de ménage (“household bread”), of his own time. Faitis simply means “made”, though it can also mean “fake” or “fraudulent” (like the modern French word factice). Why the term was used for dark bread is not clear, but at any rate pain bis would remain the preferred term over time (pain de Brode may have taken on a slightly different meaning, later being made from a mix of rye with wheat flour). For over a century, however, these were the standard Parisian terms for the three qualities of bread.

An exception appeared in 1420, when times were desperate and Charles VI ordered that bakers only make two kinds of bread: white and brown. The white was to be made of wheat; the brown of wheat combined with “mixed” méteil (maslin) flour which is then explicitly said to contain either rye or barley flour. What is more, these are set at a pound, or multiples or fractions thereof, the white selling at twenty deniers a pound and the brown at sixteen. A similar statute appeared in 1420, but referring to white, brown and rye bread separately. (Rye bread was rarely mentioned in early statutes; its inclusion here shows how bad times were.)

In this same difficult period, a type of bread briefly appeared called pain armé (“armed bread”) which was made from wheat as it came from the mill, without being bolted or otherwise cleaned. Bread of this sort was made at different times from both wheat and rye flour. In 1419, a decree noted that this “bread was not agreeable to the people, because it was brown, and they were not used to using such bread” - an early note of how demanding the Parisian populace could be about its bread, even in hard times.

Otherwise, towards the end of the Middle Ages, the main breads in commerce were fine white bread (pain de Chailly), average quality bread (pain bourgeois) and dark bread (pain bis, faitis or de Brode). These were not the only breads produced in the time. But this trinity was the ancestor of the far more varied selection in today's Parisian bakeries.

Pain de bouche and trenchers

In fine households, two types of bread in particular were used: pain de bouche (“mouth bread”) and trenchers. Pain de bouche may have been nothing more than pain de Chailly (in or near Paris, at least), or it might have been an even finer bread made by the household baker; no details survive to be sure either way. Nor is it sure why the term was used. One source claims it was made at the mouth of the oven, but it seems more likely that it was used to contrast it with the bread that was NOT for the mouth (that is, not to be eaten): the trencher.

The idea of people eating off trenchers is so associated with the Middle Ages that it may come as a surprise to know that the concept only appeared towards the end of the period (and did not persist for long after it); it is very unlikely that Charlemagne or even Hugh Capet ate off trenchers. The English term is a corruption of the French tranchoir; that is, “slicer”, from the verb trancher (“to slice”); a trencher served as surface on which to carve and eat one's portion. A trencher did not have to be made of bread; it could be, for instance, a silver dish. Why or how the idea appeared of using hardened bread for this purpose is unknown.

We have a clear idea of how at least some trenchers were made, thanks to the Menagier de Paris, which says to order bread “a half foot wide and four fingers high, baked four days before” for that purpose. (Note that an order for white bread suggests that it be a day old.) Alternately, it says to use Corbeil bread, which is to say, dark and inferior bread. But a 1336 record for a regional prince says that four small one pound breads are to be used for slicing. A regional record from the early fifteenth century says that rye flour was to be used to make trenchers, but these were for prisoners and appear to have been intended to eat (Aube).

The concept then was varied, but in general referred to hard plates of bread used for slicing. Exactly how hard is open to question; until the late sixteenth century, French bakers generally used sourdough as a leavening and sourdough leavened bread can stay fresh far longer than yeast-leavened bread. (The Menagier specifically contrasts the leavening used for beer – that is, yeast – with the leavening used for bread.) So even a four-day old bread might have remained somewhat edible.

Describing a rich man's meal, a poem from 1475 says that the poor:

get the trenchers of bread

which remain upon the table.

Ils ont tranchouers
Qui demeurent du pain dessus la table

Martial d'Auvergne, Les Vigiles de Charles VII

This brief verse may be the source of the idea that trenchers, soaked in sauce from the food, were given to the poor after the meal. While this was ultimately true, the trenchers may first have been gathered in an alms plate and stored before being distributed. Also, if the breads were indeed as hard as is sometimes thought, it is not clear that they would have imbibed much of the sauces on them.

Shells, wafers and pastries

In this period too, French pastry began to appear as a separate product. As references to things like gastel (now gateau) show, bread-bakers at first made products later associated with sweet baked goods. The Romans and Greeks had had pastries (often made with cheese and/or honey), but the idea seems to have faded in France long before the Crusades. It reappeared from two very different directions: making wafers and making pasties.

Pasties were nothing more than shells of dough which held food. In England, these were known as pies, even if the French word pasté (meaning “doughed”) also became “pasty” in English. For those who know this period, they are so universal a feature of medieval cooking that a question may never arise: how did Europeans have the idea of making shells out of dough? It is tempting to trace this innovation, like so many after the Crusades, to the East. But it is also true that by this period the flan (which had begun as a flatcake) was essentially a pastry shell holding cream or cheese and there is some evidence that over time the flat flan had initially gained low sides (like a pizza) which later rose to form a bowl.

That history remains obscure, but what is clear is that at some point making pastés became known as pastisserie – that is, pastry – and those who made them pastissiers (pastry-makers; or, in English, pie-men). But for a very long time pastry-makers did not make sweets, except incidentally; they made anything (usually meat or fish) served in a pastry shell.

Yet a light (if not necessarily sweet) baked item did exist in this period, and had since before the Crusades: the wafer. This frequently appears on menus, along with or in the place of fruit, as dessert. What's more, by now what had been a simple secular variant of the Communion wafer was made in varied forms which are also cited on such menus. The maistre (“master”) may have been a larger wafer, made with white wine in the dough or it may have simply been a service of wafers. The nieule – known in Latin as a nebula, or cloud – was a lighter wafer (though some texts make it synonymous with the latter).

These humble waffle-like treats (they were made between hot irons) along with the more dessert-like pastry shell dishes such as a flan were the ancestors of what would, over time, become French pastry. But at this point it was the oubloyeurs (wafer-makers) who made oublies (wafers) and so their role in the period was closer to that pastry-makers would hold in the future.

Other innovations

Two references from this period shows that the French were already making what they call “leafed dough” (pâte feuilletée) and what English speakers call “puff pastry” (or, more technically, “laminated dough”). Recall the 1303 mention cited by Du Cange of Panis Foliati. A charter from 1311 mentions gasteaux feuillés. In modern French this would be a “leafed cake”, but gateau still had a more ambivalent meaning at this point and this may still have been a kind of bread. Various explanations have been offered for how this technique – so central today to products like the croissant - first came to France. It might have been an Arab technique which made its way up from Spain. A thirteenth century Andulusian recipe book includes this recipe for “leafy” (muwarraqa) musammana:

Preparation of Musammana [Buttered] Which Is Muwarraqa [Leafy]

Take pure semolina or wheat flour and knead a stiff dough without yeast. Moisten it little by little and don't stop kneading it... until it relaxes and is ready and is softened so that you can stretch a piece without severing it. Then put it in a new frying pan on a moderate fire. When the pan has heated, take a piece of the dough and roll it out thin on marble or a board. Smear it with melted clarified butter or fresh butter liquified over water. Then roll it up like a cloth until it becomes like a reed. Then twist it and beat it with your palm until it becomes like a round thin bread, and if you want, fold it over also. Then roll it out and beat it with your palm a second time until it becomes round and thin. Then put it in a heated frying pan after you have greased the frying pan with clarified butter, and whenever the clarified butter dries out, moisten [with butter] little by little, and turn it around until it binds, and then take it away and make more until you finish the amount you need. Then pound them between your palms and toss on butter and boiling honey. When it has cooled, dust it with ground sugar and serve it.

But in France the brief mentions above only show that it was known, not how it was made or came to be.

In 1365 a church council at Angers forbade the use of milk or butter at Lent, whether in bread or vegetables. This early mention is striking, since the use of milk, in particular, in bread is rarely mentioned until later centuries, when it was associated with luxurious breads and, especially, in the nineteenth century, Vienna-style breads. Unfortunately, this tantalizing reference is the only one of the sort in the period, so we do not know who was making such bread or if it was considered to have a special status. (While it is just possible too that the reference is to using butter on bread and dipping bread in milk, the Latin is specifically in pane.)

A decree of February 17, 1436 mentions several fine breads of “similar whiteness” including “cakes” and échaudés, but also brioches. This may be the first mention of this in French baking history, though there is no way of knowing if it was already the rich bread later known.

The list of words from Du Cange includes a reference to Panis Moly, a corruption of pain mollet. The tax roles for 1292 mention a man named Jehan (John) Pain-Molet [sic].  These sparse references show that the term ("softish bread") existed by the thirteenth century (possibly before, for it to have become a family name). It would remain rare until the sixteenth century when bakers began to use yeast (instead of sourdough) to leaven it, provoking memorable upheavals in French bread-baking. All that can be said about it in earlier times is that it was no doubt a very fine bread, but very likely leavened with sourdough at this point.

The word miche first appears now as well, but its meaning is unclear. Even in recent centuries, this word's meaning has shifted; it typically means the most common large loaf in a given time and region (and so in Paris today it refers by default to large round breads). The word itself is derived from the Latin mica (“crumb”), which also became mie in French. It has been traced back to Chrétien de Troyes' twelfth century Perceval le Gallois: “Mais n'a çaiens que v mices”, though this could arguably refer to “five crumbs”. But the fourteenth century poet Eustache Deschamps (1340-c 1404) has a character say:

You can only give a miche

Or a piece of dark bread.

Tu n'as pouvoir fors d'une miche

Ou d'un morsiau de pain faitis

Donner;

And a fourteenth century Breton poem, Le combat de trente, says of a man killed in combat: “Jamais ne mangera de miche ni de gastel.” (“Never would he eat miche nor cake.”) The term then was established by the fourteenth century, even if its meaning is uncertain.

Conclusion

As the medieval period ended, then, a number of concepts had appeared which are now taken for granted in bread-making. Not the least of these was the public bakery itself. These had existed under the Romans, but only appeared fitfully just before the Crusades. It was after them that they became standard in cities, as shown by numerous statutes. The idea that they would sell three qualities of bread was established and would endure throughout the Old Regime, even if other breads were to join these later. The regulation of price and quality began in this period and would remain, in shifting forms, well past the French Revolution (and was bitterly resented by bakers).

The variety in types of bread which became typical of French bread began in this period and already went beyond the three official grades of bread. Biscuits and wafers already existed by the Crusades; wafers would grow more varied, forming the major dessert of the period. Pasties, first used primarily for savory dishes, were the first pastry (by that name) in France. Over time, wafer-makers and pastry-makers would join to create what became French pastry.

Several terms came into use during this period, though they may have different meanings than they later would: brioche, simnel, flamiche, fouace, miche, pain mollet, puff pastry, cake. Trenchers of bread appeared but would not remain in use for long after. The term pain de bouche would last longer, though other terms for very fine bread would displace it.

Milk and butter seem to have been used in bread in this period. Soon after, these and other additions like eggs and honey would more typically be used in pastry; but as the Old Regime ended they were again found in bread.

Overall, the fundamentals of French bread and bread-making were established in this period, even if these would evolve, and often in distinct phases, over the centuries to come.





FOR FURTHER READING:

Ayzac, Félicie d', Histoire de l'Abbaye de Saint Denis VI 1860

Migne, Jacques-Paul, “Consuetudines Cluniacenses - Udalrici Cluniacensis Monaci”,
Patrologiæ cursus completus: sive bibliotheca universalis ..., V149 1853

Du Cange, Charles Du Fresne, Glossarium mediae et infimae latinitatis. T6

Glaber, Rodulfus, Raoul Glaber: Les cinq livres de ses histoires (900-1044). 1866

Postan, Michael Moïssey, The Cambridge Economic History of Europe: Trade and industryin the Middle Ages, 1966

"The Dictionaries of John de Garlande", Mayer, Joseph, A Library of National Antiquities, 1857

Boileau, Etienne, Les métiers et corporations de la ville de Paris 1889

de La Mare, Nicolas, Traité de la police où l'on trouvera l'histoire de son établissement, les … 1713



Cotgrave, Randle, A Dictionarie of the French and English Tongues, 1611

Ordonnances des roys de France de la troisième race, recueillies v2, 1729

de Coussy, Mathieu, Journal d'un Bourgeois de Paris, ed. Buchon, Jean Alexandrey 1838

Ordonnances des roys de France de la troisième race, recueillies v11, 1769

Le ménagier de Paris: Traité de morale et d'économie domestique ..., V2, 1846

Berriat-Saint-Prix, Jacques, Recherches sur la législation criminelle et la législation de police, en Dauphiné, au Moyen âge, suivi d'une notice sur le président de Valbonnais et d'une description des repas d'Humbert II, dernier dauphin de viennois 1836

Archives départementales de l'Aube, “G. 283 Registre – 1417-1418”, Inventaire sommaire des Archives départementales antérieures à1790: Aube ... 1873

An Anonymous Andalusian Cookbook of the 13th Century

"Le Livre de la Taille de Paris", Paris sous Philippe - le - Bel: d'après des documents originaux et notamment ... ed. Hercule Géraud 1837


“Miche”, Centre National de Ressources Textuelles et Lexicales

de Troyes, Chrétien, Percevalle Gallois ou Le conte du Graal. V2 1866-1871

Deschamps, Eustache, Œuvres complètes de Eustache Deschamps, V52 1891

La Poix Fréminville (chevalier de), Christophe-Paulin, Le combat des trente: poëme du XIVe siècle 1819