Saturday, April 12, 2014

Stumbling through history towards beer

This is one of several posts on drink in the Middle Ages. The others are:

At the start of our era, Tacitus (c. 56 – after 117) famously wrote of the Germans: “Their beverage is a liquor drawn from barley or from wheat, and, like the juice of the grape, fermented to a spirit.” Note that he does not name the drink, but only describes it, as if it was unfamiliar and exotic. Which raises a simple question: how did Tacitus not already know of beer, or something very like it?

For one thing, in the same period Roman soldiers in Britain were not only drinking it, but using what would become one of the common words for it. Around 100 C. E., a Roman decurion in Britain wrote: "My fellow-soldiers do not have any cervesa; I request that you order some to be sent." (Nelson) This may only be, however, because they were stationed in a place where it was common.

Still, Tacitus was certainly not the first in Roman, nor even Greek, culture to mention it. In his own case, he was a friend of Pliny the Younger, whose uncle, Pliny the Elder (23 – 79) had already written of the drink: “From these [grains] are made drinks, zythum in Egypt, celia and ceria in Spain, cervisia and several sorts in Gaul, and in several other countries.”. One of these words – cervisia – became the standard term (cervoise) for the drink in Gaul; the others are among the most common ones found in earlier writers. What is more, Tacitus' own father may have been stationed in Belgium. While a Roman official would have had no trouble importing wine, it is very likely that the local Gauls drank, as the Gauls always had, some form of fermented grain drink.

And yet Tacitus treats it as a new discovery, unknown to him otherwise.

Tacitus' peculiar ignorance is not exceptional; it would still be found centuries later. Yet, if writers from Latin cultures tended to view beer as a “barbarian” drink, it had been known long before Roman contact with the groups (Gauls and Germans) they considered so.


Defining the terms

Before proceeding, it is important to understand the shifting terminology on this subject.

In general, a modern reader should be aware in reading about “beer” in this period that that word may translate a number of different words or even descriptions in Latin, none of which correspond to the French (originally German) word (bière), which did not appear until after this time. The drink in question was most often made from barley or wheat, but it was also made from oats, spelt or a number of other grains. Some was simply infused; some was produced using relatively complex methods. The words for these drinks – zythos, ceria, curma, cervoise, etc – are sometimes defined in contradictory ways, either because writers themselves did not properly understand their meanings or because different groups made them differently. None, for most of the Middle Ages, was made with hops (and so would not have kept for long periods).

To complicate matters, modern writers often refer to the older drinks as “ale” to distinguish them from later beer. But the distinction between ale and beer varies depending on the context (today it often refers to “top” vs “bottom” fermentation).

It should be unnecessary to point out that, whatever exactly these drinks were, none much resembled the commercial product most drink today. Notably, they would have been cloudier, often with a foam of yeast floating on top (allowing Gallic bakers, as Pliny famously noted, to use it in bread). Some was even drunk with a straw. The beer itself, not made with hops, would not have been as bitter; still, there is evidence that either wormwood or hops was sometimes added when drinking it, simply for taste. But then, so were other things (honey, spices, etc.). Early Roman and Frankish drinkers were not shy about “enhancing” their alcohol.


The earliest beer

The first recorded beer was made in Sumeria. It is unlikely that either the Greeks or the Romans knew much of Sumerian culture. But both were acquainted with the next nation known to have made beer: Egypt. In the fifth century B.C.E., the playwright Aeschylus (c. 525/524 B.C.E. – c. 456/455 B.C.E.) had a Greek king tell an Egyptian herald, “Nay, thou shalt find the dwellers of this land /Are also males, and drink not draughts of ale/From barley brewed”. Note that, though he is addressing someone from a sophisticated culture, he already speaks of beer with contempt.

Whether the drink somehow made its way from the Mideast to northern Europe or was independently invented by the Gauls and/or the Germans is unclear. Some see a Babylonian influence in German terms for numbers, so it is not impossible that exchanges occurred between these cultures, despite the distance between them (Menninger). Others have traced it from Egypt via Spain. Eyer writes “Given how popular beer was in Gaul, one can ask if it was introduced or if it is among the inherited knowledge of the Gauls..." He explains that the first records of beer-making, and on an industrial scale, come from Sumeria; then:
From the fact that Egyptians exported their beer of Pelusium – the Egyptian Munich – all the way to the Iberian peninsula, it has been deduced that the way of making it was introduced by this route into Gaul. Well, we know that the making of beer among the Gauls took place in a domestic context and that it was, like baking bread, a woman's task. If truly the Egyptians had introduced beer into Gaul, this would have taken the form of industrial breweries like the original ones and the beer would have been made following Egyptian recipes. Well then, ingredients, beyond barley, were used in the making of zythos which were not found on Gallic soil.
However, he says, barley grew well there. Further, the export of Egyptian beers seems to have come well after the beginnings of making beer in Gaul. “We can then say that the making of beer was done in Gaul for all time independently of foreign influences.” (He also refers to linguistic proof of this, though without providing details.)

Athenaeus of Naucratis (2nd-3rd c.) quotes Posidonius (ca. 135 B.C.E. – 51 B.C.E.) as saying of the Gauls that the rich drank wine. but “the poor drink Zythum, which is made from wheat and honey: and many drink it without honey and call it corma.” (Pauperes bibunt Zythum, quod fit ex tritico et melle: a multis bibitur sine melle, et vocatur corma.)

This is interesting on two counts. One is that it provides a rare distinction between zythos and corma/curmi (even if this seems to contradict later data; see below.). The other is that he again shows that beer, even among the Gauls, was looked down upon (probably because the upper classes wanted to imitate the dominant regional culture; that is, the Romans).

Virgil (70 – 19 B.C.E.) describes a similar drink made from sorbus (service) berries by the Scythes, “a joyful drink of fermented and sour sorbus imitating wine.” (pocula laeti Fermento atque acidis imitantur vitea sorbis ). Otherwise, at just about the time of Caesar's conquest of Gaul (58 B.C.E). Diodorus of Sicily wrote (60 – 30 B.C.E.) that the Gauls used a drink made from barley. Strabo (64/63 B.C.E. – c. 24 C.E.) mentions Lusitanians (in Iberia) drinking zytho.

 Note by the way that if beer is often referred to as a northern (that is, Germanic or Gallic) drink, it also has a long history in Spain.

Just before Pliny and Tacitus wrote about the drink, Dioscorides (c. 40 – 90 CE) wrote of two different barley drinks: zythos and curmi:
Zithon, which one drinks, is made of Barley. Once drunk, this Zithon provokes urine, but it damages the kidneys and nerves, and especially the panicles of the brain. It causes windiness and nasty humors in the body, and makes men into lepers....
One also makes from Barley that brew called Curmi, and which is used in sacred places, but which causes headaches, engenders coarse humors and hurts the nerves. These sorts of brews are also made of wine, in parts of Brittany and Iberia, facing the West.
With all this, there is yet another reason one would think that, after Caesar, beer would have been familiar to Romans: Rome now ruled Egypt, where it had always been made, and even levied a brewery tax there.

Pliny might well have known of some of the accounts above, since he uses the same terms in his passage on the drink. Is it natural that Tacitus did not? Given how many accounts of grain-based drinks already existed at this point, should he at least have been familiar with the general concept?

One can only speculate. But these two writers were certainly not the last Romans to describe such drinks.


Beer after Pliny and Tacitus

Cassius Dio (c.155 – 235) wrote that the people in Pannonia (towards what is now Serbia, Slovenia and neighboring areas) ate and drank both barley and millet. About the same time, the Roman jurist Ulpian (c. 170 – 228) wrote that "certain zythos, which is made from wheat, from barley or from bread, is not included [as wine in a bequest]".

More striking is the mention in Diocletian's edict (303) setting prices of cervesiae cami and, at half the price, zythi. This shows that these drinks were officially being sold in the Roman empire at this point. It also shows cami (probably curmi) as more valued than zythos.

The Gauls continued to drink beer even as Roman influence made wine more generally available. Eyer cites a Gallic altar found near Sarrebourg (now in the Museum of Metz) which shows two figures: Nantasuelta and Sucellus. By attributes shown in the image, he concludes that Nantasuelta (standing by what may be a beehive) was the goddess of hydromel and Sucellus – holding a cooper's hammer – was the god of beer. One vessel found in Paris from around the fourth century bears two different inscriptions: “Hostess fill my cup with beer” and “Innkeeper have this cup filled with spiced wine”, showing a convivial coexistence of the two drinks.

Around the same time the Emperor Julian (reigned 361 – 363) wrote an epigram against “wine made from barley”, saying that the Gauls “lacking grapes made wine of grains” which had the “smell of a goat” (unlike wine, which had “the smell of nectar”). UPDATE 6/30/2017: It is curious however that he says that the Gauls lacked grapes, since he himself praised those around Paris; he may simply have been resisting the idea that Gauls actually preferred beer.

Writing slightly later, Marcellus Empiricus (Burdigalensis) (4th-5th c.) mentioned cervisia in a matter of fact way. In one passage he suggests making a hot potion of salt in "cervisia or curmi" (cervesae aut curmi). (Unfortunately, he gives no hint of how they differ; note that Diocletian's edict conflates them.) In another, he suggests putting a pill into beer, but gives an alternate version for provinces in which there is no beer (in qua cervisia non est). This highlights the fact that the drink's use remained regional. Slightly later, Paulus Orosius (c. 375 – after 418) not only mentioned the drink but virtually described how to make it. He tells of the Numantians (in Iberia) using a drink “which was not wine” made
with the juice of wheat made through skill, which juice they called caelia from being heated [calefactio]. In fact the potency of the grain of the soaked cereal is activated by this fire and then it is dried, and after being reduced to flour is mixed with soft juice. 
(Nelson translation)


Beer under the early Franks

In 486, Clovis I made the Franks rulers of a major part of Gaul; soon they would drive out other Germanic groups that had made similar conquests elsewhere. Now the very people among whom Tacitus had noted grain drinks were rulers of Gaul.

Early in this era, Anthimus wrote in a dietetic for Theuderic I (reigned 511-534): “Drinking cervoise and mead or aloxinum is fine for almost everyone. Because cervoise which has been well made and has its full force does us as much good as the infusions of other sorts which we make.” Though Anthimus was a Greek with a strong Latin culture, he was clearly familiar with the drink.

By the time of Gregory of Tours (c. 538 – 594), then, beer would seem to have been well-known to Latin speakers as well as their new Germanic leaders. Yet in The Glory of the Confessors, he tells of a man cooking grains which had been swollen by water and germinated to make a drink; that is, of grains being malted in an early step in brewing. But, like Tacitus, centuries before, he describes the process yet does not name the drink. Elsewhere, writing of Auvergne he says "a drink is made for the harvesters... which is prepared with grains soaked and cooked in water; it is the same preparation called ceria, according to Orosius, from the word meaning to cook." This is more striking still; clearly he knew of the drink through literature, but regarded it as a curiosity in his own experience.

To complicate matters, he appears to reference it more concisely in his Glory of the Martyrs and his history of the Franks. Most translations have him here referring directly to beer. But in fact the Latin word he uses – sicera – only meant strong drink (later it would specifically refer to cider): vinum aut siceram ("wine or sicera"); Vinum, siceram, vel omne quod inebriare potest ("wine, sicera, or all that can inebriate"). Still, given that the drink in question was offered as an alternative to wine, it is hard to think it would not have been beer. Why then does he not use any of the several words mentioned by other classical writers for it? Again, one can only wonder, especially since Gregory's friend and contemporary, Fortunatus (c.530 – c.600/609) wrote of a man who “ruined water” with cervoise which “muddies bottles with its dregs.” In listing the drinks Radegund avoided, he again mentions “cloudy beer”. (cervisaeque turbidinem).

Fortunatus' very mention of it, like Anthimus' mention of it for Theuderic, shows that it was served at the better Frankish tables. Both Clothar (Radegund's husband) and Theuderic, as kings, would have had access to wine and no doubt both drank it. But being Franks, they also continued to drink beer.

Yet just after this, Jonas of Bobbio (c. 600 – after 659), writing of St Columban in Gaul, thought it again necessary to explain what the drink was: “cervoise.... which is cooked from the juices of wheat or barley.” He then goes on to say that it was the preferred beverage in Gaul, Britain, Ireland and other nations, though not among the Scotch and the people of the Dardanelles. Yet curiously Jonas too uses the word sicera to describe what is probably beer, in a famous incident in which Columban was visiting the king of Burgundy Theuderic II (587 – 613) and destroyed vessels of “wine and strong drink” (vinaque ac sicera) with a gesture.

Again, if he meant beer, why not just use the word cervoise? And if he did not, what ever was the "strong drink" in question (spirits were still a long way off)?

These references across several centuries suggest that, even though it was the favored drink of the Gauls and Germans, for a long time beer remained so little known among those of Roman culture that some continued to rediscover it. Was this because even beer-drinkers seemed to prefer wine when they could get it and those in the south, especially, had relatively ready access to the latter? 


Beer becomes established

By the seventh century, cervoise had become standard enough for the monk Marculfe to include it (c. 650 – 655) in a list of items to be provided to traveling officials (“so many muids of white bread, wine and cervoise”). By the next, it was listed, matter-of-factly, as a rent in various monastic and manorial records.

This was now Charlemagne's time and some credit him with the spread of monastic brewing:
With the spread of his Holy Roman Empire around 800 AD, Charlemagne built many monasteries across Europe, many of which became centres of brewing (Unger 2004). Initially, most of the monasteries were located in Southern Europe, where the climate permitted the monks to grow grapes and make wine for themselves and their guests. However, when later monasteries were established in Northern regions of Europe, where the cooler climate made it easier to grow barley instead of grapes, the monks started to brew beer instead of wine (Jackson 1996).
(Poelmans and Swinnen)
On Charlemagne's own estates, De Villis refers to sicatores (makers of strong drink) who were specifically qualified to make beer. It continued to generally be made from barley or wheat, (Wirth, 126) but any grain might serve the purpose. The charter for the abbey of Saint-Denis mentions beer made with spelt. In 832, the rents for this abbey included malt; that is, a product prepared especially for making beer.

Beer by now was standard enough as a drink that the Church seems to have excluded simple beer from penances, even when flavored beer was singled out. In 868, the Council of Worms ordered certain penitents to abstain from wine, mead and “honeyed beer” (cervisia mellita) three times a week; in 895, the Council of Tribur made a similar pronouncement. Regino (abbot of Prüm 892–99) also uses this phrase in penances for homicide, parricide and fratricide (and for the latter two one only had to abstain three days a week!). Yet none of these lists include simple beer, suggesting that the unflavored version was too basic to ban.

 Hopping towards true beer
The history of the use of hops in beer is as fitful as that of beer itself.

The Franks had used hops as a flavoring for centuries. The remains of mead found in a fifth century grave in Cologne included traces of hops (Salins). Both hops and wormwood were used to add a bitter taste which drinkers of the time apparently enjoyed, perhaps in contrast to the honey which (as above) was also often added.

 Charlemagne's own records are some of the first to mention hops. At St. Amand-les-Eaux (one of the emperor's estates) tenants gave “10 measures of malt and 2 measures of hops” and on another farm “6 measures of malt and one measure of hops”. It is interesting however that tenants at another gave “25 buckets of cervoise.” The fact that the beer could be given as a rent shows that it remained drinkable for sometime after it was made, which suggests the use of hops or something similar. 

In statutes written for the abbey of Corbie in 822, it is specified in regard to hops that the porter “will acquire enough for himself to make his beer.” (sibi adquirat unde ad cervisas suas faciendas sufficienter habeat). This would appear to be a clear statement that hops were used in making the beer itself.

There is some evidence too that the Bavarians had been using these in beer since the ninth century; yet the practice still did not become widespread:
An important innovation was the introduction of hops in brewing. There is evidence that already around 800 AD, German monasteries added extracts of the hops plant to preserve their beer longer. Moreover, the bitterness of the hops also balanced the rather sweet flavour of the malt, the other main ingredient of Germanic beer (Behre 1983 and 1999). This innovation would ultimately transform the entire global beer economy. However, despite its benefits, the use of hops did not spread rapidly over the beer producing regions in Europe. In fact, it would last several centuries before its use would be widely accepted.
(Poelmans and Swinnen)
These authors go on to postulate that the use of hops spread slowly in part because of tax issues; the special mixture called, in the north, gruit was taxed, while hops were not. “Therefore, in many regions, including Britain and Holland, the use of hops was prohibited for a long time.” For whatever reason, it is true that as late as the thirteenth century, Parisian makers of cervoise were forbidden to use anything in their product but water and grain. Only some specific additives were named – berries, spices or pitch – but hops would seem to have been out of the question as well.

In fact, the Middle Ages were already ending by the time the use of hops became established. In the mid to late fourteenth century, the Belgian monk Leonard was already referring to hoppa – that is, hopped beer – as a regular drink at a Liège monastery. Says Eyer:
Towards the end of the fourteenth century, the use of hops became general to the detriment of other herbs. It is useful to recall the decisive intervention of the duke of Burgundy and of Flanders, John the Fearless, who, to promote the use of hops and to underline the importance he attached to it, created the Order of Hops. Beer, such as we know it, was born.
Strangely, the fact that flavoring with hops became exclusive bit by bit, coincides roughly with the introduction of the term "beer" [bière] which would take the place of that of cervoise. It is thus starting at the beginning of the fifteenth century that we can truly speak of beers in France.

The long road to beer

What does it mean that Tacitus was unfamiliar with beer even as Roman soldiers were drinking it, and after a long history of its mention in literature? Or that, centuries later, Gregory of Tours, writing under Frankish rule, again found it necessary to describe the drink to his readers even as it was already served on royal tables?

The answers to these questions may have more to do with the nature of how knowledge was disseminated in these early centuries and how exchanges occurred between the Latin and other cultures than it does with the actual history of the use of beer. Still, the questions themselves show that beer, if it became a major Medieval drink, was far from universal by the start of the Middle Ages, even in its simplest form, well before the use of hops began – virtually with the Renaissance – to change it to the drink we know today.



FOR FURTHER READING:


Le Grand d'Aussy's texts on hydromel, cider, beer and other drinks are now available in translation:



Tacitus, Cornelius, The Agricola and Germania 1894


Pliny (the Elder), Histoire naturelle de Pline, V7 1774


Eyer, Frédérique "La Cervoise et la Bière au Moyen Age et à la Renaissance", Bulletin philologique et historique jusqu'à 1610 du Comité des travaux historiques et scientifiques v1 1968


Aeschylus (Greek:Αἰσχύλος, Aiskhulos; c. 525/524 BC – c. 456/455 BC) “The Suppliants”, The tragedies of Aeschylos: a new translation  tr Edward Hayes  1894 






Diodorus (Siculus), The Historical Library of Diodorus the Sicilian: In Fifteen Books. 1814






Osse, Paul Van Pierre Ouzoulias , Fanette Laubenheimer “La bière en Gaule. Sa fabrication, les mots pour le dire, les vestiges archéologiques : première approche”, Revue archéologique de Picardie V1 2003

Julien, Oeuvres complètes de l'empereur Julien tr Tourlet v3 1821

Marcellus (Empiricus), Marcelli De medicamentis liber 1889



Saint Gregory (Bishop of Tours), "De Gloria Confessorum", Les livres des miracles et autres opuscules de Georges Florent Grégoire, V2 1860
Grégoire de Tours, "De Gloria Martyrum", Les livres des miracles et autres opuscules de Georges-Florent Grégoire, évêque de Tours 1857

Grégoire de Tours, Histoire ecclésiastique des francs. ed Guadet,  Book V 1836

 Fortunatus, Venance, "Vita S. Radegundis Reginae", Patrologiae Cursus Completus: Series Latina v88 1850

Venantius Fortunatus, Poésies mêlées / Venance Fortunat ; traduites en français pour la première fois par M. Charles Nisard,...avec la collaboration pour les livres I-V de M. Eugène Rittier 1887

Jonas (of Bobbio,Abbot), Life of St. Columban,  1895 

Ionas, "Vitae Columbani Vedastis, Iohannis Liber I", Scriptores Rerum Germanicarum, 1905 



Wirth, Max, Histoire de la Fondation des Etats Germaniques 1873




d'Ayzac, Félicie-Marie-Emilie, Histoire de l'abbaye de Saint-Denis en France 1851

Levillain, L., "Etat de Redevance de Saint Denis (832)", Bulletin de la Société de l'histoire de Paris et de l'Ile-de-France, V35-36 1908

Poisson, Nicolas Joseph,. Delectus actorum ecclesiae universalis, seu nova summa conciliorum 
v1 1706
Regino (Abbot of Prüm), Reginonis abbatis Prumiensis libri duo de synodalibus causis et disciplinis ecclesiasticis 1840





Nelson, Max, The Barbarian's Beverage: A History of Beer in Ancient Europe 2005





FOR AN ENGLISH TRANSLATION OF ANTHIMUS' TEXT:



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Saturday, April 5, 2014

Beyond the peacocks: what most Medieval eaters actually ate

Imagine you're transported to the twenty-eighth century and your well-meaning temporal host says brightly, “I've prepared some typical dishes from your era!”, then brings out truffled langoustine ravioli with chopped cabbage, sweet corn agnolotii, and Long Island duck breast. While you might be pleased to have dishes taken directly (as these are) from the menus of some of America's most expensive restaurants, you might also say, “Could I have some mac n cheese? Maybe a Cobb salad? Fettucine Alfredo? A hamburger?”

You would then be roughly in the position of a person from the fourteenth century magically transported into the midst of a modern “Medieval” feast, recreating dishes taken directly from period cookbooks. Most of what most people know about Medieval food is taken from such cookbooks. However, these describe either (like Taillevent's Viandier) the food of royalty and the highest nobility or (like the Menagier de Paris) the “aspirational” food of well-off people who wanted to dine in a similar way. What's more, much of the food described was served, not at normal meals, but at great feasts, meant to impress.

A cookbook-based idea of Medieval food, then, leaves one (as the French say) “on one's hunger”. While the popular imagination has seized on foods like peacock and swan, served in all their feathers, or dishes reeking of spices as "typical" Medieval fare, in fairness period cookbooks contain a wider range of dishes. Still, if some simpler dishes have found their way into these works, for the most part they do not answer a simple question: what did most Medieval eaters actually eat?

The early Medieval side of that question has already been addressed in an earlier post. What follows here is a look at food from the same period as most cookbooks; that is, the late Medieval period (specifically, here, in France).


Royalty and high nobility

The divergence between the food in cookbooks and regular practice begins with the very classes for which such works were written. Consider a rare extract of accounts for John the Good (reigned 1350 – 1364), right after his coronation (1350). Lalou resumes the food in these:
During the month covered by the accounts, the court ate 130 pigs, of which some are fattened pigs (porci pingues), 37 oxen and 23 sheep. One must add to this rabbits, chickens, partridge, pheasant and plovers, as well as all the fresh or salt-water fish. Among the fish cited, one makes out eels, bruli [?], herring; one must also note crayfish. The king's cooks prepared the dishes in two ways, either in roasting them or in boiling them. Two very distinct parts of the kitchen are responsible in fact for "roast" and "pottage". One must not forget either the "saucery". The kitchen uses spices, sugar, almonds. Fat bacon and pasties are also regularly noted.
In addition to bread, the baked goods include nebulae (“clouds”), a particularly light form of wafer.

The most luxurious items in this list are the spices and the partridge and pheasant, which were of course a step above chicken – but hardly peacock or swan. Nor were the nebulae, if slightly finer than common wafers, exceptional as pastries. While 130 may seem like a large number of pigs, bear in mind that the oxen would have been bigger. Still, these royal meals included more pork than was becoming common at this point. In earlier centuries, this had appeared as the main meat in written accounts; it is far less present in this and later centuries.


About a century later, the accounts for the Burgundian court are similar. The Burgundians by now were already rivaling the French kings and had even sided with the English against them, even if their court had not yet reached the height of its magnificent. Some daily accounts survive for the expenses of Isabelle of Portugal, wife of Philip the Good (1396 – 1467). Sommé, in summarizing these for 1450, highlights the "regularity" of expenditures for food:
In September and October are bought almost each day four sides, four shoulders and six pieces of mutton, a half veal, a veal fraise ("calf's pluck"), a leg of beef, a fat capon, 17 fowl, five pairs of pigeons, a partridge, fifty eggs. The same regularity shows in the consumption of bread, of fats, of verjuice and of vinegar. Finally, if the quantities are not given, the sum spent for pottages and greens are always essentially identical. The accounts tell us less about the consumption of fish because they enumerate the varieties without specifying the quantities, and only mention the total: “The master paid for plaice, sole, red-fish, mullets and herring, XLIX s.” Nonetheless the same species recur frequently. In these days of abstinence, the quantity of eggs grows: instead of fifty, often one hundred are used in cooking.
Nor does this regularity vary by locale; essentially the same data is found for trips to Bruges and Ghent.

In a later analysis, Sommé shows that mutton predominates here, with veal far behind and beef still farther; none of this is in the least exotic today. Otherwise,
During these four months, no mention is made of buying grown pigs [porcs], but only of several younger pigs [cochons], in particular for banquets... These are then suckling pigs and not full-grown... Offal appears in the accounts as well, more frequently than pork butchery products: tripe is eaten every Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday, a veal fraise is bought almost every day. Ham, rare like pork, only appears at the December 31 banquet.
And for luxuries?
Poultry and game make up the luxury food, more expensive than meat, naturally reserved for the duchess' table, in particular the fatted capon, bought very often, which is as expensive as the quarter of a veal or a pig.... Partridge is the only game regularly consumed... Domestic poultry is then far more important than game in the daily food. It is only during banquets that the guests can consume, in addition to partridge, pheasant, "little goslings", river birds, bitterns. All these products are very expensive... Other game however appears more common, that is the rabbit...
As game goes, partridge and rabbit cut a pretty modest figure next to the large birds and boars often associated with elegant Medieval dining.
Because of their price, birds and game then form the essence of spending for banquet days. In effect if the difference between these days and normal days lies first in a light increase in the part held by outlays for meat, in the larger sense, in the food budget, it consists above all in a far greater increase in expenses for birds and game than expenses for butcher's meat.
As for fish. for Fridays and Saturdays, crayfish especially were appreciated. Roach, sole and plaice, herring and whiting, liver fish, turbot and mullet all appear, especially in Bruges. Other records show that court cooks used mackerel, cod, ray and even porpoise. Mussels appear often as well.

For fresh water fish, which appear less, carp, perch and “white frying fish” are mentioned at Bruges, elsewhere, pike, salmon, eel, trout, gudgeon and bream. "Despite certain recurrences, there is then a relative variety in the fish consumed; the accounts for fast days do not present the remarkable regularity of those of meat days."

Noting that the accounts give no details on how all this was prepared, Sommé nonetheless points out that much of the meat and fish was used in pasties. The pastry-chef (who mainly would not have made sweets at this point) also made tarts and “leafed” pastries – what English-speakers today call “puff pastry” – but possibly more like a Napoleon since she writes that these surely included fish. “This taste for pasties and savory cakes is explained by the need of varying as much as possible the presentation of meats and fish, since these made up the essential of the food.”

The accounts included ginger, cinnamon, saffron and “sundry spices”. Pepper does not appear, but may (unusually) be included in the “sundry spices”. Far more sugar – considered a spice – was bought than of the others. Other imports – rice, Corinth raisins, almonds – are mentioned. These are all relatively luxurious items and some of the few markers that these are meals for the highest class of consumer.

A variety of wines, notably the famous wine of Beaune, also hint at the class of these consumers. But in conclusion Sommé writes: “Whatever the variety of culinary practice... monotony, which shows through the regularity of the expenses, must not have been avoided.” And this at what was virtually a royal court.


A special example appears with the last independent ruler to bear the title of “Dauphin” in the region known as the Dauphiné; after Humbert II sold that possession to the king of France, his title became that of the oldest royal French prince. Humbert II (1312 – 1355) was not good with finances and before he, in effect, sold off his realm, he tried to limit expenses, in part by carefully laying out the meals for his household (around 1336-1337). The result goes on for several pages, but Le Grand d'Aussy sums it up in his eighteenth century history of food:
For his Sunday and Thursday dinner, the Dauphin wants to be served two pasties, each made of a hen and two chickens.
On Monday and Wednesday, he wants a puree of peas or of broad beans, with two pounds of salted pork; then good tripes, cooked in water. For the second service, two portions (rotulos) of beef and mutton, boiled and served with a warm pepper sauce; and, as a roast, six capons, or six fat hens.
On Tuesday, instead of soup, he asks for rice with cabbage, beets. turnips and leeks, with a pound of salted pork; half a portion of boiled beef, served with mustard; twelve chickens, or six hens, cut in half; and, for the second service, a portion of fresh pork.
As for supper, he has it consist of a half-portion of roast beef; beef feet, prepared in vinegar with parsley; and grilled beef tongues, with cameline sauce.
His dessert is made up of cheese and fruit.
The Dauphin's feasting, on meatless days, resembles those of meat days. These are, for Friday, two soups, or puree, either of peas, or of cabbage; of fish, if any are found; twenty-four fried eggs, with a good sauce; Lorraine pasties; then some fried food.
For Saturday, two soups with a puree of broad beans and almonds, seasoned with onion juice and olive oil; fish, if there is any; twelve poached eggs, with a good sauce; tarts of greens, and eight hard-boiled eggs.
The Dauphin of course got the best quality of wine, which happened to be (though not yet known as such) côtes du Rhône.

The Dauphin's knights and barons got essentially the same food, but in smaller quantities. Only he got certain specialties, like the tripes. He also got two types of bread, one the finer pain de bouche, the other small one-pound rolls meant to be dipped (probably in soup).

Le Grand explains that Lorraine pasties “consisted of a fish stuffing, which was enclosed in a pastry kneaded with butter, sugar, and eggs. They were then fried in butter. There were meat versions; and these were stuffed with a hash of capon white meat.” Along with the cameline and pepper sauce, these may be some of the more extravagant items noted here. Note that the special treat in these meals was... tripe.

Otherwise, such a menu would have been unworthy of the time of a chef like Taillevent.


Minor nobility and the middle class

As strapped as he was for a while, one can hardly mention Humbert in the same breath as a host of minor nobles who lived far more simply. Charbonnier has carefully analyzed the accounts of two such nobles in Auvergne, one, William, the lord of the several estates, and the other, his brother Amblard, a cleric, with a modestly prestigious office as dean of a chapter. These accounts come from the start of the fifteenth century. Their meals, Charbonnier writes, were "generally improvised." One example comes from the eve of St. Catherine's in 1387. It is basically made up of bread, wine and five hens. Similar meals (with somewhat less wine) are noted for December 16 and January 16 of the following year.

When Amblard came to visit with an uncle, the commander of Montferrand, on Tuesday December 1, they had a quarter of mutton, bread, wine and two hens for supper; on Wednesday, bread, wine, fish, oil and two hens and for supper, bread, wine, "large meat [beef or mutton] bought at Maringues"; on Thursday (for supper?), bread, wine, three hens.

In September,1389. William's dinner required bread, wine and one hen. Other meals were similar; the number of those present is unknown. Charbonnier says there were two types of meals:
The most ordinary, which one can suppose were improvised, are divided into three elements: bread, wine, and meat which is almost always poultry. It was in fact easy to go find poultry in the neighborhood, perhaps as a rent, while butcher's meat had to be bought at Maringues. More care was taken with the meals served to Amblard and his uncle: they in fact include two meats and these are more varied, since beyond hens, they include mutton, “large meat” and fish.
He notes that wine is always the most expensive item in these meals. He also notes that pork is mentioned relatively little (and game barely mentioned at all), while the estate raised a lot of bovines, though mainly for milk. At one of the estates, butter was the main fat, but at another walnut oil was more common; olive oil was only bought for special occasions. A local lake and the moat provided fish, largely perch and bream. Fish was of course needed for Lent and fast days. Accounts for one of the estates record numerous purchases of fruit; the other seemed to be well-placed to grow these. A similar situation existed for vegetables and one can reasonably speculate that these too were included in meals, though Charbonnier does not suggest as much.

Salt (a purchase) was largely used for salting meats and cheeses. In theory, pepper was among the rents due, but does not seem to have been given in the period covered by the surviving accounts. Ginger, cinnamon and saffron were all bought at Clermont (the first two by the pound, saffron by the ounce). These apparently were used mainly for festive meals.

“Festive” however was relative. Consider the accounts for one gala affair, here the wedding of minor nobles related to these. The accounts list wheat, wine, spices (saffron, ginger and pepper), beef and pork, chickens, cocks, geese, fish, 250 wafers, a quart of vinegar, a bottle of verjuice, a rabbit, a hare, 400 donnihos [?] and mustard. If the spices add a luxurious touch, the other foods are undistinguished. The large amount of wafer belies their low cost, even if such desserts were probably not seen on more modest tables (including, in regular times, William's). Whatever the donnihos were, they barely cost more than the mustard.

If the items listed were sufficient for a large party, they seem neither exotic nor elegant.


In fact, it may be that more modest people living in or closer to Paris fared better as a matter of course. Some glimpses of the meals of comfortable but undistinguished diners come from the acerbic fourteenth century poet Eustache Deschamps (1340–1406). One of his poems is a tirade against mustard, which he claimed was offered to him no matter what he ordered in a Brussels tavern. The food he mentions includes fresh herring, carp, pike in water, fat soles, all this presumably for a fast day, along with green sauce, saffron and "grains" [grain of paradise?]; he also enumerates roasts of mutton and boar, hare, rabbit and bustard.

Here is somewhat the reverse of what is seen in the more exalted ranks. If Deschamps was not so impoverished a poet as Villon, for instance, and even held office as a sort of bailiff at one point, he was not of the upper crust either, and yet the meals he considered reasonable for his persona were about the same sort as those noted above. If anything, the bustard would have been a touch better.

In another tirade, this one on fasting for Lent, he says that people leave oxen, cows, mutton, veal and lambs, rabbits, partridge, capons, stags and deer, pork?, butter, eggs and cheese, geese, ducks, pheasant, herons and peacocks for:
Stinking herring, rotting sea fish,
puree and peas, and broad beans in a pile,
cooked apples, ground barley, and rice.
The first list seems to trace foods across classes; it is unlikely that Deschamps or those around him often ate herons or peacock. But much of the list, again, is unexceptional even for today. Otherwise, the second gives an idea (albeit exaggerated) of what people had to put up with for Lent.


Another look at meals for a wider selection of the population, in Paris at least, comes from public feasts held by the “Hostel for Pilgrims” of St. Jacques in Paris. These were held each year for the departing pilgrims and members of the public, all of whom paid to attend. The surviving records record different details, depending on the accountant, but give a vivid picture of the sort of food a paying crowd could expect in fourteenth century Paris:
1338 eight hundred and nine guests:
5 oxen (slaughtered and skinned)
18 pigs
3000 eggs
2 setiers and 3 minots coarse salt and 3 minots white salt
spices mustard verjuice
water (brought by wagon)
cheese, pears
a queue [ about a hogshead and a half] of white wine for the kitchen
1339 seven hundred and ninety-nine guests:
5 oxen
14 pigs
bread (white and dark)
wine; beer for the cooks
fruit (pears)
cheeses of Champagne
verjuice (a setier)
Pasties
five bushels of "cake powder" (spice mix for cakes?)
1340 one thousand eighty guests:
5 oxen
20 pigs
pasties
3000 eggs
Wine - two barrels of white wine and three queues of red wine
bread (white and brown)
salt (2 setiers of coarse salt and 3 minots of broken up, a bushel of white salt)
eight bushels of cake powder
3 Champagne cheeses
4 setiers of verjuice
10 setiers of mustard
1341 twelve hundred and seventy three guests:
6 oxen
19 pigs
pasties
wine 1 queue of red wine, 2 barrels of white wine for the hospital; 1 queue of white wine, 1 barrel of red wine of Beaune
white and dark bread
ten setiers of mustard
3 Champagne cheeses
3000 pears
eight bushels of cake powder
Overall, this shows people eating beef, pork, at least partially in pasties, sometimes eggs, cheese and pears (probably the “dessert”) and either adding mixed spices to their food or having cakes flavored with them (“cake powder” is an unusual and obscure term). Sometimes with wine, sometimes even good wine. In the country, one might speculate that vegetables were added from the garden, but here they would have to have been bought and so do not seem to have been included at all. Basically this was a lot of meat, with some bread and drink, and cheese and pears afterward.

Not a bad feast, even today, but hardly what one would deduce from period cookbooks.


Finally, a simpler glimpse of modest but not limited food comes from the 1346 list of food sent to a prior who had gone to the country for a few days (from the abbey of Saint-Theodard in Gascony): “For 8 sols of bread and for 6 sols for the price of a quarter of mutton. Item for the cost of a quarter of beef, a sheep, a bacon of pork, two pairs of partridges, twelve fougasses, 200 wafers, 3 pounds of oil, 3 tallow candles and spices; 2 crowns, 3 sols (the crown worth 40 sols)”

Again, mutton, pork, partridge; nothing exotic in the way of meat. The wafers (or waffles, essentially the same at this point) were probably small, making the 200 noted here like a few boxes of cookies. Fougasse is variously defined in different authors' notes, but originally was simply hearth bread (the name derived from the same root as foccacio, that is, bread made on the focus, or hearth). This may have been a slightly better bread or even a sweet pastry at this point.


The poor and workers

Here we come to the least advantaged members of Medieval society and also those whose meals are the least discussed: the poor and the workers (the boundary between them could depend on a day's work). In fact, the meals of workers may be better known than that of many others, since they were often defined in contracts or other records; but it is rare to see them examined in detail.

Some of this food has already been seen as “hospital food”, which often was indiscriminately served to the poor and the sick in such establishments. A similar example comes from the Abbey of Obazine in the Bas-Limousin in the twelfth century. Records there record rations given to the poor during times of shortages, when they got a tourte (a large round loaf) of a pound and a half, as well as a measure of broad beans and wine. Sometimes to speed things up they were given dough to cook themselves. Women got as many of these rations as the children they brought, even in the cradle (etiam in cunabalis).

However the twelfth century poor in the Limousin did not do entirely without meat, which was promised to those doing hard work. In one case, too, a poor woman used grain gathered from gleaning to raise some chickens. Others probably did the same.

The founder of the abbey got irate when some masons killed a pig in the woods, ate some and hid the surplus in pots. Something so good as a pig was probably a rare treat for these workers.

Aubrun, analyzing all this, writes: "What is striking above all is the near total absence of a food reserve for country people who find themselves at the mercy of a bad harvest.”


Collin provides an overview of early fourteenth century food in the Lorraine region. The workers there were supposed to be given bread, cheese and wine for their (obligatory) labor during the corvées, but it seems that the lords sometimes refused to provide even these simple rations. Otherwise, bread and wine were standard fare; Collin thinks the poor even got meat: “If [butcher's meat] appeared regularly on the tables of lords and probably the bourgeoisie, if it was part of the provision for troops on campaigns, it is probable that the peasants ate it too.” He writes that beef and lamb were most common, pork not mentioned (as is increasingly the case in this period).

Fishing was a seigniorial right, but sometimes granted to bourgeois. It is less likely that the poor were able to (legally) do it. Oak, beech, apple, and pear trees were all protected as “fruit” trees, oaks for the acorns, beech for its mast "from which no doubt oil was made". Beech mast, like acorns, was often fed to pigs as well.


On the Auvergnat estates mentioned above, a rare note of a meal for the valets comes from August 1389: bread, wine and "a pair of poussins". This, says Charbonnier, was very like the lord's meals, but bread cost more in proportion to the wine.

The only note of food for the estate's workers is of wheat, "mixture" (of wheat and barley) and broad beans. However other evidence shows that cow-herds got a flitch of bacon, to which was likely added vegetables and dairy products from the estate. At Saint-Amant (probably nearby) vineyard workers got bread, wine and meat as well, but the meat was of a lesser quality (goat meat, for example). At Lent this was replaced by peas (elsewhere it was more typically replaced by herring). Cheese was often given to vineyard workers and was even included as part of a salary. Since William also sent some as gifts to his in-laws, this was probably considered to be of a respectable quality.

Overall, says Charbonnier "there existed then a difference in diet between different social elements, but it was not very pronounced."


Extensive records exist from the north, near Arras, for the estates of Thierry d'Hireçon, a large landowner in the Artois who later became bishop of Arras (1328).

In 1321, at Roquestor for a household of seven or eight people and three or four valets hired for the harvest, 52-57 rasières (half a hectoliter) of wheat are recorded, as well as 4-6 of peas, and 1 or 2 of oats to make gruel. One fattened pig was always ready for food needs (probably to make bacon above all). For Lent and August labors a large number of herring is recorded; meat is noted for a feast day. The accounts also mention salt, oil, and goodale (a weak form of beer).

Verjuice was made on the estate, as well as milk, butter, cheese and poultry. Most vegetables were as well though some were bought in Abbeville and Paris. Accounts show these to have been wild leeks, leeks, cabbage, onions, scallions, garlic, broad beans, peas, spinach, lettuce, borage, orache, chard or cardoon, spring onion, parsley, hyssop, Caulet cabbage, and clary.

In 1322, at Sailly, 2500 herring are recorded at Lent, 500 from the 1st of August to All Saints; wine was given during the harvest.

Richard resumes all this: "Wheat bread, oat porridge, pork, broad beans, dairy products, including butter and cheese, and, at certain moments, herring therefore form the basic food of this rural population. As a drink one finds, with water which does not need to be mentioned, verjuice and the beer called goodale, more rarely wine;" No cider is mentioned, though this was produced nearby.

Workers, paid in money, could buy the same food as the household. Prison accounts from 1300 to 1329 show that the basic food cost one or two deniers, leaving enough for workers to buy pork, broad beans, herring, even sometimes butcher's meat; rabbits and chickens were also available. "The field worker then could without too much trouble from time to time put a chicken in the pot."

It helped that these workers got tips ("alms") from visiting lords (sometimes for singing a welcome). The region also had "poor tables" in each parish and the poor also had the right of gleaning during the harvest, as they did in a number of places.


Records from Alsace cover a variety of obligations both for feeding workers during corvées and for special rations offered during obligatory participations in regional lawsuits. Schmidt does not give specific dates for these, but begins by discussing thirteenth century stipulations and says that in the fifteenth century some managed to buy themselves out of these corvées; the figures then seem to apply to the late Middle Ages.

A peculiarity in the Alsatian records is that food rations were often defined by how much they exceeded given measures; meat was often defined by how far it spilled over the edge of a plate and bread by how far above a man's knee it came when set on his feet.

In Alsace, in the Valley of Lièvre, when the domain's foresters came twice a week to report to the abbot, they received a glass of wine, bread, meat or eggs or in Lent fresh fish or herring. At Nothalden the mayor gave the abbess of Hohenbourg's seven foresters bread, wine and boiled or roast meat on the Sunday after St. Martin's. At Munster the abbot gave them a meal of wine, bread and two types of meat (and sent a violonist at night to lull them to sleep!). Harvesters at Marmoutier got wine or beer and a special bread (Actebrod); the reaper, bread and either wine and meat or beer and cheese. At Nieder-Hausbergen workers got wine, bread and two meats exceeding the plates by the width of four fingers.

At Ebersheim the abbot gave, during the ploughing of the fields, wine and a vegetable porridge. At Marlenheim, a sheep and an ox were killed for the reapers, each also got a loaf in the evening. At Artolsheim, a peasant got two herring, a valet a porridge; some drank wine, some beer. At the mountain of St. Odile they got bread, cakes, and meat spilling over each side of the plate; the bread had to be big enough that if a man put his thumb in the middle he could circle it with the longest of his fingers.

At Metzeral reapers got bread, garlic and red wine, At Logelnheim during the work bread and cheese were given, in the evening, wine, beans and bacon. Variations on all this existed, sometimes with meat, cheese, porridge, etc.

Schmidt says of the lords “they were obliged to give the workers meals, which, often, must have seemed like true feasts to people not used to drinking wine or eating roast meats”.

For some legal court proceedings the mayor was obliged to feed the estate farmers (colons) who attended. At Sigolsheim this included boiled or roasted meats (for which each paid 6 deniers); at Soultzmatt they got roast meat, a vegetable porridge, a green sauce, raw and cooked apples (“not rotten or worm-eaten”), walnuts and cheese. The mayor and his wife got a half-quart of wine, two loaves, pieces of beef and veal larger than the plate, with a spiced sauce and a yellow sauce. During the session itself there was bread and wine on the table.

In the evening at Neugartheim a half-measure of wine, a vegetable and roast were served. At Eichhoffen the evening meal included twelve loaves, two cheeses, a bushel of walnuts and a measure of wine. On the Saint-Martin, the mayor invited a few of the colons, giving them bread, wine, vegetables and cheese "until one saw the stars shine".


The poor of course always had the random resources of charity, as when confiscated food was given to the hospitals. At the public banquets given by St. Jacques, the leftover food was given to the poor.


In the meal plans for the Dauphin Humbert, the squires and servants who ate in the household got smaller amounts of the same foods as the others. Servants who were served outside the palace got a small ration of beef cooked in water and a "root" soup for several dinners, a half-pound of salted meat and a dish of broad beans on others. On fast days they got a soup of roots or turnips and a portion of cheese divided among fourteen. (“Roots” were simply root vegetables, such as carrots). For supper, they only got cheese. They also got (with every meal?) four white loaves.

For breakfast, the squires and servants who ate in the household got bread, pure wine of medium quality and a portion of well-cooked beef; on Sundays, they seem to have gotten pasties only for the main meals, but with a minimal quantity of pork and no chicken.

For breakfast, servants who did not dine in the household got bread, the lowest quality of wine and eggs.


Some other glimpses of food for the poorest classes come from literature. In a classic poem called “The butcher of Abbeville”, a priest's concubine, mistress of the house, beats a servant girl for “stealing”:
"Lady, what have I robbed you of?"

"Debauched creature! My barley, my wheat,
My peas, my salt pork, my bread – you took everything
The suggestion here seems to be that this was simply what the servant ate.

Like many a poet in many a culture, Deschamps idealized the “simple life” – what he called, “living frankly”.
There's nothing like the simple life
Cabbages, peas, broad beans and bacon,
rye, wheat or barley bread,
plain [“frans”], fruit, lettuce, leeks
because nothing is so good as the simple life.
If his list of foods is a little caricatural, it does give an idea of what people of his time thought the poor ate. In another poem with a similar theme, he talks about “living on bread and gruel”.

Finally, in his poem on Lent, Deschamps describes the fast day food of the poor:
Garlic and onions, oil of hemp,
moldy nuts, apples and dark bread
is put in front of them, greens, cabbage and leeks,
tourtes in pot [meaning crust?]
of barley and winter barley


Summing up

This is only a sample of the meals described in sources other than cookbooks for the late Medieval period, but what appears here is fairly consistent. Those of any means at all ate much the same meat people eat today: beef, lamb, pork; not to mention chicken, which had remained standard fare in France since the Gauls. If these were sometimes prepared in pasties and with spices and verjuice, they could also be presented more plainly, even for the well-off. Game only appeared exceptionally on tables and large birds like peacocks and swans were reserved for special occasions. Basically, the meals of the time appear if anything simpler and less varied than what we expect today as a matter of course.

There is also no clear distinction between the ordinary meals of the highest classes and those of adequate but not great means. Partridge and pheasant seem to have been the most exotic foods either ate in normal times. The most variety appears in lists of fish, which probably varied a great deal depending on the region and the season.

The poor often were limited to (typically, dark) bread and whatever greens they could find for free, sometimes beans or peas, often with cheese, more rarely with bacon (which seems to be mentioned less by now than it had in earlier centuries). Gruel too was a staple. Depending on the region and circumstances, some had more access to meat (beyond bacon) than others. On fast days, by far their most common option was herring, though some were limited to legumes. Surprisingly often, they also had a ration of wine or beer.

Broad beans and, less often, peas remained the staple legumes across all classes. Beef and lamb are mentioned far more often in this period than they had been in earlier centuries, a trend which would only continue; pork had begun to lose its status as the favored meat of the elite.

Deschamps' complaint about mustard hints at how common that condiment had become, even if one might find green sauce, for instance, in a tavern. (One could also buy sauces from professional saucemakers, but the fact that this item appears in none of the above records suggests this was exceptional.) Overall, the impression one gets in this period is of a limited range of foods served with a limited range of flavorings, except at the most elegant (and ostentatious) events. Rather than finding the period's food exotic, many modern diners would probably have found it, if anything, monotonous.



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