Showing posts sorted by relevance for query medieval spices. Sort by date Show all posts
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query medieval spices. Sort by date Show all posts

Sunday, December 11, 2022

A history of interest in medieval food

Medieval food has long been an object of interest in the Western world. Groups exist to recreate it. Academic disciplines address it as a subject. Even those with no particular interest in medieval food know of it (however caricaturally). What is more, arguably, the subject is at a turning point. For a long time, many recreationists and even some academics have treated it casually. A prime example is in making medieval bread. Do a search on “making medieval bread” and you will find numerous sites supposedly describing how to do so. But such sites never offer documentation for just what makes the bread “medieval” and in fact often describe methods which will yield something very unlike medieval bread. Even accredited academics can still be found claiming that spices did not come to Europe until after the Crusades (they are well-documented before that) or that medieval drinkers drank beer or wine because the water was bad (a “fact” unsupported, and in fact contradicted, by evidence from the period). Not everyone making “medieval” food claims to be rigorous; some are frankly recreational, indulging in what is essentially a form of entertainment. Fair enough, when that is made plain; but others offer their recipes or instructions with an air of authority that belies the lack of foundation underlying them. 

Arguably, this has been less true in recent years as a growing number of scholars and recreationists have insisted on documentation both of their own claims and those they accept from others. Where a lack of data requires a recreationist to speculate, they flag such speculations, rather than simply presenting them as authentic artifacts of earlier eras. 

Another way of viewing this is that the long-established field of medieval food studies – be it academic or recreational – is edging into a new era with new values and priorities. This being the case, it may be useful to review the historiography of this subject; that is, when did those who followed long after the medieval era begin to take an interest in its food and how has that interest developed over time? This is an attempt to review that history. 

UPDATE 10/23/2023
In 1751, the Abbé Lebeuf published not only the first work on medieval food but very likely the first full work on food history since the Romans: Mémoire sur les usages observés par les François dans leurs repas, sous la première race de nos rois ("Memoir on the customs followed by the French in their meals, under the first race of our kings" [that is, the Merovingians]). Relative to later works on medieval food, this is unique not only in ignoring cookbooks (none are known for that early period), but in studying early medieval food, when almost all work going forward would concern late medieval food (roughly, after the Crusades). The work is necessarily limited in scope, but rigorous as far as it goes, scrupulously citing the sources for each item.

Soon after this, eighteenth century writers began for the first time to revisit medieval cookbooks.

In 1780, Samuel Pegge published an edition of the Forme of Cury, a fourteenth century cookbook which is often regarded as the English equivalent of the Viandier. This was probably the first medieval cookbook to be reissued in modern times and remains a standard prime source. 

In 1782, Pierre Legrand d’Aussy, a former Jesuit, began what was intended to be a full history of French private life. As it worked out, he was only to finish the three volumes on food. But these were sufficiently comprehensive to be mined by numerous subsequent writers (usually without attribution) for facts (and too often myths) about food history. 

Legrand appears to have been the first to have drawn renewed attention to Taillevent’s Viandier, although he not only misspelled Taillevent’s name (which literally means “slice wind”) as “Taillevant”, but treated the work as a fifteenth century text – as most would for almost a century, since this fourteenth century work was long known only through its very corrupt printed version. Ironically, Legrand cites a reference to the author in his actual period – but presents the reference as being to an ancestor of “Taillevant”. (He probably knew the work from a fifteenth century copy; no new printed edition had appeared at that point.) Unlike many future writers on the subject, he points out that the food described in such cookbooks was the food of an elite, not typical food for all medieval eaters. He draws on this work and the French version (itself much distorted) of Platina to describe, probably for the first time since the original era, a number of medieval dishes such as mustard and saffron soup. 

If Legrand was the first to draw on medieval cookbooks to describe the food of the era, he would differ from most subsequent writers on the subject in not limiting himself to such sources. To the contrary, he more often drew on a wide variety of texts, such as laws, hagiographies, memoirs, etc., to explore the food of the entire medieval period in France. As time went on, more and more students of medieval food were to confine themselves to cookbooks, which so far have been unknown before the thirteenth century. The result, and within fairly short order, was to reduce the study of medieval food to that of the last few centuries of the Middle Ages, a period which began in the fifth century and lasted for a millennium. Even as fitful efforts have been made to widen that scope, it remains true that the term “medieval food” today refers by default to late medieval food, omitting centuries of food before that.

In 1831, a writer in the Gastronome argued that medieval food had been richer and more interesting than some claimed, but regretted that we had no details on the dishes whose suggestive names had survived. “Oh, who will be the Chompollion [who discovered the Rosetta Stone] who will reveal to us the mysteries of medieval cuisine?” Not that no information was available at this time. But for decades going into the nineteenth century medieval food was only referenced in survey works and then with dubious accuracy. The Dictionnaire général de la cuisine française ancienne et moderne (1839) includes two items cited in the next century by Toussaint-Samat. One concerns Dagobert II, a king who reigned so briefly virtually nothing is known about him and cites an otherwise unknown monk named Esthuin as showing him rejecting a dish made by roasting an ass stuffed with other animals. This appears to be an erudite, if unlikely, play on the Roman idea of a Trojan pig, a pig similarly roasted with other animals stuffed in it. The other claims that a king was served fourteen different soups: two of wine, one with cabbage and eggs, one with onions and beer, one with pumpkin with milk, one with fine oil and fish and seven others with boiled meat. Creative as this inventory is, it is not only the only suggestion that anyone served soups in multiple courses, but mentions soups otherwise completely unknown. 

Emile Gigault de La Bedollierre wrote a collection whose title suggests that of Le Grand’s work on private life: Histoire des moeurs et de la vie privée des Français depuis l’origine jusqu’à nos jours (1847). This includes some useful information, but also mentions a drink – brumalis canna - supposedly made of fruit, barley and ginger cited to a useless footnote. Others have since cited this, apparently based on this author’s (very dubious) claim. P. L Jacob’s Costumes historiques de la France (1852) mentions the same drink, probably based on the earlier work. 

Meanwhile in 1846 a key source document appeared in print: Le ménagier de Paris. This fourteenth century household manual, which includes both recipes and menus from the period, joined the Viandier as a rare source of medieval recipes and has remained central to medieval food studies ever since. In 1860, Louis Douet d’Arcq published the fourteenth century Enseignements qui enseignent à apareilier toutes manières de viandes, which includes recipes later found in the Viandier, showing that the later work was likely a compilation of pre-existing recipes rather than an original creation (and the same may well be true of the Enseignements). 

In 1868, Louis Nicolardot provided an overview of medieval food in Histoire de la table : curiosités gastronomiques de tous les temps et de tous les pays. 

In 1870, Valentine Rose first published a collated transcription of Anthimus’ sixth century dietetic. For a long time, this was studied for its linguistic value, with little interest in the important (and early) culinary data it recorded. 

Other overviews of medieval food appeared. In 1876, the Journal officiel de la République française told its readers that Bruyerin Champier’s De Re Cibaria included “a host of curious information on medieval food”. In 1875, John Cordy Jeaffreson included an overview of old English cookery in his A Book about the Table. In 1882, the periodical The Living Age presented an article on “Historical Cookery”. 

Note that none of these appeared to have had any wider effect; they were passing glimpses of an otherwise ignored subject. In 1884, Le Matin described a fair in Torino which (perhaps for the first time) offered recreations of medieval food, based on recipes from the Viandier. Said the journalist, “I have tasted this cuisine. The roasts and the sauces are highly peppered and seasoned with many spices.” 

In 1888, a book appeared presenting two English cookbooks: Two Fifteenth-century Cookery-books: Harleian Ms. 279 (ab. 1430), & Harl. Ms. 4016 (ab. 1450), with Extracts from Ashmole Ms. 1429, Laud Ms. 553, & Douce Ms. 55. In the same year, Alfred Franklin – a French writer on private life who frankly plagiarized much of his work – may have become the first known individual recreationist when he tried making a medieval recipe for a “Red Dodine of Duck” (which he hated). (La vie privée d'autrefois: arts et métiers, modes, moeurs, Volume 3 : La Cuisine.) 

In 1889, two works emphasized how highly spiced medieval cuisine was: Etudes religieuses, historiques et littéraires (from the Jesuits) and Lecoy de La Marche’s Le treizième siècle artistique. De la Marche spoke of the “abuse” of spices and linked what he saw as the violent character of medieval men with their love of hot spices. 

A major milestone in French medieval food history came in 1892 when Jérôme Pichon and Georges Vicaire finally published fourteenth century manuscripts of the Viandier, along with the corrupt fifteenth century version which had until then been the only one generally known. 

In 1895, the Dictionnaire des dictionnaires. Lettres, sciences, arts, encyclopédie universelle again highlighted the “abuse of spices” in medieval cuisine, adding that this began to change under Louis XIII. 

Note that none of these works added the wise caveat of Le Grand d’Aussy, that all this concerned aristocratic food, not the food of everyday people. At this point too, it was understood implicitly that “medieval food” meant food from the post-Crusades era of cookbooks. Le Grand’s attempt to explore earlier French food had long been abandoned. The general reader then began to understand that all medieval food – from all classes, from all eras – was highly spiced, when the documents used in fact regarded upper class diners in later medieval centuries. Any subtle distinctions were long lost and would remain so until recent times. 

By the end of the nineteenth century then several major sources had already been republished, scattered articles had appeared on the subject and at least two attempts had been made to actually recreate the older recipes. But nothing like a sustained interest in the subject had developed. 

This fitful interest in medieval food continued into the twentieth century. In 1913, Annie Abram’s English Life and Manners in the Later Middle Ages included a long chapter on medieval food. An article on “Medieval Cookery” appeared in the periodical Blackwood’s in 1914. The first potentially popular collection of medieval recipes appeared when Bertrand Guégan published a two-volume cookbook (La fleur de la cuisine française) in 1920. The first volume of this collection began with medieval texts and recipes from just after. This certainly made medieval recipes more generally available to non-specialists, but there is no evidence that any popular interest grew out of this work. 

In 1924, Eileen Power included a long article on the Ménagier in her book Medieval People. In the same year, Shirley Howard Weber published the first translation of Anthimus’ De Observatio[ne] Ciborum as a dissertation for Princeton. This rare glimpse at early medieval cuisine would still for some time mainly interest scholars for the archaic Latin it recorded. 

In 1931, William Edward Mead published The English Medieval Feast. 

For decades, interest in medieval food did not move beyond such scattered efforts. In the Sixties, two innovations would change that. The Society for Creative Anachronism came into being. This is not a scholarly group and it is generous in its chronological boundaries for the Middle Ages, which are “pre-17th century”. Nor are all its members equally concerned with precise historical accuracy. But inevitably it sparked serious study of period food among at least some members and no doubt had a significant influence on expanding interest in actually making medieval food. The first Renaissance Faires also appeared in this decade and no doubt also inspired further interest in some attendees. 

Whatever the exact impetus, by the Seventies more general works on medieval (and Renaissance) food became noticeably more common, including Berengario delle Cinqueterre’s The Renaissance Cookbook (1975), Lorna J. Sass’ To the King's Taste: Richard II's Book of Feasts and Recipes (1975), Bridget Ann Henisch’s Fast and Feast: Food in Medieval Society (1976), Madeleine Pelner Cosman’s Fabulous Feasts: Medieval Cookery and Ceremony (1976) and Constance B. Hieatt and Sharon Butler’s Pleyn Delit: Medieval Cookery for Modern Cooks (1979). 

In 1985, Hieatt and Butler published Curye on Inglysch: English culinary manuscripts of the fourteenth century (including the Forme of cury). The following year, Terence Scully published an edition of Chiquart's On Cookery. In 1989, James Prescott published an English translation of the Vatican Library copy of Le Viandier. 

By the Nineties, books on medieval food virtually constituted a separate genre. In 1992, Ann Hagen published her ground-breaking A Handbook of Anglo-Saxon Food: Processing and Consumption, the first sustained detailed look at medieval food before the Crusades, followed by A Second Handbook of Anglo-Saxon Food & Drink: Production & Distribution. In 1993, P. W. Hammond published Food and Feast in Medieval England. Eleanor and Terence Scully published Early French Cookery: Sources, History, Original Recipes and Modern Adaptations in 1995; Terence Scully published The Art of Cookery in the Middle Ages that same year, when Melitta Weiss Adamson also published Food in the Middle Ages: A Book of Essays. Nicole Crossley-Holland published a new look at the Ménagier, Living and Dining in Medieval Paris: The Household of a Fourteenth Century Knight, in 1996, when Mark Grant also published the first edition of his translation of Anthimus (On the Observance of Foods) and not only acknowledged the book’s culinary importance but was prompted by the food scholar Alan Davidson to publish his translation. This publication might have prompted further interest in medieval food before the Crusades, but seems to have had little impact.

The following year, Terence Scully published a critical edition and translation of The Vivendier. In 1998, Mary Ella Milham published an edition of Platina, on Right Pleasure and Good Health and Martha Carlin and Joel T. Rosenthal published Food and Eating in Medieval Europe. Phyllis Pray Bober published Art, Culture, and Cuisine: Ancient and Medieval Gastronomy in 1999. 

By the end of the twentieth century, then, medieval food history was solidly established as a subject of some popular, if not universal, interest. 

Meanwhile, a separate history developed with the Internet. Where previously people with relatively arcane interests had had to meet physically, now they could create communities from all over the world. Where most information had been transmitted by published, organized books, typically subject to scholarly and/or editorial review, now anyone could post information and piecemeal if desired, not necessarily in a coherent work. This certainly had advantages for medieval food research; numerous communities now exist for sharing information on various aspects of medieval food and a wealth of information has been made available by posters who might never have navigated the gauntlet required for publication. At the same time, unverified and even invented information can freely be posted and if the poster is sufficiently self-assured or convincing, such information will be passed on. This is not to say that physical publication avoided myths and errors; many of the most egregious food myths date to pre-Internet works. Still, it is not unusual to see someone post with great assurance on some aspect of medieval food without offering any documentation and often enough without having any and, if they have a sufficiently devoted following, such information can rapidly gain currency. 

Short of a dauntingly meticulous study, judging exactly how true this is and how long it has been is an uncertain enterprise. What has been striking in recent years is how many researchers, even if they represent a small percentage of the relevant audience, now insist on documentation for recipes and other medieval food data, or at the least a clear acknowledgment that a recipe or other item is a speculative “best guess”. Their number may not be numerically important so much as clearly defined in certain communities where this approach holds sway. To the degree that this is a reality, it represents a significant shift in the study of medieval food, one in specific corners of the Internet and even, sometimes, within university courses, which in this area have not always been free of myths or received ideas. 

With this, another shift is perceptible if not yet plainly apparent. That is towards redefining the general idea of “medieval food” so that it does not implicitly refer to the aristocratic food of Europe in the last centuries of the Middle Ages, but expands to include a wider interest both in the food of the less privileged and in the food of the many earlier centuries which so far have been neglected in medieval food studies. If such changes move to the forefront, along with a greater demand for rigor and documentation in the data, medieval food studies will change as substantially as they arguably did in the Sixties and Seventies. 



MEDIEVAL TEXTS FROM YOUR HOST 

 

The “How to Cook a Peacock” Series 

How to Cook an Early French Peacock: De Observatione Ciborum - Roman Food for a Frankish King (Bilingual Third Edition) 

How to Cook a Golden Peacock: A Translation of the Medieval Cookbook Enseingnemenz Qui Enseingnent à Apareillier Toutes Manières de Viandes

How To Cook A Peacock: Le Viandier: Medieval Recipes From The French Court 

 

 
Feasting with the Franks: The First French Medieval Food


 

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Saturday, January 18, 2014

Spices in France in the Dark Ages

Consider these statements, all from recent decades; "[The Crusades] introduced us to spices such as pepper, ginger, cloves, and cinnamon." (Snell and Williams); "the Crusades... introduced to Europe an appetite for spices like cinnamon, coriander, and saffron." (Clark); "The legacy of the Crusades can be seen in the new and exotic goods that found their way to Europe... [such as] the new spices of nutmeg, cloves, and ginger.” (McDowell).

In fairness, other sources today are more nuanced. But the idea that the Crusades essentially introduced spices to Europe is not an unusual one. It goes along with a number of other ideas associated with the Early Medieval period, accompanying an overall image of this period as “Dark Ages” where Europe declined into isolated enclaves and brutal chaos, where anything so sophisticated as international trade was a distant memory.

In this view, the Crusades were virtually a shaft of light, cutting through the dark shadows of Europe's isolation. But in fact, like so much about this period, the truth about trade, and about spices in particular, is far more nuanced.

For more about the early Middle Ages
Feasting with the Franks

The First French Medieval Food


Spices certainly did not arrive in the West with the Crusades. The Romans, whose empire stretched into the East, used spices in both cooking and medicine. Literary writers mention pepper almost exclusively. But Roman cooks used a wide range of seasonings, as recorded in the one surviving Roman cookbook, fictively attributed to the gourmet Apicius. De Re Coquinaria mentions salt, black and white pepper, anise, caraway, celery seed, costus, cumin, dill, fennel, flea-bane, ginger, laser, laurel, laurel berries, lovage, malabathrum, marjoram, mastic, mint, mustard, myrtle berries, onion, origany, pennyroyal, rocket seed, rue, saffron, sage, savory, spikenard, sumac, thyme, and tarragon.

In the fifth century, an Ostrogoth (probably) named Vinidarius added “Excerpta” to the same work, beginning with a list (in three groups) of the seasonings one should keep on hand:
Saffron, pepper, ginger, lasar, leaf, myrtles bays, costus, clove, Indian spikenard, addena, cardomon, spikenard...
Poppy seed, rue seed, rue berries, laurel berries, anise seed, celery seed, fennel seed, lovage seed, rocket seed, coriander seed, cumin, dill, parsley, caraway, sesame...
Laser root, mint, catnip, sage, cypress, origany, juniper, shallots, [bacas timmi], coriander, Spanish camomile, citron, parsnips, Ascalonian shallots, rush roots, dill, pennyroyal, Cyprian rush, garlic, legumes, marjoram, inula, silphium, cardamom,
These lists might be inclusive to a fault. Few cooks today use most of the spices available in a supermarket and probably some of these were rarely if ever used. Still, it is clear that the Romans had a great variety of seasonings available.
Compare the above lists to this one, from a fifteenth century edition of Taillevent's Viandier: “Ginger, cinnamon, clove, paradise seed, pepper, mastic, galangal, nutmeg, saffron, cinnamon, sugar, anise and powder [a mixture of other spices].”  Taillevent does not distinguish between types of pepper, but one might add to this list long pepper and cubeb. While other spices would occasionally appear in Late Medieval food, these were the most common ones, several centuries after the Crusades.
Bear in mind too that not everything we consider a spice today was imported and not all plant products fit a single category. In English, a distinction is made between cilantro – an herb – and coriander – its seed, a spice. But in French coriandre refers to both and the plant was grown in Europe, as was caraway, whose seed is also a spice, but whose roots and leaves can also be consumed.
The terminology of the time is probably of most interest to those referring to the original sources; still, a note on this might be useful. “Spices”, for a very long time, referred to various luxury items or, in later centuries, even to quasi-bribes paid to judges; it is always dangerous, in earlier centuries, to assume the word (in French or Latin) refers to seasonings. Most often, the latter were simply identified individually. The most common collective term was pigmentum, which also meant “color” (hence “pigment”) and would later branch into “pimento” (from one variant, used for example by Vinidarius, who writes of pimentorum.) When Pliny refers to spiced wines he calls them either aromatites (“aromatic” or “perfumed”) or piperata (literally, “peppered”, though other spices were used). Knotker the Stutterer, one of Charlemagne's biographers, also refers to aromatibus (aromas; “spices” or “aromatics”).

 Remnants of Rome
The Roman Empire was already declining well before the Franks took over Gaul, but Marseilles, the main port for imports from the East, remained active for centuries. When Gregory of Tours writes of “spices” (species) arriving there, he is probably referring to a variety of luxury goods, but these would have included aromatic spices, especially since he also refers to “writing paper” (chartam); that is papyrus, which came from the same place as many spices: Egypt.

What spices continued to be imported into Gaul? As it happens, the Greek physician Anthimus recorded a number of them at the start of Gregory's own (sixth) century. Anthimus had been sent as an ambassador from Vinidarius' own culture, the Ostrogoths, but wrote a guide to foods for Theuderic, one of the Frankish kings. The text specifically addresses foods from near Metz (in northeastern Gaul); where he is uncertain if a food is available there, he explicitly says as much. While his was a work on health, not a recipe book, that is all the more reason for him to have been attentive to spices, which were considered to have important medicinal effects. The food he describes is, for the most part, Roman, but Roman food made far from Rome itself and after Rome had fallen; that is (even allowing for his work not being a cookbook), a simpler version of that cuisine than described by Pseudo-Apicius.

Anthimus repeatedly recommends pepper as one of the spices to be used in various preparations. He mentions both simple pepper (no doubt black pepper) and (in one reading) “sweet pepper” (probably white pepper). He also mentions salt, clove, coriander, costus, dill, fennel, ginger, "leaf", leek, mint, pennyroyal, spikenard, sumac, and celery. (He mentions onions and garlic, but not as flavorings.) Not all of these, of course, were imports or even spices per se; several were herbs which could be grown or (like salt) were otherwise produced in France itself.

The list of seasonings in his work is far shorter than that of those from Pseudo-Apicius and Vinidarius. But it not only includes pepper and ginger (which would still be popular centuries later) and costus and spikenard (Roman favorites rarely found in Late Medieval cuisine), but clove, which would later be very important in cooking, but came late to Rome (Pseudo-Apicius omits it, though Vinidarius includes it).

Note that of the imported spices, most Anthimus names came from the same areas as those named in Pseudo-Apicius and Vinidarius. In other words, the fact that the latter were not used does not mean that they were not to be had, but that, more probably, they were not desired. This would be perfectly in keeping with the change in rulers. If the upper class Franks (and other Germans) tried to emulate Roman luxury up to a point, they had neither the same history of tastes nor anything like the Romans' extensive empire. Nor would their cooks have been as sophisticated.


Cumin and cinnamon

Anthimus omits two other spices: cumin and cinnamon. The first is surprising. Not only do both the earlier writers mention it, but the Greek writer Poseidonius had already noted cumin as one of the rare spices used by the Gauls: “Those who live near the Mediterranean sea, or near the Atlantic ocean... eat [fish] roasted with salt and vinegar and cumin seed: and cumin seed they also throw into their wine.” Unfortunately, he does not say if they used imported cumin or a local variety which grew in France.
None of these three writers mention cinnamon, which already appears in the Old Testament (Exodus 30:23 and Song of Solomon 4:14) and was known to the Romans, but mainly used at funeral and for medicine. It was literally believed to come from Paradise, where the poet-bishop Sidonius Apollinaris (430 – 489) described it being used in the Phoenix's nest. (Eastern spice merchants are believed to have invented such colorful tales to hide the origins of their precious goods.)
But about a century after Anthimus, the monk Marculfe, in his previously mentioned book of forms and letters (650-655), recorded both. Traveling officials in this period used a kind of requisition form – a tractorium – which defined what local hosts were obliged to provide for them. Marculfe includes a sample of such a form to be used by the king's representatives. The quantities of each item are omitted, since this was a model to be used in different circumstances, but the items themselves give some idea of what could be reasonably found in Gaul by a traveler. Among these are the following spices: cumin, pepper, costus, clove, spikenard, cinnamon and mastic. If the hosts were probably expected to be people or institutions of means (local lords, monasteries, etc.), these spices could not have been so rare and expensive that providing them would have imposed an undue burden. Though the costus and spikenard here still harken back to Roman tastes, the other ingredients were already among those which would be popular after the Crusades (and whose appearance in France, as we have seen, is sometimes erroneously ascribed to them). It is in fact surprising that mastic, rarely mentioned at the time, was already included in the list.
The next major source comes from yet another century later, though it may originally be contemporaneous with Marculfe. In 716, Chilperic II confirmed a charter said to have been issued by Clothar III (reigned 655- 673) and Childeric II (reigned 673-675) in favor of the great monastery at Corbie, in Picardy. This charter exempts the monastery from duties for goods received at Fos, near the port of Marseilles. Aside from providing invaluable details, this charter also shows that monks from the north of France – specifically the cellerar and his companions – found it normal to travel all the way to the south; this too contradicts a common image of a Dark Age where travel was exceptional and dangerous, with people huddling in isolated enclaves.
Further, like the tractoria, this charter defined supplies the cellerar and his group were to receive along the way. These did not include all the spices they were to transport themselves, but did include pepper and cumin along with salt. Again, this implies that these were common enough that one could expect to find them in different locales.
As for the products they were to pick up, this list, unlike Marculfe's, includes quantities: 30 pounds of pepper, 150 pounds of cumin, 2 pounds of clove, 1 pound of cinnamon, 2 pounds of nard, 30 pounds of costus. The amounts here are interesting; if the amount of pepper is far larger than that of most of the others, it is dwarfed by the quantity of cumin (though that might be true in part because pepper was so expensive at the time). Whether this imported cumin was African (Ethiopian) or not is uncertain; but clearly it must have been considered superior to that grown in Gaul itself. Pliny had already made a distinction between varieties of cumin:
It is cummin that is the best suited of all the seasoning herbs to squeamish and delicate stomachs. This plant grows on the surface of the soil, seeming hardly to adhere to it, and raising itself aloft from the ground: it ought to be sown in the middle of the summer, in a crumbly, warm soil, more particularly. There is another wild kind of cummin, known by some persons as "rustic," by others as "Thebaic" cummin: bruised and drunk in water, it is good for pains in the stomach. The cummin most esteemed in our part of the world is that of Carpetania, though elsewhere that of Africa and Æthiopia is more highly esteemed; with some, indeed, this last is preferred to that of Egypt.
The quantity here, together with the expectation that it could be found along a traveler's route, suggests that cumin held an unusual importance in this period. As noted above, this importance had existed under the Gauls and may simply have continued into the earlier Medieval centuries. But it would be less apparent after the Crusades, when cumin was mainly used in its own dish (cominée, or cuminey), but not in the common mixtures of clove, cinnamon, etc. used elsewhere.

 If clove and cinnamon were current by now, small quantities are listed for both – suggesting that they were unusually expensive or only under-used? The continuing presence of costus and nard (that is, spikenard), shows the persistence of Roman tastes in this period (especially since the same list includes the Roman condiment garum, which would still be used by Charlemagne). (Another item, “hidrium”, is mentioned later in the list. Pirenne suggested that this was a spice and the quantity (50 pounds) suggests it was important; but the hidrium is listed separately from the other spices  – grouped, in fact with chick peas and rice  –  and has never been satisfactorily identified.)
In approaching Charlemagne's time, then, most of the major spices found after the Crusades were already being imported: pepper, cinnamon, clove, cumin and mastic. Ginger was known at the start (Anthimus mentions it once, to use with hare), but it is not clear if it was still available. Nutmeg was not yet mentioned, nor were paradise seed or galangal (both of which would have a fleeting vogue in Late Medieval cuisine, but not endure in French cooking). "Pepper" may conceivably have referred to more than one type, but at the least no specific mention is made of long pepper or cubeb.
It is always important, of course, to bear in mind how fortuitous and fragmentary are written records for this period. Other spices might have had currency and simply not be recorded in surviving documents. The best we can say currently is that the above were found. It is also important not to assume that all spices were used for cooking; again, they had medicinal uses as well.

The Carolingians
Charlemagne's own period presents a paradox: it is probably the best documented era in France before the Crusades and evidence certainly exists that spices were used then; yet most references to them remain general. In a metaphor, Theodulf of Orleans, for instance, expressed frustration at being given simple fare rather than having “spiced foods”; Charlemagne received gifts of spices from Eastern ambassadors. Further, Charlemagne had contact with a number of cultures – Byzantine, Persian, Arab – which used spices and had good reason to see that his own cooks offered visitors from these cultures impressive food. (Knotker the Stammerer – “The Monk of Saint Gall” – tells a long story of the lengths taken to impress some arriving ambassadors from the East.)
Knotke tells one humorous story which, quite incidentally, shows that trade with the East continued and that it included spices. It also references the fact that Jews (along with "Syrians" - probably any Mideastern Christian) played a key role in that trade. (Note too that if a modern reader may cringe at some of the stereotypes in this story, it nonetheless holds none of the virulence towards Jews found in Gregory of Tours, for example, and that would be standard after the Crusades; to the contrary, it shows the Emperor enlisting the aid of a Jewish merchant, as he would elsewhere as well):
There was a bishop who sought above measure vanities and the fame of men. The most cunning Charles heard of this and told a certain Jewish merchant, whose custom it was to go to the land of promise and bring from thence rare and wonderful things to the countries beyond the sea, to deceive or cheat this bishop in whatever way he could. So the Jew caught an ordinary household mouse and stuffed it with various spices, and then offered it for sale to the bishop, saying that he had brought this most precious never-before-seen animal from Judea. The bishop was delighted with what he thought a stroke of luck, and offered the Jew three pounds of silver for the precious ware. Then said the Jew, "A fine price indeed for so precious an article! I had rather throw it into the sea than let any man have it at so cheap and shameful a price." So the bishop, who had much wealth and never gave anything to the poor, offered him ten pounds of silver for the incomparable treasure. But the cunning rascal, with pretended indignation, replied: "The God of Abraham forbid that I should thus lose the fruit of my labour and journeyings." 
Then our avaricious bishop, all eager for the prize, offered twenty pounds. But the Jew in high dudgeon wrapped up the mouse in the most costly silk and made as if he would depart. Then the bishop, as thoroughly taken in as he deserved to be, offered a full measure of silver for the priceless object. And so at last our trader yielded to his entreaties with much show of reluctance: and, taking the money, went to the emperor and told him everything. A few days later the king called together all the bishops and chief men of the province to hold discourse with him; and, after many other matters had been considered, he ordered all that measure of silver to be brought and placed in the middle of the palace. Then thus he spoke and said :— "Fathers and guardians, bishops of our Church, you ought to minister to the poor, or rather to Christ in them, and not to seek after vanities. But now you act quite contrary to this; and are vainglorious and avaricious beyond all other men." Then he added: "One of you has given a Jew all this silver for a painted [that is, spiced] mouse." Then the bishop, who had been so wickedly deceived, threw himself at Charles's feet and begged pardon for his sin. Charles upbraided him in suitable words and then allowed him to depart in confusion.
Several times, Knotker emphasizes Charlemagne's disapproval of high-living bishops and their serving ornate food is mentioned as one evidence of their excess. Though such food would have been richly spiced, we have no accounts of specific dishes or ingredients. Even the Capitulary De Villis, with its wealth of other details, is silent on spices. (Some sources state that the recipes of Pseudo-Apicius were used at this point, but seem to base that only on the fact that the oldest known manuscript dates to about this period. The idea is not far-fetched – Charlemagne had garum made on his estates and probably the best meals of this time bore Roman influence. But no specific evidence supports the use of these recipes in this time.)
His son, Louis the Pious, defined allotments for envoys similar to those in the tractoria, but these do not mention spices. (The great French scholar Pirenne pointed to this as proof that spices were no longer imported, but in fact these lists do not include any other seasonings either, including salt or vinegar, both of which were produced in France.) Still, two documents dated to the last two centuries before the first Crusade provide further information on spices. One is the Brevis de Substantia (a list from 867, for the church of Saint-Sauveur at Steneland, near Veurne, now in Belgium) and the other (less precisely dated) the Brevis de Melle (a list of purchases for the Abbey of Corbie, generally thought to be from the end of the ninth century or start of the tenth, even if Pirenne disputed this). 
The mention in the Substantia is very brief: “cumin, 1 ounce, between cinnamon and galangal and clove. 1 ounce.” The de Melle lists products bought at Cambrai, which, after the pillage of Marseilles (838), became one of the northern trading hubs for products from the East. Not all of the spices it names can be clearly identified, but the list includes pepper, cumin, ginger, clove, cinnamon, galangal, costus, spikenard, mastic, and zedouary. At this point, the list is very close to what would be found after the Crusades. It only omits paradise seed, nutmeg and saffron (anise could be grown in France and sugar would take on a different status entirely). Otherwise, pepper and cumin still stand out in the de Melle's list: 120 pounds of pepper are specified, 70 of cumin and ginger together (compared to 10 pounds each for most of the others). Again, pepper is only mentioned generically; long pepper and cubeb, if they were present at all, are not explicitly mentioned.
Around the same time, a Jewish geographer, Ibn-Yakoub, (writing in Arabic) described spices found at Mainz. The French scholar Bruno Laurioux also mentions an 11th century document, Honoranciae civitatis Papiae, which refers to the end of the tenth century.
Taken together, these documents not only show that spices were present in France before the Crusades, but trace a progression towards the spices used in Late Medieval cuisine. Laurioux provides an overview of these shifts, while acknowledging that not all spices were "consumable”:
The spices most commonly found in these texts are: pepper, cinnamon, clove, galangal, in a lesser measure costus. We are far from the spices of Apicius, and to the contrary quite close to the medieval "stock". The case of galangal is not without interest; it appears in the West in the ninth century; the first mention is not found in the letter of bishop Salomon II of Konstanz from 876, but in the Brevis de substantia...; right away, in the ninth-tenth century, galangal is a highly-used spice: cited in the Brevis de melle of Corbie, it is mentioned by Ibn-Yakoub and the Honoranciae as a standard product of major trade.
Laurioux then highlights the implications of these changes where the products are clearly for consumption:
With the Brevis de substantia, we have without any doubt properly consumable spices. What then do we find there? An ounce of cumin, an ounce of cinnamon, of galangal and clove. The absence of pepper is surprising, but [may reflect a gap in the text]... Finally, the confirming evidence of the Honoranciae and of Ibn-Yakoub allow us to suggest that the major trade of spices concerns, at the end of the tenth century, four to five products above all: pepper, cinnamon, ginger, galangal (to which Ibn-Yakoub adds clove). The promotion of the last four of these is indeed specific to the Late Middle Age.
To put it another way, a number of Late Medieval dishes could be made using only these spices, even if others, like long pepper and paradise seed, would join the list in later centuries. Zedouary, a ginger-like root, would briefly be mentioned at the start of the Late Medieval period, but appears only fleetingly in later recipes.
Zedouary is also mentioned, and along with long pepper, in a document from around 900, the Nomina de picmentis. It is believed to have been written by the monk at the abbey of Jumièges who managed either the pharmacy or more general storage. It lists seventy-four items, including long pepper, saffron, cardamon and zedouary. In this case the intended use of these spices is less certain; many were almost certainly used medically. But, taken with the other documents, it shows the presence of almost all the major Late Medieval spcies in France before the Crusades.
Conclusion
It should be clear from the above that spices were known in France well before the Crusades. Some writers, rather than claiming otherwise, simply state that they became more common and less expensive afterward. That claim is credible, but also far from straightforward. For one thing, spices remained expensive for several centuries after the Crusades and it was some time before they became anything like common. But there is also the question of just how common they were, or not, relative to other foods before. The slim data cited here is in fact most of the data on spices in the sparsely documented period between the fall of Rome and the Crusades. If it proves that spices were available in France through most of that period, it provides a very uncertain picture of how widespread their use was among those of any means. To complicate the question, all evidence suggests that only a minority in France ate with any sophistication at all until the rise of a true middle class (which came late in the Middle Ages overall). Many barely had meat, much less exotic flavorings to put on it. It seems at the least foolhardy then to state that spices were any less available than other foods of significant cost before the Crusades than after. But that issue at least remains obscure; that the Crusades did not introduce most spices to France is certain.


FOR FURTHER READING:


Snell, Melissa, Paul L Williams, PH.D.,, The Complete Idiot's Guide to the Crusades 2003

Clark, William W., Medieval Cathedrals 2006

McDowell, Linda, Marilyn Mackay, Teacher's Guide for World History Societies of the Past 2005


Gregory (st, bp. of Tours.), Histoire ecclésiastique des Francs, revue et collationnée et tr. par mm. J. Guadet et Taranne  1836

Taillevent, Le viandier de Guillaume Tirel dit Taillevent, ed Jérôme Frédéric Pichon, Georges Vicaire Techener 1892

For my own English translation:
Taillevent, How to Cook a Peacok: Le Viandier


Dalby, Andrew, Food in the Ancient World from A to Z 2013






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Friday, August 22, 2014

An anniversary, an overview, a break

Last week's post was the 52nd weekly post since I revived and repurposed a moribund blog. That makes this as good a time as any to take a break, as well as a look back.

For the last year, I have tried to maintain a steady “publication” rhythm of posting each Friday evening. But when I return to this blog, I expect to follow a more occasional pace. Realistically, this will not matter to most readers; experience shows that most people find posts here long after they first go up, often through forwarding by others.

Also, when I revived this blog, it was with the view of exploring material for two different books I am working on: one on early medieval French food, the other on the history of French bread. In practice, however, I have drifted more towards the medieval side, perhaps only because research on that side is more challenging. I expect my future posts to lean more towards the bread history side. But who knows?

With this of course there will always be wild cards, as there have through this last year.

With that, a look at this past year's hits – and not.



Popular posts

By far the most popular post on this blog has been the one exploring a common myth: that people in the Middle Ages drank beer and wine to avoid bad water. This is perhaps not so surprising; most people have heard some version of this claim and more than one is surprised to see it methodically demolished. What is perhaps more surprising is that for almost two months the post was barely noticed. Then, after a brief run-up, views again froze for several weeks – until, all of a sudden, a rush of forwards drove views up by the tens of thousands over several days. After that movement peaked, the trend has been more modest, but continues apace nonetheless.

Perhaps more surprising is the fact that the most popular post after that seems to have spread with virtually no public forwards and for, honestly, completely unknown reasons. This is the post on drinks other than beer, wine and water used in the Middle Ages.

Drinks in general seem to be a popular topic – the third most popular post has been on early medieval wine. But of course wine in general is increasingly popular as an interest.

This said, the most popular post after that is on early medieval cheeses. Can't have the one without the other?

It is perhaps not so surprising that the next most popular post is on recipes from medieval medical texts. For a long time, only a handful of medieval recipe books have been known. Any new possibilities are likely to interest those seeking to make more medieval dishes, and medical works are an under-used source of recipes.


No? Really?

If the success of some posts comes as a surprise, the lack of success of others shows how hard it is to predict what others will like. Not of all these were necessary unsuccessful in terms of views, just less successful than I had initially expected.

Lancelot de Casteau's Ouverture de Cuisine (1604) is a classic of early cuisine which also happens to address Belgian cuisine specifically. But Belgian cuisine in earlier centuries is rarely documented. One would think then that an earlier work on the subject would excite both those with an interest in historical food in general and Belgians in particular. Brother Leonard's fourteenth century dietetic is such a work; it includes a wealth of details not only on the food eaten in Liège in this period, but some specific regional specialties. And it is not like the four posts examining this work have been completely ignored. But certainly they have proved less exciting to my readers in general than I might have expected.

The history of Roman aqueducts which survived into the early Middle Ages would seem to be a unique and fascinating subject, as would that of snails used as funeral ornaments. But neither has attracted much attention. The story of breads which have survived in archaeology across many centuries has begun to attract some interest, but this has taken longer than I might have expected with so unique a tale.

Since horse meat has even been in the news in recent years, one would think that the long history of eating it in France would draw general interest. But that post has had only mediocre activity.

As a general note, it is simply very hard to predict what subjects, within this narrow and somewhat esoteric domain of medieval food, will interest the most readers.


An overview of topics

Though I have not followed any planning in choosing topics for my posts, as a practical matter, the great majority explore aspects of early medieval food. These can be grouped into larger topics, as they are here. Otherwise, a number have been either on late medieval food or on aspects of the period as a whole.  

Just two posts have delved into little-known aspects of Roman food. This is still arguably related to early medieval food, since so much of the preparation remained essentially Roman.

Otherwise, a few, but, just a few posts have been about bread, and then mainly at the start.


ROMAN
Beyond Apicius (2): recipes from other Roman sources



EARLY MEDIEVAL FOOD

Drink

The water highways of Gaul

Early Medieval French wine

Stumbling through history towards beer

Getting drunk in Medieval France

Beyond wine, water and beer: what else they drank in Medieval France

And its two follow-ups for later centuries:

The later water myths: Old Regime water after the Middle Ages

Later water myths: early America




Specific foods

The small, tart plum of my eyes

Of peas, beans, monks and kings


The meat of the matter / The matter of meat

Killing Pegasus: a history of horse meat in France

Lamprey, fish ponds, and carp

Whaling in Medieval France


Spices in France in the Dark Ages

A soup for the Bishop of Tours

Saved by fire: breads in archeology
http://leslefts.blogspot.com/2014/01/saved-by-fire-breads-in-archeology.html


The luxury of butter

OLD REGIME CHEESE: 1. The lost cheeses of Medieval France
http://leslefts.blogspot.com/2014/03/old-regime-cheese-1-lost-cheeses-of.html

OLD REGIME CHEESE: 2. What, no Camembert?
http://leslefts.blogspot.com/2014/03/old-regime-cheese-2-what-no-camembert.html



Serving

A matter of courses

At the table in early medieval France

Tableware in early Medieval France



Commerce

Using coins in early medieval France

Fairs and markets in France from the Gauls to the Halles

Comparing prices in medieval France



Religious

Shifts in fasting in medieval France

Food in early monastic rules

Food of the early French saints

Christmas in early Medieval France



Sources

Sources on early medieval French food


Food in Frankish laws

Food in other Germanic codes


GENERAL EARLY MEDIEVAL

French cities in the Dark Ages

In defense of the Franks (and other “barbarian hordes”)

The funereal snails
LATE MEDIEVAL

http://leslefts.blogspot.com/2014/03/the-doctors-blancmange-medieval-recipes.html

The early history of the Paris Halles

A FOURTEENTH CENTURY DIETETIC: 1. What is a dietetic?

A FOURTEENTH CENTURY DIETETIC: 2. Brother Leonard on diet and health

A FOURTEENTH CENTURY DIETETIC: 3. Belgian (Walloon/Liègeois) food in the fourteenth century

A FOURTEENTH CENTURY DIETETIC: 4. Brother Leonard on behavior and attitude
http://leslefts.blogspot.com/2014/02/a-fourteenth-century-dietetic-brother.html


GENERAL MEDIEVAL FOOD

French hospital food in the Middle Ages

Beyond the peacocks: what most Medieval eaters actually ate

The doctor's blancmange: Medieval recipes from medical texts





BREAD

Back to one bread?


What got a rise out of French bakers?


Saved by fire: breads in archeaology


The Yeast Paradox



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