Medieval Food Archive
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Feasting with Early Medieval Chiefs: Locating Political Action through Environmental Archaeology
Posted on May 18, 2013 | No CommentsThis excellent paper was the first given in the session on Early Medieval Europe. It looked at various archaeological excavations in Iceland and Denmark and the political role feasting played in pre-Christian Viking societies. -
Female brewers in Holland and England
Posted on May 7, 2013 | No CommentsI also want to know why women worked in those professions, what the background of these women was and if changes occurred over time. -
Food Recipes from the 12th-century discovered in manuscript
Posted on April 16, 2013 | No CommentsScholars have found a collection of food recipes dating back to the twelfth-century, making them the oldest western medieval culinary recipes known to exist. -
The Roots of Rhythm: The Medieval Origins of the New Orleans’ Mardi Gras Beignet
Posted on April 15, 2013 | No CommentsThis paper argues that the beloved Mardi Gras beignet, eaten in advance of the Lenten fast, derives from deep-fried pastries used to break the Ramadan fast by medieval Muslims living in Spain. -
The vegetarian component of a late medieval diet
Posted on March 10, 2013 | No CommentsTrondheim was the seat of an archbishop and the centre of the see of Nidaros from 1152/53 until 1537 when the reformation reached Norway and the last Norwegian archbishop, Olav Engelbrektsson, fled the country. This marked a turning point in the town’s history. The arch- bishop’s residence, Erkebispegården, which was established around AD 1170 between the cathedral and the river Nidelva. -
Horses for Courses? Religious Change and Dietary Shifts in Anglo-Saxon England
Posted on February 25, 2013 | No CommentsThe spread of Christianity across England over the course of the Anglo-Saxon period brought new worldviews, ways of acting and dietary habits. -
Why did the English people stop eating horses in the Middle Ages?
Posted on February 20, 2013 | No CommentsPeople living in Anglo-Saxon England were turned off the idea of eating horses once they became Christian as they believed it was ‘pagan’ food, argues a new research paper. -
The Progression of the Fork: From Diabolical to Divine
Posted on February 10, 2013 | No CommentsThis paper is about 'Design and the Tools of the Table, 1500–2005' curated as part of the Cooper Hewitt exhibit on utensils. -
Reconstruction of the diet in a mediaeval monastic community from the coast of Belgium
Posted on January 31, 2013 | No CommentsThe aim of the present article is to report the results of stable carbon and nitrogen isotope analysis on skeletons from a Belgian mediaeval population, and to look at variations in diet that may relate to age and social status. -
The Regular Canons and the Use of Food, c. 1200–1350
Posted on January 31, 2013 | No CommentsWe are greatly handicapped by the lack of material available to us for this period. By and large, household accounts which provide gross details of quotidian diet elude us. However, to recover the everyday diet of the canons, one useful approach is to examine corrodies and study the assumptions there, by way of analogy, with what can be inferred as normal consumption by canons. -
City and Countryside in Medieval England
Posted on January 27, 2013 | No CommentsAn impressive array of data, ranging over the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, has been collected by two full-time researchers, James Galloway and Margaret Murphy. Of primary importance for the project are demesne farming accounts and inquisitions post mortem (detailing manorial land and other assets, especially again those of the demesne), both of which sources survive in very large numbers for the period under review. Also, the project incorpor- ates large amounts of data from urban records, particularly those dealing with merchants who were prominent in organizing London's food supply. -
Body Mass and Body Mass Index estimation in medieval Switzerland
Posted on January 27, 2013 | No CommentsThe aim of the present study is to test the available BM estimation formulae based on the femoral head breadth (Auerbach and Ruff 2004, Grine et al. 1995, McHenry 1992, Ruff et al. 1991) on skeletal populations from medieval Switzerland and to reconstruct the BM and the BMI within a specific temporal and geographical setting. -
Apicius: Aspects of incorporating a cookbook of Early Middle Ages (8th and 9th centuries)
Posted on January 13, 2013 | No CommentsCuriously, although Apicius has been associated to Roman historical context by historians, its earliest manuscripts belong to the Early Middle Ages. -
Animal keeping and the use of animal products in medieval Emden (Lower Saxony, Germany)
Posted on December 20, 2012 | No CommentsThis thesis deals with the faunal remains from several excavations in the centre of the medieval town of Emden (Lower Saxony, Germany; Figure 1-1). The aim of this thesis is to answer questions concerning the development of animal husbandry and the use of animal products in the medieval period. -
Greenland’s Viking settlers gorged on seals
Posted on December 17, 2012 | No CommentsA Danish-Canadian research team has demonstrated the Norse society did not die out due to an inability to adapt to the Greenlandic diet: an isotopic analysis of their bones shows they ate plenty of seals. -
Environmental impact of the Baltic Crusades: deforestation, animal extinction, dogs no longer on the menu
Posted on December 11, 2012 | No CommentsA multidisciplinary project seeks to understand the environmental impact of the Baltic Crusades. Horses, for example, aided the Christians in battle, while the castles the Crusaders built decimated forests. -
Tasting Histories Lecture: “Seasonal and Local Dining in the Middle Ages”
Posted on November 30, 2012 | No CommentsThis was a paper given at the University of Toronto by Yale Professor, Paul freedman, on food during the Middle Ages and Early Modern period. -
Hot Holiday Reads!
Posted on November 23, 2012 | No CommentsPut down those turkey left-overs and check out some of these hot holiday reads! -
Medieval Food – Come Dine with St. Patrick
Posted on November 13, 2012 | No CommentsIreland in the 5th century: No restaurants, no take-aways, no street vendors or pre-prepared meals. -
You Are What You Eat: Hildegard of Bingen’s Viriditas
Posted on October 21, 2012 | No CommentsHildegard argues in the beginning of Physica that humans become what they eat. -
Dining at King’s College in the 15th century
Posted on October 8, 2012 | No CommentsPerhaps unsurprisingly, fish and seafood formed a major component in the diet of the fellows and scholars. -
Wine and Medicine from Hippocrates to the Renaissance
Posted on September 15, 2012 | No CommentsUntil the mid-1300s, brandy was regarded primarily as a medicinal beverage. Its reputation increased in the fourteenth century as a prophylactic against the plague. -
What is Medieval Times?
Posted on September 10, 2012 | No CommentsWhat is Medieval Times? Medievalists.net decided to see for ourselves and go to the Medieval Times Dinner and Tournament in Toronto, Canada. Here is our report on the show: -
Fruit of the Womb: Prenatal Food in Renaissance Italy
Posted on August 26, 2012 | No CommentsOne of the crucial tenants of humoral theory is the belief that females are of a colder and wetter disposition than the hotter, drier nature of males. To achieve optimal health the humors needed to be in perfect balance, as seen in all recommendations for food, drink, preparation and even environment. -
Labor Markets After the Black Death: Landlord Collusion and the Imposition of Serfdom in Eastern Europe and the Middle East
Posted on August 19, 2012 | No CommentsThe differences in the imposition of serfdom led to different economic and political effects for the peasantry in Europe. In Western Europe, wages rose, grain prices fell, and the consumption of meat, dairy products, and beer increased. More and more peasants moved into a widening “middle class” that could afford to buy manufactured goods.
