What did people in medieval Europe like to eat? Two works written in the 15th century, one by a Papal chef and the other by a French diplomat, offer unique descriptions of the favourite European foods.
The first source is a cookbook written by Johann of Bockenheim, who was the chef to Pope Martin V (1417–31). A document in the Papal archives reveals that Johann was hired on 1 December 1417 to be responsible for the general kitchen for the court and guests. This would have been a good way to learn the food preferences of the many visitors the Papal court would receive—knowledge he put to good use when he wrote Registrum Coquine in the 1430s.
This text, which offers over 80 recipes, is very interesting in how Johann notes that these dishes are particularly good for different nationalities or people of different regions. French, English, Germans, Hungarians, Italians, and even local Romans are among the European peoples Johann mentions when he writes his simple recipes.
For example, here is a recipe for cheese soup:
Take some fresh cheese, mix it up with eggs and season it with saffron and other sweet spices. Then take some fat broth, pour it on and let everything rest until you are ready to eat; with it fill a bowl as large as you wish it to be and sprinkle with spices. It will taste good to the French and the English.
In another section, the same dish is prepared a little differently for Romans:
Take grated bread and place it on plates. Add on top aged, good grated cheese with sweet spices. Then arrange bread and spices until you have filled the plate. Pour on top good, fat broth, and then bread and spices.
A folio from one of the two manuscripts that have Johann’s cookbook – Wikimedia Commons
Here are some other recipes aimed at particular peoples, starting with spinach soup for Italians:
Wash the spinach well, then boil it. Remove the water and pound it well with the knife, mixing with almond milk and making a mash. Add lard or olive oil.
Mutton for Germans:
Place the meat in fresh water, keeping it there for a short time until the blood oozes. Then place it on the fire until the blood oozes. When it is cooked, add parsley, make a bit of broth, and add saffron.
Liver soup for Czechs and Hungarians:
Take pork, veal, or lamb liver, and pound it in the mortar. Add a bit of honey and other sweet spices. Boil them together with saffron. It will be excellent.
This bird recipe was for northern Europeans (Saxons and Dacians):
Take starlings and all the little birds and boil them well, then cut them into four parts. Pound their heads and livers with juniper berries and unripe grapes. Fry them with lard and add the parts of the birds. Serve them with this mixture on top.
Johann of Bockenheim also offered recipes for different social groups—there were dishes for the rich and nobility, and others for peasants. He also covered dishes for women, monks, actors, and even prostitutes:
This is the way to roast almond milk on a spit. Take some rather thick milk and mix it with a good dose of broth. Then take a vegetable sponge (mushrooms?), and warm it up on the spit; then soak it in the milk and turn the spit very slowly, until the milk forms a curdle. At that point cut the sponge in half and continue to cook the milk, turning the spit slowly, until it is done. And it will taste good to harlots.
Gilles Le Bouvier presenting a book to King Charles VII. – BNF MS Français 4985, folio 13v
The second source is Le Livre de la description des pays, by Gilles le Bouvier (1386–c.1455). This herald spent nearly 30 years in the service of King Charles VII of France, acting as a diplomat and travelling throughout Europe and into the Middle East. In his later years, he became a writer, and one of his works was a description of the many countries he visited.
While not devoted to food itself, Le Livre de la description des pays offers occasional snippets of information about what people from various lands ate. For the regions within France, these observations included that people in Poitou ate salted bread, while, in Guyenne, it was millet bread. The Normans would make cider and perry from apples and pears, since they had no wine, but the people of Brittany would just drink water.
When it came to lands further away, Bouvier explained that the people of Scotland were “great eaters of meat and fish because the country is cold and they have little bread.” Meanwhile, in Bosnia, he wrote that its residents liked to carry “a bag of flour from which they make pancakes on the fire.”
Finally, in his section on Jerusalem, which is meant to be a broader description of the Middle East, he offers this intriguing note—that the people “drink a beverage made from pods growing on trees that they grind and percolate in fresh water. It is very good to drink and sweet like sugar.” Could this be one of the earliest references to coffee?
Le Livre de la description des pays has been translated as The Observations of Gilles le Bouvier: A Medieval Herald’s View of Europe and Its Neighbouring Lands, by Gideon Brough and Sophie Patrick. Click here to learn more about it.
What did people in medieval Europe like to eat? Two works written in the 15th century, one by a Papal chef and the other by a French diplomat, offer unique descriptions of the favourite European foods.
The first source is a cookbook written by Johann of Bockenheim, who was the chef to Pope Martin V (1417–31). A document in the Papal archives reveals that Johann was hired on 1 December 1417 to be responsible for the general kitchen for the court and guests. This would have been a good way to learn the food preferences of the many visitors the Papal court would receive—knowledge he put to good use when he wrote Registrum Coquine in the 1430s.
This text, which offers over 80 recipes, is very interesting in how Johann notes that these dishes are particularly good for different nationalities or people of different regions. French, English, Germans, Hungarians, Italians, and even local Romans are among the European peoples Johann mentions when he writes his simple recipes.
For example, here is a recipe for cheese soup:
Take some fresh cheese, mix it up with eggs and season it with saffron and other sweet spices. Then take some fat broth, pour it on and let everything rest until you are ready to eat; with it fill a bowl as large as you wish it to be and sprinkle with spices. It will taste good to the French and the English.
In another section, the same dish is prepared a little differently for Romans:
Take grated bread and place it on plates. Add on top aged, good grated cheese with sweet spices. Then arrange bread and spices until you have filled the plate. Pour on top good, fat broth, and then bread and spices.
Here are some other recipes aimed at particular peoples, starting with spinach soup for Italians:
Wash the spinach well, then boil it. Remove the water and pound it well with the knife, mixing with almond milk and making a mash. Add lard or olive oil.
Mutton for Germans:
Place the meat in fresh water, keeping it there for a short time until the blood oozes. Then place it on the fire until the blood oozes. When it is cooked, add parsley, make a bit of broth, and add saffron.
Liver soup for Czechs and Hungarians:
Take pork, veal, or lamb liver, and pound it in the mortar. Add a bit of honey and other sweet spices. Boil them together with saffron. It will be excellent.
This bird recipe was for northern Europeans (Saxons and Dacians):
Take starlings and all the little birds and boil them well, then cut them into four parts. Pound their heads and livers with juniper berries and unripe grapes. Fry them with lard and add the parts of the birds. Serve them with this mixture on top.
Johann of Bockenheim also offered recipes for different social groups—there were dishes for the rich and nobility, and others for peasants. He also covered dishes for women, monks, actors, and even prostitutes:
This is the way to roast almond milk on a spit. Take some rather thick milk and mix it with a good dose of broth. Then take a vegetable sponge (mushrooms?), and warm it up on the spit; then soak it in the milk and turn the spit very slowly, until the milk forms a curdle. At that point cut the sponge in half and continue to cook the milk, turning the spit slowly, until it is done. And it will taste good to harlots.
Registrum Coquine, which has been translated by Marco Gavio de Rubeis, is certainly a quirky text and, in the words of one scholar, is “among the most amusing and mysterious masterpieces of European gastronomic literature.”
The second source is Le Livre de la description des pays, by Gilles le Bouvier (1386–c.1455). This herald spent nearly 30 years in the service of King Charles VII of France, acting as a diplomat and travelling throughout Europe and into the Middle East. In his later years, he became a writer, and one of his works was a description of the many countries he visited.
While not devoted to food itself, Le Livre de la description des pays offers occasional snippets of information about what people from various lands ate. For the regions within France, these observations included that people in Poitou ate salted bread, while, in Guyenne, it was millet bread. The Normans would make cider and perry from apples and pears, since they had no wine, but the people of Brittany would just drink water.
When it came to lands further away, Bouvier explained that the people of Scotland were “great eaters of meat and fish because the country is cold and they have little bread.” Meanwhile, in Bosnia, he wrote that its residents liked to carry “a bag of flour from which they make pancakes on the fire.”
Finally, in his section on Jerusalem, which is meant to be a broader description of the Middle East, he offers this intriguing note—that the people “drink a beverage made from pods growing on trees that they grind and percolate in fresh water. It is very good to drink and sweet like sugar.” Could this be one of the earliest references to coffee?
Le Livre de la description des pays has been translated as The Observations of Gilles le Bouvier: A Medieval Herald’s View of Europe and Its Neighbouring Lands, by Gideon Brough and Sophie Patrick. Click here to learn more about it.
Subscribe to Medievalverse
Related Posts