SC - Horrendous article about period food.

[Philip & Susan Troy]

Bluwlf17 at cs.com wrote:
> 
> Hello, I'm new to the SCA and hopeing to become a great feastcrat.  I'm not
> that knowleged
> in period food, but the author of this article is refering to "plain
> peasants' fare".

After having gone back and read the article again, I can't agree. The
author is generalizing by taking the worst, most alien (to us) aspects
of medieval European life, and applying them across the board to portray
the living conditions of a generic (and therefore nonexistent) medieval
person. It is, at best, not completely accurate, and at worst, is highly
patronizing as _well_ as inaccurate. The article proceeds from the
premise that life was so different then, and supports the premise with a
lot of misinformation or accurate information misapplied. Easier to tell
the truth and admit that while life is different in many respects in
medieval Europe from life today in much of the world, there are many
areas in which it was pretty similar. Unfortunately for many people it
is the patronizing tone that makes the article interesting.  

>  I can beleive most of what they wrote, and agree about the
> bread.  Also, it is possible to cook bread on a hearth. Though some small
> villages had community ovens, it was highly unlikly that anybody had a
> suitable baking oven in their home.  If anyone can find it documented
> otherwise, please let me know.  I'd hate to stand by a missinformed statement.

The misinformed statement is the implication that in the year 1000 bread
in general was flat and made from unbolted meal. While such bread
existed, there's no reason to believe it was any more universal than
leavened, semi-white bread.

But wait, there's more! If you order before midnight tonight, you'll see:

(The following is from the article, not from Antonio)

> And, when they could get it, they hashed and mashed the
> stringy pork or tough mutton or rubbery chicken (only after it had
> stopped laying eggs) into "soft," curry-like dishes. Their teeth were worn
> to stumps from gnawing bones and munching coarse grains or else so
> full of cavities it was too painful to chew anything stiffer than peas
> porridge, a sticky mass of dried legumes they made into dumplings
> then steamed in a linen cloth hung from a hook above the ever-
> simmering soup.

There's a good deal of speculation as to exactly what peasants ate,
assuming this is peasants we're discussing, which is unclear. While nobs
and peasants are mentioned, the impression I got was that a sort of
Everyman was meant. I wonder what documentation the author could provide
for the info on pease pudding in a linen cloth (pease porridge is a
completely different dish and appears to originate somewhat earlier than
the pudding the lady describes, which appears to be eighteenth or
nineteenth century, if you can go by the recipes). Note also that the
author states that among the reasons people couldn't chew coarse, tough,
or hard foods is their habit if chewing on bones..."Sorry, I can't eat
that chicken leg, it's too tough -- my teeth are worn down from all the
chicken leg bones I've chewed. Got any frumenty?"    
 
>                  Most kept poultry so they could count on (very small) eggs
> from their own flocks, as well as from the nests of any and all wild birds -
> - from swans to sparrows.

Recipes seem to suggest hen's eggs were somewhat smaller than we now get
them. Whether they were significantly smaller than the smallest of the
broad modern range, I couldn't say, but I find it hard to believe the
author could know this either, unless she simply believes everything
she's told about the Middle Ages.
> 
>                  They fished the rivers when they weren't frozen

Actually, they fished them when they were frozen, too, and they were
frozen for roughly the same amount of time as they are today. What's her point?

> and hunted
> deer and small game, adding whatever they had to the one large pot
> they owned.

If "they" only owned one large pot (i.e. were serfs), "they" were also
barred by law from hunting deer in England after the Norman Conquest.
Since we're generalizing... .

> The only other kitchen utensils were a dagger-like knife, a
> ladle and a shallow, probably earthenware, frypan. They had no ovens
> and few Roman "cookbooks" had survived though even if they had, not
> many besides clergy could read.

They also had forks (they just didn't use them at table), spoons,
colanders, hair sieves and a variety of other equipment, depending on
the kitchen tasks they tended to perform, just like people today. If you
need to do a job you make or acquire the necessary tools.
 
>                  There was no pasta,

Pasta appears in several forms in recipe sources of
early-to-mid-13th-century England, and may well have been eaten
considerably earlier in places like Italy, Spain, and Turkey. Both
spinach and brussels sprouts are mentioned in 14th-century French cookbooks.

> no potatoes, tomatoes or corn; no
> spinach, broccoli or brussels sprouts. But they had cabbage, spinach,
> watercress and kale, which they referred to as "herbs."

So, they had spinach, but not spinach?

> They had most
> of the root vegetables we know today, as well as onions and leeks,
> which they grew were supplemented with wild plants and grasses.

Except, apparently, for the orange carrot, which appears to be more recent.

> These they foraged from local forests full of hungry bears and wolves
> also out foraging -- sometimes for peasants.

Now this is just plain silly. Yes, there were wolves and sometimes bears
in forests. Their populations had, by the Middle Ages, been severely
depleted by forest clearing and hunting, and as with large carnivores
today, tended to avoid humans unless too old or sick to prey on the more
standard fare. Again, an event which did occur but was comparatively
rare is being portrayed as commonplace.  

>                  There was no sugar or maple syrup with which to make
> desserts,

There _was_ sugar, and again it matters whether we're talking about the
rich or the poor, and there was honey, both wild and commercially
available. It was used used it for a wide range of sweets, too, most
often, but not exclusively, by the wealthy.

> but they enjoyed a porridge called frumenty, made from boiled
> wheat berries. It was served cold with cow's or ass's milk and honey.

Yes, it was. It was also served hot with venison and mutton. And
porpoise. 
 
>                  Everyone in a household ate out of the same wooden
> trencher using unwashed fingers or a wooden spoon. The two-pronged
> fork, imported from Turkey, wasn't known in Europe until 1071.

Yes, and everybody ate foods with an unbelievable array and quantity of
spices to disguise the rotten meat they were eating...this whole
unwashed thing is pretty silly. It's true that some medical authorities
of the period advised against excessive bathing, but even if there were
prejudices against frequent full-body bathing, there's nothing to
suggest people didn't wash their hands, and a fair amount to suggest
they did. In the case of many peasants, it may have been unavoidable by
the work they did. 

I guess the reason this article bothered me was that it set out to
isolate us from our origins, make aliens of our ancestors, and found
evidence to support it, and sometimes manufactured it, when there was no
real reason to expound on that particular premise more than any other.
It could just as easily have concentrated on how the more things change,
the more things stay the same, which would have been just as interesting
and more historically supportable.

Adamantius
- -- 
Phil & Susan Troy

troy at asan.com