SC - Charlemagne

[Philip & Susan Troy]

"Peggy A. Stonnell" wrote:
> 
> Greetings to the list
> 
> I am coming out of lucker mode to ask for help.
> 
> I am planing the menu for a feast that is set in the time of Charlemagne.
> Could you suggest any sources that talk of what was served at the court of
> Charlemagne, what foods were eaten, how it was served, etc.  I have a few
> references to that time, I'm looking for that I have missed.

Ooh, hard questions... there's not a huge amount of written material
directly related to food from this time, AFAIK...

You might look at Anthimus, who wrote a letter on food to a previous
King of the Franks some 275 years prior. I hear that the Mark Grant
translation from Prospect Books is currently out of print, but I'd be
surprised if you couldn't find a copy from someplace. I have a
secondary-source book on medieval food by Richard Barber someplace that
has some dark ages descriptions of foods from various ecclesiastical
writers that are roughly contemporary to Charlemagne; I'll see if I can
find it.

There's also a fair amount of semi-substantiated culinary-ish anecdotes
concerning Charlemagne (for example, his getting yelled at by his
doctors for eating too much roast meat and avoiding the boiled, so you
might want to serve a roast with a simple black pepper or mustard or
garlic sauce, which seem reasonably likely candidates, or serve
something made with whichever of the cheeses -- I forget which -- is
supposed to have been discovered by Charlemagne while visiting a certain
bishop and later demanded in taxes by the Emperor: I think it was
probably a blue-rinded variant of Brie).

Then, of course, I'm pretty sure we have access to which herbs were
grown in Charlemagne's gardens. Lord Bear should be able to hook you up
with this information; he'll probably see this note in the morning.

Hope this helps.

Adamantius
- -- 
Phil & Susan Troy

troy at asan.com