[Sca-cooks] No Sugar in 10th Century??

[Chris Stanifer]

Stolen from www.regia.org/food.htm

This is an article on Food and Drink in Anglo-Saxon
England.  I read it slack-jawed, particularly because
I found it on a 'TeacherNet' web site.  Can anyone
verify these claims?


"Fruit and Vegetables:
When we go to the shops today we are presented with a
wealth of fruit and vegetables from all corners of the
planet from which to choose. For people in the tenth
and eleventh century it was not remotely the same;
they had no potatoes, tomatoes, parsley, bananas,
pineapple, lemons, oranges, etc.. They had only what
they could find in the wild or what they could grow in
their fields and gardens."

< My Comment: No parsley?  No oranges? Hmmnn...>

"We know that they grew wheat, rye, oats and barley,
but with these grew plenty of weeds - some of which
were quite poisonous. People eating bread with these
seeds in must have been quite ill from time to time.

It is known that they had carrots, but these were
small, white, thin-rooted examples. They also ate wild
parsnips and wild cabbages. In fact most of the
vegetables we have today have only been developed into
the large tasty varieties we know in the last 150
years. Other vegetables included peas, beans and roots
such as burdock.

One way in which the people made up for the poor
quality of these vegetables was to flavour them with
native and imported herbs and spices. Dill, coriander
and thyme were used quite a lot as were ginger,
cinnamon, cloves and mace. Garlic and wild onions
helped to give the meat from old animals some flavour
and were used extensively."

<My Comment: Of course we already know that all meat
in the middle ages was old or spoiled...>

"Many fruits were eaten, and seeds from excavations
tell us that they also had small apples ( crab-apples
), plums, cherries and sloes which were probably
sweetened with honey - they did not have sugar."

<My Comment: Is this true? No sugar in 10th century
England?>


" Pears, peaches, blackberries, bilberries, wild
strawberries, raspberries, grapes, blackcurrants,
redcurrants, elderberries and other wild fruits also
formed part of most people's diet. Almonds, walnuts,
beech-nuts, hazel nuts and chestnuts were eaten too.

Honey was used to make a sweet alcoholic drink called
mead, which was usually flavoured with some form of
herb such as meadowsweet ( O.E. meduwyrt - meaning
mead plant ). Barley was used to make beer which would
have been flavoured with wild hops. Wine was drunk,
but this was generally imported although fruit wines
may have been home-produced. There are also written
references to 'apple-wine', probably a form of cider.
Many fruit juices including apple, pear and plum were
drunk as were herbal 'teas' and a drink made from
acorns. Spirits and fortified wines were not known
although the apple wine may have had quite a high
alcohol content."


There is much more on this site, including a little
bit on feasts which I found rather humorous.

Balthazar of Blackmoor




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