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

[Decker, Terry D.]

> 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?

Regia Anglorum.  A re-enactment group with a tight focus of Anglo-Saxon
England, say late 6th Century to October 14, 1066.  So very tight temporal
and geographic focus.  They are specifically addressing 10th and 11th
Century in the article


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

Parsley was a Roman herb and probably came to the Isles following the Roman
conquest.  The closest oranges were in Spain and there was little or no
trade with the Moors.  Commerce in Seville oranges in Europe begins about
1332 through a market in Nice.  (Trager, so the source may be questionable.)

>
> "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.

This one I wonder about.  If this is true, then many people up into modern
times before the introduction of herbicides should have become ill from
their bread.  Yet, ergot poisoning seems to be the major bread related
problem.

> 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.

Then the Renaissance painters are lying through their oils.

Modern hybridization is about 250 years old (Antoine Nicholas Duchesne
presented the first modern hybrid strawberries to the King of France in 1764
and Kew Gardens was founded in 1760).  However, man has been hybridizing
plants for over 13,000 years, if the rye seeds from Abu Hurerya are any
indication.

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

You ride the horse until its too weak to ride.  You work the oxen until they
are too weak to plow.  You keep the sheep for wool and milk.  You keep the
pigs until you have to feed them over the winter.  Here piggy, piggy.

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

Sugar was probably known and used in medicines, as the Greeks knew and used
it in the 4th Century BCE, but it wasn't until the 8th Century and the
Islamic expansion that sugar became a major cultivar around the
Mediterranean.

The First Crusade introduced Northern Europeans to relatively large
quantities of sugar and sugar cultivation.

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

It is simplistic, but not necessarily wrong.

Bear