[Sca-cooks] Food in 1632? sorta OP/OT

[Terry Decker]

Spices and spoiled meat equals incompetent research.

That being said, 1632-33 in Germany is a real mess.  Your entering the last
quarter of the Thirty Years War.  Depending on where you are, you are living
out of your garden or you are starving.  Germany is not united and the
fighting will leave the northern states Protestant and the southern states
Catholic.  I vaguely remember something about a grain harvest failure about
this time, so a check of the histories might help.

Meat would be limited to local availability, because the network of trade
that increased available meat supplies across Europe in the 15th Century
were broken.  I doubt seriously the Germans would complain about the amount
of meat used in a meal.  German hunting has been structured for centuries to
provide a steady supply of meat to the diet.  German cooking tends to be
heavy on meat and fish limited primarily by availability and funds.

Wheat, rye and barley are the principle grains.  Beer and bread (or
porridge) were the staples of life for all classes.  In good times, per
capita consumption averaged 2 1/2 pounds of cereal in various forms,
primarily bread and porridge, with a gallon of beer or small beer.  I don't
have any estimates for average consumption in lean times.

Maize was being grown in garden patches in Southern Germany.  New World
pumpkins and squash were being grown.  Germans were aware of red and green
peppers from the Turkish incursion into Hungary, but there is no evidence of
them being used.  Yellow orange tomatoes were known to the Germans, but
there is no evidence of them being eaten outside of the Mediterranean
countries.  Red and green cabbage, fava beans, probably black-eyed peas and
some of the New World kidney beans, onions, turnips, and carrots (but
posssibly not the modern orange carrot which is a 15th Century Flemish
hybrid).  Rumpolt, which predates this period by about 40 years, has a
selection of vegetable dish recipes that I would recommend using for
research.  There is a transcript of the German on thomas Gloning's website
and some of the recipes are availble in translation through GwenCat's
website.

The white potato was known, but beyond some casual culinary experimentation,
it was not in use.  The potato's rise to use as a German staple was about
100 years in the future.

Tea has not yet arrived in Europe.  Coffee will not enter the German sphere
(at Vienna in 1683-6) for 50 years.  Chocolate is a beverage of the rich in
Spain and France and is spreading.  The common breakfast drinks are beer or
wine.

Cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, cloves, black pepper, white pepper and most modern
spices (allspice and vanilla probably excepted) would have been available if
one could afford them.  The same for refined white sugar.  The world price
for sugar was dropping due to increasing production, but it was still an
expensive proposition.

Majoram, rosemary, thyme, sage and other herbs which could be grown in the
garden would be.  The small European wild strawberry might be found
transplanted to kitchen gardens.  The modern hybrids of Chilean and
Virginian strawberries would become popular over 100 years later.

Getting exact prices for imported goods requires some serious research.
Remember that Germany was divided into a multitude of tiny states each with
their own laws, standard measures, custom duties and currency.  To make a
good estimate, you would need to know where these time travellers are
located, then look at what is known about the local state, the trade routes,
and the current state of combat and politics in the vicinity.

For everything I've listed here, there are probably a dozen I've forgotten.

If you want to forward this, feel free.  Everything I post to the list is
fair game as long as you don't twist my meaning.

Bear


>Hej!
>    I am on another list that is run by Baen Publishing.  The list is for
>people who are submitting stories based on the SF books 1632 & 1633-basic
>story a 20th Century West VA coal mining town slips back in time to Germany
>in the years 1632.  The stories all revolve around the results of the
people
>interacting.  They are really interested in getting the history right & are
>asking for critiques of the historic aspects as well as their writing.
>Recently one of the writers wrote a very good story about food-but had the
>German peasants complaining about how much meat the uptime hostess wasted
on
>each meal & that the food was too spicy (spaghetti & chili).  What I would
>like to ask those of you with far more knowledge than my limited scope
>(mainly because some one else posted a response about the old saw of
spoiled
>meat & spices) is for a list of meats, vegetables, beverages, grains, herbs
>& spices with relative values if they are known that would be available to
>either a noble or a peasant for the 1632 time frame.  Also permission to
>post your responses to the list at Baen's Bar.
>Thanks,
>Olaf