[Sca-cooks] what the Franks were eating

Terry Decker t.d.decker at att.net
Sun May 2 11:32:21 PDT 2010


>> It is an inventory of Charlemagne's property kept on the estate, not
>> the personal property of the staff, so there may have been other towels 
>> not listed.  Since the towel is listed with coverings for one bed and one 
>> tablecloth, it suggests to me that these are the linens to be used for 
>> guests who were travelling light and fast, rather than households that 
>> would be supported by a baggage train.
>>
>> Bear
>>
> That's pretty much the conclusion I've come to. Charles dragged a lot of 
> people around with him, so he likely had that sort of stuff with him. (It 
> appears that he took the wife and kids pretty much wherever he went- 
> including campaigning- until fairly late in his lafe, when he settled the 
> family in the palace at Aachen. I would imagine that they had a lot of 
> towels in their baggage!)
>
> Do you suppose they also brought more cooking equipment with them? I 
> noticed that there didn't seem to be much in the way of pots and pans and 
> cutlery. Lots of livestock though.
>
> The food issue is only one of the things I'm working on- also deep into a 
> network of monasteries that supported Charles' educational projects, 
> contemporary theology, the location of one of his wives (if she existed- a 
> couple of recent scholars doubti, which is not consistent with the primary 
> records), etc etc etc. The Frankish 'rabbit hole' is a veritable warren, 
> and I've been doing a lot of 'oooh! Look at this!' and getting 
> distracted...
>
> Liutgard

Asnapium was apparently a small villa with limited resources, so it was 
likely a farm providing provender to larger estates or even the Palace.  It 
probably didn't have the capacity to handle Charlemagne's full household. 
The limited cookware may be an indication of this.  IIRC, the Capitulare de 
Vilis calls for a greater number of estate equipment than the inventory of 
Asnapium indicates.

I don't know about Charlemagne's period, but 12th and 13th Century England 
appears to have used a similar rotating manorial system with the various 
manors being stocked with communal goods and cookware and finer, individual 
linens, dinnerware and the like traveling in the baggage train.  Bakers (and 
possibly some cooks) went ahead of the household to prepare staples in 
advance of the household's arrival.

Lots of side-tracks.  Charlemagne's France was an amazingly complex place 
and very fascinating.  I tend to accept Einhard and the original texts in 
Monumentia Germanie Historica as the baseline.  Recent scholarship may be 
street cred for academics rather than a serious question.

Bear 




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