For tastes, colors. But if you were the guest of a landowner of the Middle Ages, a hostel Hyper spicy. After all, it was not crazy that you were a pheisan tray on the table swimming in a sauce made with 17 different spicesso many that its flavor would hardly please today’s palates.
Perhaps that expectation seems little appetizing, but for the diners of the Middle Ages it made all the meaning.
Better with spices. The diners with possible of the Middle Ages liked spices. A lot. So much so that their banquets were a real display of ginger dressings, cinnamon, black pepper, nutmeg or saffron, between A long and well spiced and so on. As an example, Michael Delahoydefrom the Washington State University, Explain that a meat sauce could contain about 17 different spices. In another recent example The country He spoke of recipes up to 15 and abundant sugar.
All in the same dish. Combined. Forming a mixture of flavors that would make meals that gave luster to the great banquets of the medieval nobles were hardly edible for the diners of the 21st century. And that (culinary ironies) that it was never as easy to find spices as it is today: it comes with entering any supermarket to meet full shelves.
A gastronomic window. If we know what and how the medieval nobles ate it is thanks to the work of historians and works such as ‘The Llibre de feel Soví’a manuscript that stands out for several reasons: it is the oldest recipe book of its type of the Iberian Peninsula and for a few days it stars An exhibition On medieval food in Valencia. The work contains 72 recipes and dates from the XV, although experts are convinced that the work starts from a previous, now lost original, which was written in 1324.
The work is interesting not only for its recipes. It is also because it tells us about how the diners of the low Middle Ages were, perhaps somewhat different from us in tastes, but not in what they refer to. In addition to appreciating the good taste of the dishes, they liked to presume, use gastronomy as a status symbol. They appreciated kitchens with large stoves, The trenches that cut and distributed meat among diners, Spices and sugar.
Kitchen and marketing (medieval). “Eating we have to eat all, every day, but in the Middle Ages they did not have the ways of distinguish leftovers to the poorest classes. Comment to The country Juan Vicente García Marsilla, Professor of Medieval History and Commissioner of the Exhibition.
The seventeenth -century recipe book preserved in Valencia has a lot of that pomp and prestige that was sought between stoves and pantries. In his prologue he slides that the original work was prepared long ago by commission of an English kingbut the recipes speak of another reality: an author probably Valencian or Catalan accustomed to the gastronomic tradition of the Mediterranean. “Marketing ínfulas of the time”, Garcia summarizes. By attributing the work to a foreign and old chef, the recipe book sought to imbute exoticism and prestige.
Why so many spices? Partly for the above. Status. Today we may find them in any market, but spices or sugar centuries ago They were luxuries that were not available to all tables. “The spices were a sign of luxury and opulence. They denoted prestige,” Delahoyde commentswho reflects on the peculiar value of medieval kitchen books: probably not all chefs knew how to read and the recipes were not used between stoves, but were preserved in private collections.
Therefore … Did they serve for those responsible for provisions? Were they a sign of status? A way of knowing the exotic ingredients of each dish, dressings that otherwise perhaps go unnoticed for diners?
In search of flavors … and name. Analida Brager slides some interesting reflections in Medievalist.neta platform founded in 2008 and specialized in medieval history. In A broad article On the subject, he points out that the medieval palate was accustomed to very seasoned foods, a symbol of power in part by its exotic origin and the Imports from the East. In the extensive list Cinnamon, nail, nutmeg, ginger, pepper, saffron, macis, cardamom or Galanga.
Insatiable demand. “The insatiable demand for spices by Europe at the end of the Middle Ages is a notable example of a drastic historical change caused by consumer preferences,” He pointed in 2012 Paul Freedman in an article published in ‘The Oxford Handbook of Food History’.
The result are recipes such as sugar chicken that we can read in the XV manuscript preserved in Valencia. In addition the spices were not only used in the kitchen, they also had Medical applications.
There is who says That despite its limited availability and high cost, a very high percentage of the recipes of the kitchen books of the thirteenth, fourteenth and fifteenth centuries include spices and that at least some works cite up to 40 different types. In any case, it is necessary to be clear that the kitchen of the aristocracy and the extended between the popular classes is not the same. Among the latter it was not strange that it was consumed Cold food for a matter of costs.
Reviewing old topics. As It often occurs With everything referred to with the Middle Ages, the use of spices is overshadowed by topics and prejudices that are not always accurate. Delahoyde remembers The “common myth” that the chefs of the time resorted to both condiments to mask the taste of meat in poor condition. After all there were no refrigerators or freezers with whom to keep the meat fresh, right? Why not season it well?
It is not likely to happen. And the reason is simple. In the Middle Ages they were also aware of the importance of fresh foods and who had the necessary resources to buy spices probably would not use them for that purpose. First because they were too expensive to waste them with rotten meat. Second because it is not unreasonable to think that if an aristocrat could have a nail or galanga in his pantry would probably also have fresh meat.
A way to keep food? Another extended topic is that they were used to preserve food, but Delahoyde insists: “The medieval were not idiots.” It would not make sense to use them for that purpose when meat or fish could be kept in salting or with the help of vinegar, sugar and honey. In fact the expert remembers a fact: the spices seemed to lose strength in the kitchen towards the seventeenth century, long before Neveras were invented. Did you stop getting the flesh and fish bad? Or simply changed tastes?
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