What Did They Make With Beef in the Middle Ages
Silver plaque depicting the Last Supper. 14th century.
Food has been central to the social life of humans for thousands of years and, in medieval Europe, food consumption ranged from everyday sustenance to extravagant feasts.
The diet of the rich and poor was very unlike. While the upper classes and their households enjoyed fresh and imported foods, the rest of the population had to live off what the local land could produce which, at the cease of winter or in times of shortage, might be very little!
Diet wasn't just afflicted by the seasons, religion too played a part in what people ate. Fridays (and, in the earlier period, Wednesdays and Saturdays) were obligatory weekly fasting or 'fysshe' days, when it was prohibited to eat meat. At that place were as well annual fasts such as Rogation Days, Advent and Lent, which restricted diets. Medieval cooks invented creative recipes for wealthy diners during fast periods – including mock hard-boiled eggs made of coloured almond paste within blown shells for Lent, when dairy was prohibited!
A huge amount of grooming went into the creation of feasts. When the whole royal court assembled, hundreds of people could be sitting down to eat. For the two great feasts at Easter and Christmas, preparations had to start months alee, when preserves were ordered and made. Fasting took place in the Appearance catamenia, meaning four weeks of lean eating to prepare for the feast.
We accept compiled 11 of our favourite recipes from the Middle Ages, which y'all can recreate at domicile to make your own medieval feast! And while meat is clearly a characteristic, there are a surprising number of vegan and vegetarian dishes, then there's something for everyone.
These recipes are all from The Medieval Cookbook , by Maggie Black and published by British Museum Press, which includes more than 80 recipes adapted for the modernistic melt. Buy the book here.
Starters and snacks
Mixed pickles (vegetarian, can be made vegan)
Take rote of persel, of pasternak, of rafens, scrape hem and waische him clene. Take rapes & caboches, ypared and ycorue. Have an erthen panne with clene water & ready it on the burn; bandage all thise therinne. Whan they buth boiled bandage therto peeres & perboile hem wel. Take alle thise thynges vp & lat it kele on a faire fabric. Practice therto salt; whan it is colde, exercise hit in a vessel; accept vyneger & powdour & safroun & do therto, & lat alle thise thynges lye therein at dark, other al day. Have wyne greke & hony clarified togider; take lumbarde mustard & raisouns coraunce, al hoole, & grynde powdour of canel, powdour douce & aneys hole, & fenell seed. Take alle thise thynges & cast togyder in a pot of erthe, & take thereof whan thou wilt & serue along.
Curye on Inglysch, IV. 103
This recipe creates the perfect accompaniment to your Christmas cheese and crackers. Pickling was an important manner of preserving vegetables in the Heart Ages, and still is.
The French Medieval household book Le Ménagier de Paris (the Goodman of Paris) had recipes for pickling walnuts and various vegetables and fruits grown on the fictional writer's farm, merely he soaked the whole lot in love – probably ruining the teeth of anybody in his household! This recipe is not quite as sweet and is more similar modern recipes.
Bandy the honey for sugar to make this vegan.
Makes ii.3kg
Ingredients
- 900g mixed parsley roots, carrots, radishes and turnips
- 450g white cabbage
- 450g hard eating pears
- six tbsp salt
- 1 tsp basis ginger
- 1⁄2 tsp stale saffron strands
- 425ml white wine vinegar
- 50g currants
- 575ml fruity white wine
- half dozen tbsp clear love
- 1 tsp of French mustard
- i⁄eight tsp each of ground cinnamon and black pepper
- 1⁄iv tsp each of anise and fennel seeds
- 50g white sugar
Method
Wash and pare the root vegetables and slice them thinly. Core and shred the cabbage. Put the vegetables into a large pan of water and slowly bring to the eddy. Peel, core and cut up the pears and add them to the pan. Melt until they start to soften. Bleed the contents of the pan and spread in a 5cm layer in a shallow non-metallic dish. Sprinkle with the salt, ginger, saffron and 4 tbsp of the vinegar. Leave, covered, for 12 hours. Rinse well, then add together the currants. Pack into sterilised storage jars, with at to the lowest degree 2.5cm headspace. Put the vino and dear in a pan. Bring to simmering bespeak and skim. Add together the rest of the vinegar and all the remaining spices and saccharide. Reduce the heat and stir without boiling until the sugar dissolves. Bring back to the boil. Pour over the vegetables, covering them with 1cm of liquid. Cover with vinegar-proof seals and store.
Cabbage chowder (vegan)
Take caboches and quarter hem, and seeth hem in gode goop with oynouns ymynced and the whyte of lekes yslyt and ycorue smale. And practise therto safroun & common salt, and force it with powdour douce.
Curye on Inglysch, Four. 6
The French Medieval household book Le Ménagier de Paris (the Goodman of Paris), has quite a lot to say about cabbages, from the pocket-size spring sprouts for salads to the frostbitten winter leaves. However, the recommendation to eddy cabbages all morning is best ignored! This recipe could be fabricated every bit a starter, or every bit a primary form if yous add minor pieces of toast and pocket-sized strips of fried salary – both well-known medieval additions.
Serves 4
Ingredients
- 600g house-hearted cabbage or 700g open up-hearted cabbage or spring greens
- 225g onions, peeled and finely chopped
- 225g white part of leeks, thinly sliced into rings
- A tsp of dried saffron strands
- 1⁄two tsp of salt
- 1⁄4 tsp each of ground coriander, cinnamon and sugar
- 850ml chicken or vegetable stock
Method
If using a house-hearted cabbage cut information technology into 8 segments and remove the centre core. If using an open-hearted cabbage or greens, cut off the stalks and cut the leaves into strips. Put into a large pan with the prepared onions and leeks. Stir the saffron, salt and spices into the stock, adjusting the quantity of salt if required, and so cascade the mixture over the vegetables. Cook gently, covered, for most 20 minutes or until segments of house cabbage are tender.
'Departed' creamed fish
To make mortreux of fisch. Tak plays or fresch meluel or merlyng & seth it in fayre water, and then tak awey the skyn & the bones & presse the fisch in a fabric & bray it in a mortere, and tempre it vp with almond melk, & bray poudere of gynger & sugre togedere & departe the mortreux on tweyne in two pottes & coloure that on with saffroun & dresch information technology in disches, one-half of that on & half of that other, & strawe poudere of gyngere & sugre on that on & clene sugre on that other & serue it forth.
Curye on Inglysch, Iii. 26
Mortrews was a type of pottage or paté that contained either fish or meat, mixed with almonds. 'Departed' just means that the dish is 'parted in ii' different colours. The Medieval household book Le Ménagier de Paris (the Goodman of Paris) suggested a chicken liver or meat mortrews, just this fish option would exist a adept substitute on 'fysshe' days when eating meat was forbidden.
Serves 6 as a starter
Ingredients
• 600g skinned cod fillet
• A pinch of sea salt
• 125g ground almonds
• 2 tsp rice flour or corn flour
• iii tbsp deep xanthous saffron water or nutrient colouring
• one⁄two tsp ground ginger
• 3⁄4 tsp white saccharide
Method
Poach the fish fillet in about 575ml of salted water until cooked through. Drain off the cooking liquid into a measuring jug. Pour 275ml of this liquid over the almonds in a bowl. Press the fish nether a cloth or kitchen newspaper to squeeze out excess wet, and so flake it. Strain the almond 'milk' into a jug, stirring to separate the free liquid from the almond sludge in the strainer. Put the liquid into an electric blender, followed by the flaked fish, and procedure until smooth. If the mixture is likewise stiff to process easily, add together a little more fish cooking liquid. Plough the mixture into a basin. In a small saucepan, cream the rice flour or cornflour with 3 or 4 tbsp of fish cooking liquid, and then heat the mixture gently until it thickens. Stir this 'cream' into the fish mixture and season with common salt. Put one-half the mixture into a separate bowl and tint it deep gold with the saffron water or food colouring. Combine the ground ginger and 1⁄iv tsp of the saccharide and mix into the golden fish, reserving a piddling of the mixture for sprinkling. If yous like ginger, increment the quantity. Serve the mortrews in half-dozen small bowls or plates, putting a coloured and a plain spoonful of mixture next in each. Arctic until needed. Merely before serving, sprinkle the remaining ginger/saccharide mix on the gold portions and the remaining one⁄2 tsp plain sugar on the white portions.
Chief dishes
Spit-roasted or grilled steak
To make Stekys of venson or bef. Have Venyson or Bef, & leche & gredyl it vp broun; and then take Vynegre & a litel verious, & a lytil Wyne, and putte pouder perpir ther-on y-now, and pouder Gyngere; and atte the dressoure straw on pouder Canelle y-now, that the stekys be al y-helid ther-wyth, and just a litel; Sawce & then serue information technology forth.
2 Fifteenth-Century Cookery Books, Harleian MS 279, p. 40
Serves 6
Ingredients
• half-dozen fairly thin beef steaks
• Oil or fat for grilling
Basting sauce:
• 2 tsp red wine vinegar
• 1–2 tbsp Seville orange juice
• iv tbsp red wine
• Pinch each of ground black pepper and ginger
Garnish:
• Sprinkling of basis cinnamon
Method
The original recipe calls for 'verjuice', a popular medieval condiment made from particularly grown or (in England) unripe grapes. Merely another recipe from the Medieval household book Le Ménagier de Paris (the Goodman of Paris) suggests using the juice of Seville oranges. If you tin can go these in season and freeze them, you lot tin can use their juice as a substitute for verjuice – it makes a delicious sauce. Nick the edges of the steaks and grease them. Mix the sauce ingredients in a jug, adjusting the proportions if you wish. Then grill the steaks as you prefer. Warm the sauce and sprinkle a few drops over the meat while grilling it. Serve the steaks lightly sprinkled with cinnamon and any remaining sauce.
Mushroom pasties (vegetarian, tin can exist fabricated vegan)
Mushrooms of one night are the all-time, if they are pocket-size, red inside, and closed at the top: and they should be peeled and then washed in hot water and parboiled, and if you wish to put them in a pasty add oil, cheese and spice powder.
The Goodman of Paris, trans. East. Power
This recipe is from the Medieval household book Le Ménagier de Paris (the Goodman of Paris). At abode it is likely that the fictional narrator of the book, who kept a well-furnished table, would serve a large double-crust sticky or plate pie – only on his journeys to and from the farm, pocket-sized ones probably seemed more than suitable.
Serves 6
Ingredients
• 450g home-made or bought shortcrust pastry, thawed if frozen
• 450g button mushrooms
• Compression of salt
• 2 tbsp olive oil
• 50g Cheddar cheese, grated
• 1⁄2 tsp common salt
• 1⁄8 tsp freshly footing black pepper
• 1⁄4 tsp dry mustard powder
• one egg, beaten
To brand this recipe vegan utilise vegan pastry, omit the cheese or utilize vegan cheese, and use soy, rice or almond milk instead of the egg to seal the pastry.
Method
Apply two-thirds of the pastry to line small-scale, deep pans. Chill while making the filling. Preheat the oven to 200°C. Trim off and discard the bottoms of the mushroom stems, then dip the mushrooms in humid salted water, belongings them in a sieve. Drain them, pat dry, then chop or piece them. Put them in a bowl and mix them with the oil, cheese and seasonings. Fill up the mixture into the pastry cases. Gyre out the remaining pastry and employ it to make lids for the pasties. Seal the lids with beaten egg. Decorate the tops with pastry trimmings and brush with the remaining egg. Make a modest crosscut in the centre of each lid. Bake the little pies in the oven for 15–18 minutes. Serve warm.
Lamb or mutton stew
Take veel other[wise] motoun and smyte it to gobettes. Seeth it in gode broth; bandage therto erbes yhewe gode won, and a quantite of oynouns mynced, powdour fort and safroun, and alye it with ayren and verious: but allow it not seeth afterward.
Curye on Inglysch, Iv. 18
Serves 6
Ingredients
• 900g boneless stewing lamb or mutton
• 425ml craven stock
• ii medium onions, peeled and finely chopped
• i tbsp chopped parsley
• 1/2–i tsp each fresh rosemary leaves, thyme leaves, and savory or marjoram leaves, bruised in a mill (use less if using dried herbs)
• 1/4 tsp each ground ginger, cumin and coriander
• Salt to taste
• 225ml white wine
• 2 eggs
• ii tbsp lemon juice
Method
Cut the meat into 5cm cubes. Put the stock into a stewpan and bring to the boil. Add the meat and bring dorsum to the boil. Skim if needed, then add the prepared onions, herbs, spices, salt and wine. Reduce the heat, cover the pan and melt gently until the meat cubes are cooked through and tender (one–ane one/2 hours). Vanquish the eggs with the lemon juice until composite, then take the pan off the estrus and stir the egg mixture gradually into the stew to thicken information technology slightly. Practice non re-boil.
Haddock in tasty sauce
Shal be yopened & ywasshe clene & ysode & yrosted on a gridel; grind peper & saffron, bred and ale mynce oynons, fri hem in ale, and do therto, and salt: boille hit, do thyn haddok in plateres, and the ciuey aboue, and ghif forth.
Two Fifteenth-Century Cookery Books, Laud. 553, p. 114
Serves half dozen
This dish is a blazon of civet, which is a course of stew, usually made with meat of game. In old dishes the cook is commonly told to 'drawe' a fish, animal or bird, so this recipe interprets 'yopened' to mean that the fish or meat should exist cut open up and boned. It could and so easily exist cutting in pieces and eaten with a spoon. Oil could exist used by strict (and wealthy) dieters for frying nutrient in Lent, but poor people would probably use butter, and omit the plush saffron, as we've washed hither as it'southward all the same costly!
Ingredients
- 900g haddock fillet
- Salt
- 75g onions, peeled and finely chopped
- Oil or butter for frying
- 1⁄iv tsp footing white pepper
- 75g fine soft white breadcrumbs
- 125ml brown ale
Method
Skin the haddock fillet and cut into several pieces. Put plenty salted water into a shallow pan to cover the fish and bring it to the boil. Put in the fish and simmer for a moment or two, then comprehend the pan and remove from the heat – the fish will proceed to cook in the hot water while yous make the sauce. For this, fry the onions in the fat until just starting time to chocolate-brown. Mix the pepper with the breadcrumbs and add together them to the onions with the ale and 225ml of the h2o used to cook the fish. Process until smooth in an electric blender, so simmer for a few minutes to reheat.
While simmering, drain the remaining h2o from the cooked fish and put the pieces on the grill rack. Brush them with a little melted fatty, then place them nether a hot grilling flame until they are just showtime to glaze. Cut them into bite-sized or serving portions and spoon some sauce over them. Serve the rest separately. If you lot don't like ale or beer you lot can use cider instead.
Desserts
Cherry pottage (vegetarian)
Tak cheryes & practice out the stones & grynde hem wel & draw hem thorw a streynour & do it in a pot. & do therto whit gres or swete botere & myed wastel bred, & bandage therto practiced wyn & sugre, & salte information technology & stere information technology wel togedere, & dresse information technology in disches; and set theryn clowe gilofre, & strewe sugre aboue.
Mnesitheus, quoted in Oribasius, Medical Collections four, iv, 1
This ruby-red pottage was a genteel dish, being made with vino and white bread, and called for the use of precious white sugar! Soluble gold gouache tin be used to gild the tops of whole cloves, but don't eat them as they are very stiff – they're but for decoration here.
Serves six
Ingredients
- 900g fresh ripe ruby-red cherries
- 350ml cherry-red wine
- 175g white sugar
- 50g unsalted butter
- 225g soft white breadcrumbs
- Pinch of salt
- Flower heads of small-scale clove pinks or golden whole cloves (according to flavor)
- Coarse white saccharide for sprinkling
Method
Wash the cherries and discard the stems and stones. Purée the fruit in a blender with 150ml of the wine and half the sugar. Add a little more than wine if you need to. Melt the butter in a saucepan and add the fruit purée, breadcrumbs, remaining wine, sugar and salt. Simmer, stirring steadily, until the purée is very thick. Pour into a serving bowl, comprehend and go out to cool. When quite cold, decorate the edge of the bowl with flowers or whole cloves, and sprinkle coarse sugar over the middle.
Foam custard tart (vegetarian)
Doucetes. Accept Creme a gode cupfulle, & put it on a straynour, thanne take yolkes of Eyroun, and put ther-to, & a lytel mylke; and so strayne it throw a straynour in-to a bolle; then take Sugre y-now, put ther-to, or ellys hony forde faute of Sugre, than coloure it with Safroun; than have thin cofyns, & put it in the ovynne letre, & tat hem ben hardyd; than take a dyssche y-fastenyd on the pelys ende, & pore sparse comade in-to the dyssche, & fro the dyssche in-to the cofyns; & whan they don a-ryse wet, teke hem out, ee serue hem forth.
Two Fifteenth-Century Cookery Books, Harleian MS 279, p.l
Serves 6
Ingredients
- Pulverized dried saffron strands
- Shortcrust pastry fabricated with 225g flour, 65g butter, 40g lard, and common cold water to mix (utilise butter instead of lard to make this vegetarian)
- six egg yolks
- 350ml double foam
- 125ml milk
- 65g white sugar
- 1/4 tsp ocean salt
Method
Soak the saffron in 2 tbsp water until the h2o is deep gold in colour. Add the pastry to a 20cm pie plate or block tin with a loose bottom, with a depth of 5cm. Bake 'bullheaded' in a preheated oven at 200°C for fifteen–20 minutes, and then remove the filling of dried beans and return the case to the oven at about 160°C for 6–8 minutes until stale out and house. Remember a cake tin is deeper than a pie plate so the case in information technology may need longer blistering than usual. Beat the egg yolks lightly in a bowl, then beat in the cream, milk, carbohydrate, saffron h2o and salt. Pour the custard into the pastry case. Bake information technology at 160°C for about 45 minutes or until it is merely set up in the centre. Serve warm. Make small tarts if you adopt. The total recipe quantity of pastry volition make 36 tarts, using a vii.5cm cutter. You will need two thirds of the filling for them.
Rose pudding (vegetarian)
Take thyk milke; sethe information technology. Cast therto sugur, a gode porcioun; pynes, dates ymynced, canel, & powdour gynger; and seeth it, and alye it with flours of white rosis, and flour of rys. Cole it; common salt it & messe information technology forth. If thou wilt in stede of almounde mylke, accept swete crem of kyne.
Curye on Inglysch, IV. 53
Serves six
Ingredients
- Petals of one white rose
- 4 level tbsp rice flour or cornflour
- 275ml milk
- 50g pulley sugar
- 3/4 tsp ground cinnamon
- 3/four tsp basis ginger
- 575ml single foam
- Pinch of salt
- 10 dessert dates, stoned and finely chopped
- 1 tbsp chopped pine nut kernels
Method
Take the petals off the rose one by one. Flinch the petals in boiling water for 2 minutes, then printing them between several sheets of soft kitchen paper and put a heavy apartment weight on top to squeeze them dry out. (They may look depressingly greyish but blending will improve the dish'south color.) Put the rice flour or cornflour in a saucepan, and blend into information technology enough of the milk to make a smooth cream. Stir in the remaining milk. Identify the pan over low heat and stir until the mixture starts to thicken. Put in a (non-medieval!) electrical blender, and add the saccharide, spices and rose petals. Process until fully blended, and so add together and alloy in the cream and table salt. Turn the mixture into a heavy saucepan, and stir over very low rut, below the boil, until information technology is the consistency of softly whipped foam. Stir in most of the chopped dates and pine nut kernels and stir for 2 more than minutes. Plow into a glass or decorative bowl and cool. Stir occasionally while cooling to preclude a peel forming. Arctic. Just before serving decorate with the remaining dates and nuts.
Piment or medieval mulled wine (vegan)
Pur fait ypocras. Troys vnces de canell & 3 vnces gyngeuer; spykenard de Spayn, le pays dun denerer; garyngale, clowes gylofre, poeure long, noiey mugadey, mayioyame, cardemonii, de chescun i quarter donce; grayne de paradys, flour de queynel, de chescun dm. vnce; de tout soit fait powdour &c.
Curye on Inglysch, IV. 199
Piment was the general name for sweetened spiced wines in the Middle Ages. The first recipes for spiced wine appeared at the end of the 13th century and the outset of the 14th century. The recipe above is for Hypocras, another type of spiced wine only it contains long pepper (poeure long), the grains of paradise (grayne de paradis), spikenard (spykenard), which are very difficult to get hold of today.
The drinkable became extremely popular and was regarded as having various medicinal or even aphrodisiac properties. Spices were among the nearly luxurious products available in the Middle Ages.
Ingredients
- 2 ltr red wine (check the label to ensure that ingredients are vegan if you want to make this recipe vegan)
- 175g white sugar
- 1 tbsp footing cinnamon
- ane/4 tbsp ground ginger
- 1 tsp each ground cloves, grated nutmeg, marjoram (fresh if possible), ground cardamom, ground black pepper and a pinch of grated galingale (if available)
Method
Warm the wine until it only begins to steam. Add together the sugar and allow to dissolve. Mix all the spices and herbs together. Stir one-half this mixture into the wine, then gustatory modality and slowly add more until y'all achieve a flavour you like (you volition probably need well-nigh, or all, of the mixture). Simmer your 'mix' very gently for x minutes. Strain through a jelly bag (which may take some hours). Bottle when common cold, then cork securely. Use within a calendar week.
These recipes and more tin be plant in The Medieval Cookbook by Maggie Black, published past British Museum Press. Find out more and purchase the book here.
We would love to see your medieval feasts – ship u.s.a. pictures of your creations using @britishmuseum on Instagram and Twitter. Happy cooking!
Source: https://blog.britishmuseum.org/how-to-cook-a-medieval-feast/
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