Arts & Sciences

As explained before we do nearly everything in the SCA that has been done in period. Rather than waxing poetically about what can be done, we will give you a few examples here on stuff that is easy to do and can be done at home with minimal equipment. More will be added here as work progresses.

Cookery

Basics

The medieval cuisine is a very varied one and contrary to popular conception did not use a multitude of spices to overcome the rotten taste of ill-stored meat. The town-dwellers had fresh meat brought to the butchers and slaughtered every day. Those country-dwellers who could afford meat obviously had no problems obtaining it fresh. Think of medieval food as of today's Indian cuisine: spicy but well balanced.

The main problem with recreating medieval cuisine is one of sources. Cookbooks only started to get written in the 12th century with most examples we have being from the 14th and 15th centuries. I have seen recipes from one Anglo-Saxon cookbook but I have no idea how they came to be recorded. This holds true for all medieval arts and crafts with cookery having the problem that we have no chance of actually deducing recipes from archaeological finds as opposed to say leather working. Also the recipes are like the ones from today's professional cookbooks so they do not say "1 teaspoon of this and 1 pinch of that" but rather read "Frytour of erbes. Take gode erbys; grynde hem and medle hem with flour and water, & a lytel zest, and salt, and frye hem in oyle. And ete hem with clere honey" (Translations: Fritter of herbs. Take good herbs; grind them and mix them with flour and water, & a little yeast, and salt, and fry them in oil. And eat them with clear honey – From: "A Forme of Cury" - yes Cury was an English dish way before Kari [curry] leaves were found by the English in India). We therefore cannot deduce the ratios of the individual spices and _cannot_ know what the dish tasted like in period because even the guesses we make are tempered by our own appreciation of what is right. Anybody who has ever tasted the authentic (i.e. not attuned to the taste buds of restaurant customers) cuisine of a different culture (say Korean) will understand what I mean by this. Knowing that our research can only be flawed and - barring the invention of a functional time machine- will always be, we still dabble in it with gusto.

I personally have experience with two trends in medieval cuisine:

one which is later and very much a nobleman's cuisine: It not only endeavours to show off the skill of the cook by pleasing his employer's guests' palates and eyes but also is trying to impress those guests with the wealth of said employer by using as many exotic and expensive spices as possible. Some of these recipes are delicious while the fact that a period cook had to know the lethal dose of saffron (it's way beyond anything we would be prepared to eat today [saffron in high concentrations is pretty gruesome], so not to worry) does bode evil for some others. This also saw the appearance of the "subtleties" (elaborate works of art like castles made from sugar or a peacock roasted and then put back into its own plumage and served in it - the cook relating the recipe concludes it with the words: "don't try it, it's not worth the effort") and of highly illusional works - like a whole roast stag being served that was made of poached fish since it was the time of Lent. I have yet to see anybody attempt anything even nearly this complex.

The other one I would more attribute to the gentry and later the middle class. I have also found recipes of this ilk in the Anglo-Saxon cookbook, meaning that the style has been unchanged for at least 500 years (the time difference between the two sources I know). This is a very herbal cuisine, using the wealth of Europe's native herbs and not depending on spices brought down the silk road at high cost.

All of this changed with the late renaissance and even more with the age of enlightenment (which is outside our scope). People got interested in the natural flavour of things and started looking down on "this medieval spicing" - this I believe is where the bad rumours we even hear today got started.

As for Equipment needed: any reasonably well equipped modern kitchen will do - we usually strive to enjoy the taste rather than going all the way to recreating the actual process. This would be hard in the case of cookery since a medieval kitchen is quite different to a modern one and the whole process of cooking involved much more (the cheap) human labour than we are prepared to invest today.

To summarise: Medieval cuisine is a very rich field for those who want to research it and can be as weird and absurd to modern tastes as one wants it to be. One also will find dishes which are simple, easy to make and when served to one's friends nobody will cop on that the recipe is actually more than 1000 years old. It all depends on one's interests.

Recipes

Here is a medieval dinner that you can easily cook at home with more or less your normal ingredients. The recipes are from a 14^th century German source, but probably a lot older.

Chicken with Herbs

Ingredients:

1 chicken
fresh herbs: rosemary, thyme, basil, tarragon, chives, sage
fresh garlic to taste
50 grams butter
3 tablespoons honey

Wash chicken inside and outside and pat dry. Chop garlic, mix with butter and rub inside of chicken with it. Chop rosemary needles and sage leaves, add some salt and rub outside of chicken with mixture. Stuff the chicken with the other herbs. Roast the chicken on the grill in the oven, placing a pan on the bottom to collect juices. 10 minutes before the chicken is finished mix the honey with same amount of water and start basting the chicken with it to give it a honey crust. Serve with:

Period Peas

Ingredients:

500 grams deep frozen or fresh peas
fresh thyme
2 tablespoons honey
fresh cream

Boil the peas with little water and the thyme, at the end remove the thyme, add cream and honey, bring to the boil once et voilá!

Serve with either French white bread or basmati rice. Suggested wine is a Tavel Rosé or a product of the following section ;-)

These recipes by: Lord Arpad