The Meal

• Before a meal, the stomach would be opened with an apertif (from Latin: aperire, "to open") that consisted of something of a hot nature: confections made from sugar or honey-coated spices like ginger, caraway and seeds of anise, fennel or cumin, wine and sweetened fortified milk drinks.
• A meal would ideally begin with easily digestible fruit, like apples, and would then be followed by vegetables like lettuce, cabbage, purslane, herbs, moist fruits, light meats like chicken or goat kid with potages and broths.
• A subtlety, a fanciful and highly decorative surprise dish, was used to separate one course from another. Among the specialties were gilded apples, meatballs of mutton or chicken colored with saffron or a glaze of egg yolk, or flavored and colored with the juice of bitter oranges.
• Next would come heavy meats like pork and beef, and vegetables and nuts or foods considered difficult to digest, such as pears and chestnuts.
• It was popular (and recommended by medical expertise) to finish the meal with various digestives, most commonly a dragee, which which during the Middle Ages consisted of lumps of spiced sugar or hypocras, wine flavored with fragrant spices and a variety of sweetened and aged cheese, and by the Late Middle Ages could also inclue fresh fruit covered in sugar, honey or syrup and boiled-down fruit pastes. There was a wide variety of fritters, crêpes with sugar, sweet custards and darioles, almond milk and eggs in a pastry shell that could also include fruit and even bone-morrow or fish.

Preparations

• One of the most common constituents of a medieval meal, either as part of a banquet or as a small snack were sops, pieces of bread with which a liquid like wine, soup, broth or sauce could be soaked up and eaten.
• Another common sight at the medieval dinner table was the frumenty, a thick wheat porridge often boiled in a meat broth and seasoned with spices. Porridges were also made of every type of grain and could be served as desserts or sick dishes if boiled in milk (or almond milk) and sweetened with sugar.
• Pies filled with meats, eggs, vegetables or fruit were common throughout Europe as were turnovers, fritters, donuts and many similar pastries.
• By the Late Middle Ages biscuits, and especially wafers, eaten for dessert had become high-prestige foods and came in many varieties.
• Grain, either as bread crumbs or flour, was also the most common thickener of soups and stews along, or in combination, with almond milk.

Ingredients

Grains

• The most common grains were rye, barley, buckwheat, millet and oat.
• Wheat was common all over Europe and was considered to be the most nutritious of all grains, but was far more expensive since it carried with it a higher social prestige.
• The finely sifted white flour that modern Europeans are most familiar with was reserved for the bread of the upper classes, while those of lower status ate bread that became coarser, darker and of a higher bran content the lower one was on the social ladder.
• In times of grain shortages or outright famine, grains could be supplemented with cheaper and less desirable substitutes like chestnuts, dried legumes, acorns, ferns and a wide variety of more or less nutritious vegetable matter.

Vegetables

• Various vegetables such as cabbage, beet, onion, garlic and carrot were also common foodstuffs.
• The primary forms of preparation were in soups or stews. The orange carrot that is the most common today did not appear until the 17th century.
• Various legumes, like chickpeas, fava beans and peas were also common and important sources of protein.

Fruits

• Fruit was popular and was served fresh (even if the medical science of the time discouraged it), dried, or preserved. Common fruits were grapes, apples, pears, plums, strawberries, figs and dates.

Meat

For canon purposes, domesticated-animal meat sources such as beef from cows and pork from pigs or lamb will be discluded.

• Hunted Game might include hare, rabbit, squirrel, hedgehog, beaver, shrew, vole, or mouse.
• A wide range of birds were eaten, including swans, quail, partridge, storks, cranes, larks, geese, ducks, and just about any wild bird that could be hunted successfully.

Fish

• While large quantities of fish were eaten fresh, a large proportion was salted, dried, and, to a lesser extent, smoked.
• Especially important was the fishing and trade in herring and cod.
• Stockfish, cod that was split down the middle, fixed to pole and dried, was very common, though preparation could be time consuming, and meant beating the dried fish with a mallet and soaking it in water.
• A wide range of mollusks including oysters, mussels and scallops were eaten by coastal and river dwelling Mediterranean and British populations.
• Freshwater crayfish were generally seen as a desirable alternative to meat during fish days.
• Fresh water fish such as pike, carp, bream, perch, lamprey, and trout were common.

Spices

• Spices were among the most luxurious products available in the Middle Ages, the most common being black pepper, cinnamon (and the cheaper alternative cassia), cumin, ginger, cloves, cardamom, long pepper, mace, spikenard, galangal, cubeb, sage, mustard, parsley, caraway, mint, dill , fennel, and anise.
• Sugar, unlike today, was considered to be a type of spice due to its high cost and humoral qualities.

Drinks

• Water is often seen today as a common and neutral choice to drink with a meal. In the Middle Ages concerns over purity, medical recommendations and its low prestige value made it a less favorable option and alcoholic beverages were always preferred. They were considered to be more nutritious and beneficial to digestion than water with the invaluable bonus of being far less prone to putrefaction due to the alcohol content.
• Wine was the preferred drink of the bourgeoisie and the nobility who could afford it, and far less common among peasants and workers.
• The drink of commoners in the northern parts of the continent was primarily beer or ale; due to problems with preservation of this beverage for any long period (especially before the introduction of hops) it was mostly consumed fresh; it was therefore cloudier and perhaps of a lower alcohol content than the typical modern equivalent.
• Plain milk was not consumed by adults except the poor or sick, being reserved for the very young or elderly, and then usually as buttermilk or whey. Fresh milk was overall less common than other dairy products because of the lack of technology to keep it from spoiling.
• Juices, as well as wines, of a multitude of fruits and berries were consumed in the Middle Ages; perry, cotignac from medlars or quince, wine from pomegranate, mulberries, blackberries and cider, which was especially popular in the north where both apples and pears were plentiful.
• Medieval drinks that have survived to this day include prunellé from wild plums (modern-day slivovitz), mulberry gin and blackberry wine. Many variants of mead have been found in medieval recipes, with or without alcoholic content. However, the honey-based drink became less common as a table beverage towards the end of the period and eventually wound up primarily as a sick-potion.

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