Medieval Recipes

The best way to store meat and such things in the middle ages was to salt it. They would cut up the meat and roll it in salt troughs and after it was coated in salt they would store it in salt filled barrels until it was needed. The salt worked by locking up the water in the meat and fish. The microorganisms that rot meat need water to live, so salt protected the meat from spoiling. Much of their meat was fresh, especially in the summer, since they raised the livestock and fished daily. But in the winter months it was hard to have enough food to feed everyone so they would kill off some of the livestock and store it so they would not have to feed it. They would keep just enough cattle for breading in the spring and for milking. Meat had to be turned constantly while being cooked over an open fire; the job of turnspit was the lowliest job in the kitchen.

Meat was prepared in a few different ways using open fires. Some meat was smoked by placing it up in the chimney over the cooking fires. Cooking herbs were dried after being harvested by hanging them around the kitchen, usually from the rafters in the ceiling. Many of these kitchens were huge, large enough to roast whole oxen. The job of the pantler was to provision out the food products from the pantry. The job of the butler was to provision out the wine and ale. This word has been changed to butler today.

Pigeons were kept for bearing messages and for eating. Pigeon pie was a medieval favorite. The pigeons were kept in tiny roosts along the inside of the towers and they were easily caught for cooking at night when they were asleep and you could just pick them up and put them in a basket to take down to the cook.

But where did they get all this food? They hunted it. Those who could not afford to hire others to hunt for them would seek out game on their own. Even when they might have been rich enough to hire others to hunt for their daily fare, hunting was a very large part of their hobbies and leisure activities too.

Falconry was a popular pastime of the noble families. Frederick II was so enamored with falconry that he wrote a series of six books on the art. The first dealt with the anatomy and habits of birds gleaning his information from the works of Aristotle's works on natural history. He introduced the Arabic practice of hooding falcons to keep them tranquil during training. They were taken from their nests as young birds just before they were ready to fly on their own and kept in mews or hawk houses. They were secured to their perches with a slipknot. They were very carefully kept and shown much reverence by their handlers.

Medieval Europe was a constant battleground, from petty border disputes to internal power struggles and National rivalries. The Church was as much a competitor as it was a peacekeeper. Feudalism, the Roman Catholic Church and the Code of Chivalry provided the framework for the social, political and economic environments of Europe during the Middle Ages. Emphasis was on manor life in the Early Middle ages but shifted to the cities and commercial activities during the later period. Monasteries gave way to Universities as centers of learning.