The music you heard is track number 17, When the Nichtegale Singes on the album Lenten is Come, by Briddes Roune. And it is available at Magnatune.com
So what did people eat during the Middle Ages? I have come across a few perceptions and they weren’t positive. Some figured that gruel was the cuisine of the day. Some more generous people thought the nobles had meat, but it was very plain and dull, not much better than the peasants’ gruel. There are also some misconceptions about what foods were available in the Middle Ages. Potatoes are strongly associated with the Irish thanks to the 19th century potato famine. Tomatoes are strongly associated with Italians for pasta and pizza. Yet both of these ingredients are from the “New World” and would not have been available in the Middle Ages, to Europeans. At the same time, some people I’ve asked thought oranges and honey are from the “New World” and would not have been available to Europeans. In fact, these two ingredients were available. Oranges were grown in Middle Eastern regions and here in Germany they still often import their oranges from Turkey, not Florida. Honey was a staple ingredient instead of sugar. Sugar was available after a while in the Middle Ages, though it was a different type and very expensive. So honey was the sweetener of the day. Also, honey was a little different than now. First, our bees in America use the pollen from different weeds and flowers and they are a different breed. The early European breed of bees produced less honey. But for our purposes this week, it’s still honey.
So this week I’m trying something a little different for our listeners. How would you like to try some food from the Middle Ages and decide for yourself if it was at a low status with gruel, or if it was somewhat tasty? Now it isn’t possible for me to stop by everyone’s house and cook, nor am I about to make enough and send some to the over one thousand listeners. The hours of work would be insane. I just made candied orange rinds for about 90 people and that took a long time. Instead, I am going to give you two Medieval recipes that are simple enough to make and taste really good for those with a bit of a sweet tooth. So you don’t worry about transcribing the recipes and directions, they will be available on the blog, and hopefully a few pictures as well.
Here’s a quick background and advertisement for what I do in my spare time. I’m a member of the Society for Creative Anachronism. It’s a worldwide group that tries to recreate the Middle Ages. People pick a time anywhere between 600 and 1600 and try to learn as much as possible about their “persona”. We picked the early 800s, as we love to read about Charlemagne and his time. So I’ve studied up on the clothes and sew up outfits for us. I’m working on all sorts of needlework as well. We are interested in learning to sword fight, though I’ve been doing it and not my husband at this point. So we’ve researched armour and weaponry of the time as well. I currently have a set of leather scale armour I made and fight in. Or more I should say get pummeled in. I’ve only been fighting for a year, against men who have been fighting for over ten years.
There are also events that are put together where people can dress up, show off their arts and sciences projects and have feasts. Some feasts are set up by a few individuals and others are potluck, though you are supposed to bring Medieval dishes, not macaroni and cheese. Thus I have embarked on a learning experience of food. Since I love to bake and make sweets, that’s what I usually prepare, though I made a nice mushroom pie a few times.
For anyone who is interested in checking out the group, the webpage is www.sca.org. Check it out and find your local kingdom. It’s lots of fun. So, that brings me to some recipes.
The first recipe is Nucato, or Spiced Honey Nut Crunch. This is a very easy recipe and only takes a little bit of time. The recipe I have is a rather large one, so I will scale it down for our listeners, so it’s good for a family snack. You need…
1½ cups honey
1 pound shelled almonds, hazelnuts or walnuts
1 lemon for spreading the mixture
Spice Mixture
1 teaspoon ground ginger
1 pinch freshly ground pepper
1 rounded teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/3 teaspoon ground cloves
Boil the honey and skim off any scum that rises up. Coarsely chop the nuts and add them to the honey. To the side, you should have the spice mixture and you need to add 1 teaspoon of it to the honey and nuts. Cook over low heat and stir constantly for 30-45 minutes. When the nuts make a slight popping sound from the honey, take the pan off the heat. Make sure not to burn the nuts, or they will be bitter. Now mix in the rest of the spice mixture. Pour the nucato onto a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper and spread it with the cut half of a lemon. Let it cool and then enjoy.
The original recipe says to spread the nuts with your bare hand, but this is NOT advised, as you will probably get burned and not enjoy the snack as much. I’ve made the recipe with walnuts and made quite a lot of it. It was for forty people and my husband swore I made too much of it. It turns out many people in our SCA group LOVED nucato and the bowl was empty at the end of the night.
In this recipe you can also see what spices were commonly used. Although cinnamon is a more eastern spice, it was traded commonly enough to be used in recipes. This was an Italian recipe from the 14th century and Italy was often the port of trading between the Western and Eastern world. There is a good book about the spice trade routes and I will go through it for another episode.
The second recipe is a bit more time consuming, but I feel, even better than the nucato. From a French manuscript, we get Candied Orange Rinds. You need…
2 organically grown, pesticide free, thick skinned oranges, navel oranges are good.
1 ¾ cups honey
ground ginger
The recipe is simple, you just have to wait a while. I cut the oranges into four parts, though the original recipe said five. Keeping the quarters of the oranges intact, slowly peel off and if you need to, dig out the meat of the orange. The part you normally eat. Do whatever you like with that part, including eating it right there. The part you need for the recipe is the rind. Take a vegetable peeler and remove the pith, or the white part of the rind. So you want to keep the orange part intact. If you accidentally scrape through and make a hole in the orange peel, it’s fine. Actually, I didn’t use the peeler in the normal way. Looking at the peeler, it should make a “u” shape, with the sharp part on the curve. I turned the peeler upside-down and used the two outside edges and scraped back and forth vigorously to get all the pith off. This shouldn’t take too long for two oranges. I actually did it with two sacks of oranges and spread the work out over the course of a week. That was tiring to the arm.
The next part and long one, is you place the orange rinds in a small bowl of water and let them soak. Then tomorrow you change the water and let them soak again. Changing the water every day, you let them soak for a whole week or seven days. This makes the rinds very tender. Please make sure to change the water every day. Even after just one day, the water gets a little cloudy and scummy looking. I know it probably sounds like the oranges won’t be edible after a week like this, I was nervous about that, but they are fine.
After you patiently waited that week out, boil a quart of water. Dump the rinds in and let the water come to a boil again. Then immediately take the rinds out and dry them off with some paper towels. Once they are dry, cut them into strips. I just used my kitchen scissors and literally cut them, as opposed to slicing them with a knife. Now place them in a saucepan and cover them with the honey. The honey should completely cover the orange strips. Bring it to a boil over medium-low heat and then put the heat to low and let it simmer for about 15 minutes.
The recipe says you should put the strips on a rack and let them dry for a few hours. Unfortunately I didn’t have the time for that when I made them. It didn’t affect the taste though, so it’s up to you. Either after you let them dry, or if you can’t wait, sprinkle some ground ginger over the strips and enjoy. The recipe suggests letting them sit in an air-tight container in a cool place for a month before eating. Again, I didn’t have that kind of time. It’s up to you if you wait. The difference isn’t so much in the taste, but the texture. Since I was in a bit of a rush for the event, my rinds were still a bit goopy. If you dry them out and even wait a month, they should be more like a soft candy. Even still, they taste just fine, goopy.
I will have a few photos up on the webpage in the next few hours. For the most part, if you just read the instructions, it’s pretty simple. The pictures are intended to show you what the final product looks like.
I’m curious to hear what people think about this episode. It’s more “hands-on” and instructional, than historical. Yet I tried to give a little background as well. Plus, these are historical recipes. If anyone tries these recipes, please tell me what you think. If I get some positive feedback on the episode, I’ll try to have a “hands-on” episode about every 6-8 weeks. This will include simple clothing and accessories as well. In the case of clothing, there would be more information on the fashion of the time period talked about with instructions for a simple article of clothing on the blog. And it wouldn’t be just Medieval. We have a handful of daily life resources for Ancient history as well, including a cookbook from about 60BC.
Ed. Kritzman, Lawrence D. Food: A Culinary History. New York: Columbia University Press, 1999.
Redon, Odile, Sabban, Francoise & Serventi, Silvano. The Medieval Kitchen: Recipes from France and Italy. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1998.
