Medieval cuisine is as fascinating as it is disconcerting. Between banquets laden with spices and frugal peasant meals, we often get lost in clichéd images. However, thanks to culinary manuscripts, accounting archives, archaeological excavations, and period treatises, we can now reliably reconstruct the foods consumed in the Middle Ages, between the 13th and 15th centuries.
Here is a summary of medieval food practices, focused on France and neighboring regions.
A cuisine based on grain
As in Antiquity, the basis of the medieval diet remained bread and cereals. Wheat was reserved for the wealthiest and for the cities, while the countryside consumed mainly rye, barley, oats, or buckwheat, depending on the region.
Grains are consumed in the form of bread (brown, black, white, or meslin bread), porridge, thick pancakes, flans, or flour to thicken sauces. White bread remains a luxury reserved for nobles and clergymen.
Legumes and vegetables from the garden
Peas, broad beans, lentils, chickpeas, and some beans (especially pole beans, imported from Spain) were common. They are used in soups, purees, and stews.
Medieval vegetable gardens provided simple but nutritious vegetables all year round: cabbages, turnips, leeks, heirloom carrots, parsnips, onions, garlic. Also eaten were beet tops, beet greens, watercress, nettles, and other greens.
Meat: abundant or rare depending on status
Nobles consumed a lot of meat, often as part of banquets or codified meals: game (deer, wild boar, hare, rabbit), noble poultry (swan, peacock, heron), and farmed meats such as beef, mutton, lamb, and especially pork.
The people are content with pork, poultry, or offal. The meat is often salted, smoked, or simmered in a cauldron. The lean days imposed by the Church prohibit meat for several days a week: instead, they consume fish, eggs, or dairy products.
Charcuterie and preservation techniques
Charcuterie is very present in both rural and urban cuisine. Smoked bacon, black pudding, sausages, andouille sausages, pâtés, and meats preserved in their own fat are found. Salting, drying, and smoking allow meat to be preserved for several months. These products are also incorporated into soups and stews to enrich them.
Dairy products: present, but variable
Milk is rarely drunk as is, but is processed into curdled milk, faisselle, fresh or mature cheeses. Butter is mainly consumed in northern regions, cream in certain noble recipes, and whey is used in soups.
Dairy products play an important role in the lean diets prescribed by the Church.
Fruits and natural sweets
Apples, pears, plums, cherries, blackberries, walnuts, chestnuts, and hazelnuts are common. The fruits can be eaten raw, dried, or incorporated into sweet and savory dishes.
Cane sugar is an imported luxury product, reserved for the aristocracy. Honey is more common and is used for sweetening, preserving, or flavoring. Jams are often medicinal in origin (electuaries), or prepared in thick syrups.
Spices: taste and prestige
Medieval noble cuisine is renowned for its generous use of spices: pepper, ginger, cinnamon, cloves, maniguette, nutmeg... They are expensive and symbolize wealth and refinement.
These spices are used in sauces, stews, and even porridges. The desired flavor is often sweet and sour, with the use of verjuice, vinegar, acidic fruit juices, or herbs such as parsley, sage, marjoram, or hyssop.
Cooking with a cauldron: the heart of the home
In all walks of life, the cauldron is the central utensil. Suspended in the hearth, placed on a tripod, or directly on the embers, it can be used to cook almost all everyday dishes.
We prepare there:
— thick soups, stews, porridges
— meat, vegetable and legume stews
— thick sauces made with bread and spices
— dishes simmered for several hours
Cooking is done on a bed of embers, without a direct flame, at around 95°C. It is a cuisine requiring patience and slowness, but also great efficiency: few utensils, lots of flavor and even cooking.
The cauldron is associated with warmth, survival, and sharing.
Bread and soup: pillars of the diet
Some peasant recipes called for bread to be baked over embers, directly in the cauldron, by placing the dough on a bed of straw or leaves. The ubiquitous bread is often dipped in soups or stews. Among the poorest, a meal sometimes consists of just a slice of black bread dipped in soup.
Soup, a generic term, refers to any hot liquid containing bread, vegetables, grains, or leftovers. It is the most common dish, shared every day around a pot.
Beverages: wine, beer, cider, mead
Wine is widely consumed, even diluted with water or boiled. People tend to drink ale, beer (unhopped), cider, or mead. Herbal infusions and sometimes fermented broths are also found.
Water is rarely drunk alone, often mixed with other ingredients to avoid contamination.
A codified, rustic and scholarly cuisine
Medieval cuisine was structured by the seasons, religious prohibitions, social status, and also by a great capacity for adaptation. Noble cookery manuscripts reveal an inventive, refined, and flavorful cuisine. But popular cuisine, more restrained, shows great creativity in using leftovers.
Cooking in a cauldron is one of the foundations of this culinary culture: simple, but generous.
You can now order your Medieval recipe boxes to make yourself in the cauldron.
All the material is available on the site to get you started!
To go further:
– The Viandier de Taillevent (14th century), ed. T. Scully
– The Housekeeper of Paris (1393), ed. Brereton & Ferrier
– Odile Redon et al., Cooking in the Middle Ages, ed. Stock
– Bruno Lemesle, “Fire and Domestic Cooking in the Middle Ages”, in Medieval Archaeology, 2002
– Jacques Thirion, The Cauldron and the Still, CNRS