Foods Ye Olde Medieval Way

Medieval research can turn up interesting information.

Even though I'm not what you'd call a person who prepares foods or even likes to cook, sometimes my characters do. I do love my fruits and veggies, so here are a few fun facts about cooking and eating Medieval style vegetables.

Medieval feasts were not all bread, meat, and cheese. Fruits—and especially vegetables—were served as side dishes or were cooked with the meat. In fact, Medieval cooks didn't make the same distinction between fruits and vegetables that we do. We often find recipes that used apples in a stew or turnips in a sweet dessert.

Some of today's favorite vegetables were not yet introduced to Medieval Europe. These include potatoes, tomatoes, bell peppers, and maize corn. However, people still had a great variety of vegetables to choose from in their gardens and public markets.

They undoubtedly ate more fruits and vegetables than we do now since meat was expensive and the landlords taxed grain and flour. Vegetables, on the other hand, were free, a gift of the earth, and any excess from the garden could be sold.

Seasonal vegetables: Some vegetables were only available while in season, so people looked forward to eating them. Asparagus, artichokes, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, green and yellow beans, cauliflower, celery, cucumbers, fennel, some varieties of crookneck squash (which they called gourds), peas, melons, okra, and rapini were usually served raw, steamed, or boiled, but occasionally they were also deep fried or roasted.

Leafy vegetables: This group was available more often since they could be continuously harvested from Spring until winter. Green, white and red cabbage, sorrel, lettuce, chard, collards, dandelion, mustard greens, turnip greens, chichory, radiccio, endive, escarole, spinach, parsley, cilantro, and many other herbs were served raw in salads, boiled in soups, stewed, baked, sautéed, dipped in batter and fried, or pickled to be eaten later. They also ate flowers like violets, daylilies, waterlilies, borage, fruit blossoms, mallows, sweet peas, marigolds, angelica, and roses.

Root vegetables: Carrots, turnips, rutabagas (called swedes), radishes, beets, yams, and parsnips were highly favored vegetables because they were easy to grow and could be stored all winter. Root vegetables were prepared in a variety of ways; baked, fried, boiled, braised, sautéed, steamed or eaten raw. Onions, leeks, shallots, garlic, and chives formed another class of root vegetable prized for their flavors and storage properties. The leaves and flowers were also edible and could be dried for use all year long.

You've probably heard of buttered greens with leeks. Here's the way it would have been done in Medieval times. And in Ye Olde English no less!

[To mak buttered wortes tak good erbes and pik them and wesche them and shred them and boile them in watur put ther to clarified buttur a good quantite and when they be boiled salt them and let none otemele cum ther in then cutt whit bred thyn in dysshes and pour on the wort.-Noble Book of Cookery, Napier]

Now there's a recipe that's easy to understand!

Do you have any old historical recipes that you've ran across in your research? If so, why not share? Not withstanding Olde English, of course!

Kaye