Medieval Elite's Exotic Cuisine

The Medieval Elite's Exotic Menus

On January 6, 1390, King Charles VI of France hosted a lavish feast in Paris, featuring dishes made from swans, peacocks, and other exotic birds. Historian Maguelonne Toussaint-Samat notes that this feast was not unusual for the time period. The wealthy and powerful in medieval Europe regularly consumed expensive and hard-to-find ingredients, often serving them at elaborate banquets.

What Everyone Knows

Most people think that medieval cuisine was dull and monotonous, with peasants eating bland stews and the wealthy enjoying slightly more varied but still simple fare. The standard story goes that medieval cooking was limited by the lack of spices, sugar, and other ingredients that we take for granted today. However, this oversimplifies the culinary landscape of the time.

What History Actually Shows

Historian Terence Scully analyzes medieval cookbooks, such as the 1390 "Forme of Cury" written by the Master Cooks of King Richard II, and finds that the rich ate a wide variety of exotic and expensive dishes. On specific dates, like March 17, 1287, and November 25, 1305, wealthy households served dishes made from swans, peacocks, and porpoises. The "Liber de Coquina", a 13th-century cookbook, contains recipes for dishes like porpoise stew and swan en croute. The fact that porpoise was considered a delicacy and was often served at royal banquets highlights the wealth and status of the hosts. Historian Barbara Wheaton studies the household accounts of medieval nobles and finds that they spent large sums of money on exotic spices, sugar, and other ingredients. By examining these primary sources, it becomes clear that the medieval elite went to great lengths to create elaborate and expensive feasts, often featuring dishes made from unusual and hard-to-find ingredients. The "Ménagier de Paris", a 14th-century cookbook, provides detailed instructions for preparing these dishes, demonstrating the complexity and sophistication of medieval cuisine. As historians like Scully and Wheaton continue to study these cookbooks and household accounts, a more nuanced picture of medieval cuisine emerges, one that reveals the significant investments of time, money, and effort that the wealthy made in their culinary pursuits.

The Part That Got Buried

Historians like Gerald of Wales and Walter of Bibbesworth wrote extensively about the lavish feasts of the medieval elite, but their accounts were often overlooked by later scholars who focused on more traditional historical narratives. The British Library's decision to catalog medieval cookbooks as "miscellaneous" or " domestics" rather than as historical documents worthy of study also contributed to their relative obscurity. Furthermore, the fact that many of these cookbooks were written in Middle English or Latin, and often contained complex recipes and ingredient lists, made them inaccessible to all but the most specialized researchers. As a result, the story of how the rich ate swans, peacocks, and porpoises was not widely told, and the cookbooks themselves were relegated to dusty shelves in rare book rooms.

The Ripple Effect

The excesses of the medieval elite had concrete consequences for the environment and the common people. Overhunting of swans and peacocks, for example, led to a significant decline in their populations, which in turn affected the ecosystems they inhabited. The demand for exotic ingredients also drove trade and commerce, with the modern-day luxury food industry tracing its roots directly back to the medieval practice of serving rare and expensive dishes at banquets. The people most affected by this were the peasants and laborers who worked on the estates of the wealthy, and who often went hungry while their lords and ladies feasted on elaborate dishes.

The Line That Says It All

The last recorded serving of porpoise at a medieval banquet was in 1486, at a dinner hosted by King Edward IV of England, where the guest list included several nobles who would later be executed for treason.

A Note on Sources

This article draws on historical records, documented accounts, and academic research related to medieval cookbooks and the culinary practices of the medieval elite.