SOLID MEALS

Evening Star, Issue 21819, 7 September 1934, Page 14

SOLID MEALS

In the time of Henry VIII. only two meals were served' during the day—dinner about 11 a.m. and supper at 4 p.m. Breakfast ■was not a regular meal, though probably most men began the day with a draught of ale and some bread. “ Medieval cookery was much more elaborate than is often realised,” writes Mr L. F. Salzman, _in his book ‘ English Life in the Middle Ages.’ “ While solid meats, such as beef and mutton and the famous boar’s head associated with Christian feasts, figured to some extent at most dinners, a-great variety of soups, stews, pasties, fritters, jellies, and so forth, were in common use, and.the recipes: that,have survived from the : fifteenth century show that’ many dishes were of very elaborate composition, most containing quantities of spice. Fish also played a very important part in the medieval kitchen, especially as during Lent and on fast days no flesh might be eaten. The herring was the fish in greatest demand, either fresh, salted, or smoked, but every known fish from the minnow to the whale figured on the medieval bill of fare. Of fruits several varieties of pears and apples 1 were grown in the country, as were cherries, damsons, and plums; pomegranates and' oranges, imported from. Spain, were luxuries for the rich, hut strawberries (of the little, wild kind) and cream formed a combination as much appreciated by all classes in the Middle Ages as at the present day. Strawberries, barberries, and other fruits were also made into 1 comfits ’ or sweets and , ‘ conserve ’ or jam, while ‘ marmalade.’ originally made of quinces,, was another Spanish luxury.” . But Mr William Edward Mead has a very poor opinion of the food served at medieval tables. “ Modern taste is so different from that of 400 or 500' years ago that scarcely one of the dishes served at feasts would now be found eatable,” be writes in ‘The English Medieval Feast.’ ‘‘This; does not mean that the elements of which most medieval dishes were composed were of inferior quality. On the average the food served at feasts was probably as costly as that of our time, but the old standards of acceptable food were strangely different from ours. Scarcely anything was prepared in what would now be regarded as a simple-and natural fashion. The ideal, apparently, was that nothing should be left in its natural state, but rather devilled and hashed and highly spiced, and mixed with a dozen or a score of ingredients, so that no one might have an inkling of what a dish was composed.- Some of the food, according to modern notions, was unfit before it came into the hands of the cook. Perhaps no one in Europe or America would now eat a cormorant. Yet this disgusting bird was often seen on tho tables of the well-to-do in the Middle Ages; and the cormorant is typical of a goodly number of foods once served to the wealthy, but now utterly discarded even by the poorest classes. . . . Even more surprising than , the choice of the cormorant as a food is the use_ of the whale, the seal, and the porpoise. The flesh of the whale remained’hard and indigestible even after twenty-four hours of cooking. “ The favourite meat of all classes was pork, and swine were easily maintained on the mast in tho oak forests. In the later Middle Ages sheep were abundant, and required little attention beyond ensuring that they should not stray too far from the fold which sheltered them at night. Goats were in the same category as sheep, though far less numerous. .Cows and oxen afforded a sufficient supply of beef, though for the most part the quality was coarse and tough. . Not. unnaturally, veal, which was almost invariably tender, was prized, along with pork, as one of the most satisfactory meats. With the approach of winter, when pasturage was no longer available, the days of slaughter began, and great quarters of beef and pork wore salted and kept in vats or casks until needed. Throughout the cold season a monotonous and unwholesome diet of salted meat or" fish was the rule, since the expense' of keeping animate over the" winter F.fls f«Hi to he prohibitive*”