The Fancy Feast
The menu of a medieval banquet bore very little resemblance to today's. It's as if table d'hote and a la carte were one and the same thing ,with the alternative dishes in each course all being placed on the table at the same time. A "course" was a more or less haphazard assortment, it's only real consistency was that it offered a wide choice within itself; The host served what was available and made his own choice-some of this, some of that-with no compulsion to take a platterful of everything, even if the option existed.
Banquet guests may have been offered the following:
First Course
Miniature pastries filled with cod liver or beef marrow
A cameline "brewet"-pieces of meat in a thin cinnamon sauce
Beef marrow fritters
Eels in a thick, spicy puree
Loach in a cold green sauce flavoured with spices and sage
Large joints of meat, roasted or boiled
Saltwater fish fritters
Roast bream and darioles
Sturgeon
Jellies
Second Course
"The best roast that may be had"
Freshwater fish
Broth with bacon
A meat tile consisting of:
Capon Pasties and Crisps
Bream and eel pasties
Blank mang (blamanger)
Third Course
Frumenty
Venison
Lampreys with hot sauce
After the meal the board was cleared to make way for dessert, which encompassed a variety of sweet and spicy confections. Either then or later, spiced wines and wafers were served, as well as dry whole spices to help the digestion.
On the tables of the rich there would be fewer fish dishes (except on fast days) and more game birds and beasts. The overall number of dishes would also be much greater than those offered on the middle levels of society. but where the aristocratic table differed most strikingly was in presentation. the medieval world, still only marginally literate, compensated by being intensely visual, and it's delight in architecture, painting, silverware and costume overflowed onto the rich man's table in the form of gilded swans, peacocks in all there plumage, and extravagant "soteltes" (subtleties)-sweets, jellies or pastries moulded into splendid and fanciful representations of lions, eagles, crowns or coats of arms.
Most medieval food fell into one of five texture categories. There was plain, dry roast. There were small pies, pasties and fritters consisting of meat, sauce and plate, all in one self-contained package. There was the thickly sauced mixture, sometimes custardy, sometimes a whole grain pudding like frumenty. There was the "brewet" of meat, poultry or fish in a spicy, creamy sauce. And there was the simple soup, a flavoured liquid with a few "sops" of bread or meat swimming in it.
Texture was important in medieval times because there were only two pieces of cutlery. Most people carried a knife of the traditional, general-purpose dagger shape, and spoons were not uncommon, but the dinner fork was an oddity in most of Europe until the eighteenth century. Until after 1700, although a few eccentrics used forks to dine, most northern Europeans continued to eat with fingers and knives, or spoon and bread.
Last updated August 25, 1999 by Jacqui
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