Time Travel Garm

A video, heavily edited, of one of my groups members delivering the kitchen talk was posted on Chalke History Festivals page across various socials. This lead to plenty of people in comment sections jumping on the good old fashioned ‘bland British food’ joke. Everyone loves a good ‘British cuisine’ joke; Just as much as everyone loves debunking them. So that’s not what I’ll do here, Instead I’ll just show off my spice kit and let you make your own decisions on how Medieval cuisine would have tasted.

Much like with a lot of history, our misconceptions are tainted by the Victorians. They popularised the idea of medieval peasants sitting around eating flavourless slop; Or nobles covering meat with absurd amounts of spice to hide the fact it was rotting away on the table. Give Hollywood a few centuries to purpurate it further and suddenly chucking some pepper in the soup blows everyone’s mind.

What was the food really like?

When reading household accounts, recipes and descriptions of feasts you see a very different story of medieval food. People often polarise the past into mud farmers and kings, truth is for many people in the medieval period trade and guild or household employment meant disposable income. And what better to spend that on than imported spices, wine and almonds. (They absolutely loved almonds but that’s a story for another time). Those eating as part of a household, as my group portrays, would have had access to some very flavourful food.

What was that flavour though? Above is a picture of the spice kit I pull out at events. The items in this kit always do wonders delighting public as they identify things they have at home (cloves, nutmeg, salt) and things they’ve never seen before (long pepper, solid sugar). Combing these as described in period recipes gets you a warm almost “Christmassy” flavour akin to a floral curry. Think of a mild masala or a pastel de nata sprinkled with cinnamon. All sounding very appetising now huh?
Below I’ll list each part;

• Ginger
  A root of a flowering plant, it’s trade spread with the roman empire as they used it in recorded medical remedies. It’s easily observable decongestant abilities and it’s natural ‘heat’ lead to it being very popular in medieval food and medicine.
• Nutmeg
  The seed of a small fruit that grows on several types of nutmeg tree. It’s ability to not dissolve at all in foods meant it was mostly discarded in favour of it’s seed covering and sister spice Mace.
• Mace
  This is the covering of the nutmeg, between the fruit flesh and seed. It has a similar taste to nutmeg, but dissolves and softens more in liquid dishes.
• Cinnamon
  The bark of one of many ‘cinnamon’ trees. The more bark looking Cinnamon I have would be known as ‘Canel’ and what most households imported. The modern twirls of perfectly brown cinnamon is from younger specific tree breeds and ‘true cinnamon’. True cinnamon cost a lot more without any change to it’s presence in food.
• Turmeric
  A root much like ginger but with a very different flavour. This was prized more for the colour it could lend to dishes, a bright gold that mimics that of saffron (for a lower price). It’s overuse can lead to bitterness making it clear the chef is cheating you.
• Long pepper
  One of the peppers fighting for control in the 12th century. This has a more subtle peppery taste with more citrussy notes. It will eventually be surpassed by it’s cousin the common peppercorn.
• ‘Piper’ Pepper
  Closer to the common modern peppercorn, it has a very similar taste albeit weaker. As the 13th century and later draws in long pepper is replaced by this due to its stronger and more one note flavour.
• Cloves
  Dried flowers again from a tree. Cloves were possibly the most popular spice, household rolls list these as the largest per weight purchase and recipes of the time call for them alone.
• Salt
  Rock salt, mined places like modern day Bavaria. Sea salt is wildly labour intensive without modern distillation methods and is prone to spoiling as it tries to de-desiccate itself.
• Black salt
  A Sulphurous smelling salt used mostly medicinally. Although I have one recipe where it’s sprinkled onto egg tarts. It’s origin varies from mined salts with sulphurous compounds to salts kiln fired with additives.
• Saffron
  Remaining today as a wildly expensive spice, this is the stamen (small pollen bits) of a flower. There is no way to accurately harvest these without gently pulling them off by hand which leads to it’s cost. It’s ability to turn cloth, food and sometimes skin/hair a bright red gold lead to it’s massive desirability. Outside of it’s colouring properties it has a pleasant floral taste.
• Cardamom
  The seed of a flowering plant. This is a divisive one, I have found no English household accounts listing this as being purchased with the spices. However I have foreign (Italian) and later (15th c.) writing using it amongst other common spices. It comes from the same region as many other imports, and I can only assume it’s slight ‘resin’ flavour didn’t sit well on the Angevin palate. I have it in my kit mostly to talk about this interesting fact.
• Grains of Paradise
  Small seed which grows in clusters in papery ‘pods’. Related to Cardamom and furthering my confusion to why it’s not seen, this is has a strong peppery taste with citrus notes. It seems from recipe and amounts ordered these are used like ‘table pepper’ to finish off dishes rather than ground into the blend.
• Sugar
  Used as a spice in period and much more likely to be from beets than cane sugar would be. Sold in it’s raw form it grinds up into grains and is mixed into the various ‘powders’ (spice blends and mixes)

It’s unlikely medieval cooks would have such small jars at their disposal. The household cook would have access to vast stores of dried goods. Rolls (household accounts) for the wife of Simon deMontfort show them ordering 8lb of pepper for the Christmas season.;
“At Christmas 1264 the household (of deMontfort) consumed 60 lb almonds, 6 lb ginger, 8 lb pepper, 6 lb canel (cinnamon), 1 lb saffron, 1 lb cloves, 12 lb sugar, 6 lb white powder with mace, at a total cost of £5 13s 5d.”

I have a few things missing from my kit which are also common in accounts such as; Zedoary, Anise/Fennel seed, Wormseed, Mastic, Cumin, Galingale, and many many more. There’s only so much I can carry around events so I’ve stuck with the most common and interesting to engage public.

But what’s in that house mix?

Much like a premade ‘season all’ I keep a blended mixture of spices and herbs ready to go. This mimics the ‘powder’ that was kept in kitchen stocks and thrown on basically everything being cooked. Admittedly, this powder would only be spices, with herbs thrown in fresh cut each time. I’m allowed a little cheat when cooking for 30 over open flame.

These seasoning mixes took on two main forms; Powder Douce or Powder Forte. Translating to Fine and Strong. A common misconception is that Douce/Fine was used for sweet dishes alone; It certainly contained sugar, but in small amounts comparable to the cinnamon and lesser to ginger and cloves. It is seen in or on dishes which are not at all rich, things with lots of milk or white meats.
Forte/Strong however took the role of being applied to rich soups and stews and red meats. It still may contain sugar, but it’s primary ingredients are pepper and ginger.

Each of these powders would vary from house to house, and season to season. Some medically minded cooks would include more ginger for the winter months to stave off sniffles for example. Each cook would have their own ‘secret’ recipe but they mostly followed the trends of ginger and pepper forward with back notes of cinnamon, clove, citrus.

Unfortunately I only make these mixes in huge amounts and by eye. But I’ll list a ‘rule of thumb’ below for making each powder if you want to try it out. Pound all of these in a mortar and pestle (or you can use a small blender or coffee grinder I wont tell) until a fine powder. For low heat ‘wet’ foods like soup or stew cook the powder into the food, for higher heat and dry foods like roasts or bread sprinkle on at serving.

Powder Douce for light foods
To be tried on egg tarts, roasted chicken or rice pudding.

• 1 part Ginger
• 1/4 part Cinnamon
• 1/4 part Cloves
• 1/8 part Sugar
• 1/8 part Grains of Paradise
• 1/8 part Nutmeg or 1/4 part Mace

Powder Forte for heavy foods
To be tried on stew, roasted pork or vegetables.

• 1 part Long Pepper
• 1 part Pipers or Black pepper
• 1 part Ginger
• 1/8 part Cloves
• 1/8 part Nutmeg or 1/4 part Mace

Source department

• Medieval Spices and Spice Accounts by Mary O’Regan
• Dangerous Tastes: The Story of Spices by Andrew Dalby
• Hildegard von Bingen’s Physica: The Complete English Translation by Priscilla Throop