![]() ![]() spices, sugar, expensive fruits, or meat) note For instance, sugar-sweetened and spiced cheesecakes/cheese pies, sometimes with fruit, appear to have been staples of noble banquets, as do savory pies (spiced again, possibly with meat) that amount to medieval quiches. All that said, cheese was often found on noble tables across Europe in two major forms: (1) in elaborate preparations involving more expensive ingredients (e.g. However, in some areas, such as Ireland, it was seen as an equal to meat, and would frequently be consumed by the noble classes as well as the peasantry. In most of Medieval Europe, cheese was seen as something to be eaten in place of meat when meat was scarce. This allowed cheesemakers to rely on beneficial microbes (which brought interesting and funky flavors) to preserve the cheese rather than pure salt. The pull was the spread of cheesemaking to Northern Europe, where the cheese wouldn't spoil as quickly and so you could salt cheese less than in the hotter regions of southern Europe where ancient cheesecraft began. The push was people (particularly monks) who had little animal protein to eat but cheese and wanted more variety in their diet. These innovations appear to have been driven by a push-pull process. traditional French Munster) are all Medieval inventions. Limburger and Appenzeller), and smear-ripened cheeses (e.g. Roquefort and Gorgonzola), soft-ripened cheeses (e.g. The Middle Ages were an innovative time for cheesemaking, with many new techniques being discovered in Medieval Europe. Many modern varieties of cheese date back to the Medieval period. Buttermilk and whey (liquid byproducts of butter and cheese making, respectively) were consumed more frequently in liquid form, though in some places whey was also used to make cheese (particularly Italy, where whey had been converted into ricotta since Roman times).Ĭheese was far more important in the Medieval diet, because it didn't spoil as fast as liquid milk. However, fresh milk did find some use in cooking as a base for porridges (which were consumed by all classes) and soups. Fresh milk was drunk by children, the poor, the sick, and the elderly the average adult didn't drink it often. ![]() Milk was obtained from cows, sheep, and goats. Those who couldn't afford meat got a lot of their animal protein from milk and dairy products. On the other hand, if you want to have any semblance of verisimilitude, you might want to at least explain how these peasants can afford to eat roast meat every day in a preindustrial economy.įor fictionalised versions of Medieval meals, see Stock Medieval Meal. Note that while many Medieval European Fantasy settings will use a Medieval level of technology, they are still fantasy settings and thus don't need to worry about the specifics unless the author really wants to (in a fictional world where none of the European nobility or the Americas exist, there's no need to debate the "historical accuracy!" of things like women knights or potatoes, after all). ![]() As a result not all of the information given will apply to the entire timespan, and writers who want to be historically accurate should do additional research to be certain of what food would have been eaten at a specific point. This period is usually defined as the time from the fall of The Roman Empire to the dawn of the The Renaissance, so it covers a fair bit of time (1000 years, from the 5th to the 15th centuries, to be rough) which was split into multiple time periods (see The Middle Ages for more information). ![]() The following page is intended as a brief summary of the kinds of food that would have been available in Europe during Medieval times/the Middle Ages. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |