While the kitchens of the lower classes remained much as they had been since the Celts – a hearth in the centre of a one roomed house on which cauldrons were hung to make stews and porridges -for the better off, the kitchen was now separate from living quarters. Initially, cooking was still carried out on an open hearth in the middle of the kitchen but eventually, with the introduction of chimneys, the fire was moved to a side wall and a large fireplace made of brick or stone was inset. It was also now possible to build a brick oven into the chimney wall. This now left more space in the kitchen for preparation tables. In great houses and castles further separate rooms for storage of food and wine and for the making of butter and cheese were attached to the main kitchen. Added to the usual kitchen equipment of knives, ladles, pots and wooden bowls were sieve cloths and, most importantly, mortar and pestles which were used to pound both the spices imported from the East and the sugar introduced from the Middle East during the Crusades.
While the lower orders ate their bread, cheese, pottages and porridges on simple trestle tables, the wealthy dined in special dining halls and followed the new dining etiquette introduced by the Normans. Feasts would comprise of a series of courses, usually dictated by theories of medical science which saw diet as fundamental to good health. They would begin with sugar coated seeds (comfits) such as fennel, aniseed or cumin accompanied by a fortified wine. This would be followed with an array of vegetables, light meats such as chicken and broths. Then joints of roasted meat accompanied by vegetables and nuts would be served. The meal would end with cheese and wine.
Cooking methods became more sophisticated, partly as a result of French influences, but also from the crusaders returning from the Middle East who brought back not only new ingredients such as sugar, dried fruits and spices imported from the East by Arabs, but the cooking methods they had discovered there. In rich households the very expensive spices imported from the East such as cinnamon, nutmeg, mace, cloves and cumin and the dried fruits from the Middle East and southern Europe were added to meat dishes. Very often, rather than cooking spiced and fruited stews in the cauldron they were placed in a pot and covered with a paste of flour and water and baked. The paste (which eventually developed into edible pastry) was not eaten but discarded before the dish was served.
The new ingredients could also be mixed into finely chopped fresh fruit and placed in the cavity of birds such as geese and chickens as a stuffing. Mixtures of minced meat, dried fruit and spices were placed in an animal stomach and boiled in water over the fire: the first puddings. Sugar was now used to sweeten many dishes rather than honey, and sweetmeats such as marzipan (marchepain), sugar pounded with almonds and bound together with egg white, were highly prized. Much of what we know about the food eaten and the cooking methods used in the Middle Ages comes from The Forme of Cury, the recipes of Richard II’s cook. It is on this book that the majority of the Medieval recipes in this website are based.
Apart from the spices, dried fruit, and sugar imported from the Middle and Far East at exorbitant prices, ingredients available in Medieval England remained much the same as they had been in Anglo-Saxon and Viking times. The Normans, however, were particularly fond of rabbit and re-introduced them as a delicacy for the wealthy. Lemons and oranges began to be imported from Spain and North Africa and became important flavourings.
To the usual methods of preserving food (salting, drying and pickling) was added that of sugar which, cooked with fresh fruits would make ‘conserves’ or jams and, added to vinegar would enhance the taste of pickled produce.
