Castles, Customs, and Kings: True Tales by English Historical Fiction Authors (23 page)

Since the fork had not yet been introduced into general English usage in the late 15th century, cutlery meant spoon and knife only. The knife was often each man’s own property brought to the table. The use of fingers was therefore necessary, but this did not mean bad manners. Hands were wiped on the napkin, washed before and after meals, and only used where the spoon and the knife were insufficient.

Grace would be pronounced first by the head of the family (or the chaplain in a large household), the first course would be laid, and there was supposed to be consideration for others at the table where communal bowls and platters were concerned. Someone taking more than his share would be frowned upon. The position of the salt cellar could be an important part of accepted etiquette, and generally behaving with discreet decorum was important. A child was taught table manners. His elders would be judged by theirs.

Light ale was the most common drink, also for children. It was weak by our standards but many beers were stronger. Wine was most likely to be imported from Flanders, France, Italy, or Spain, although some was produced in England.

The famous Malmsy was a sweetish Greek wine. Burgundy was highly favoured and there were various qualities, with Beaune perhaps the best. There was Claret, Cabernet from Brittany, Vernaccia and Trebbiano from Italy, Sack (sherry from Jerez) and many, many more. If spiced and possibly gingered, and then maybe heated, the wine became Hippocras and was supposedly medicinal—certainly very pleasant on a chilly evening by the fire.

Very sweet wines from the Levant were favoured by some ladies. Verjuice, made from unfermented and often unripe English grapes, was used in cooking. Mead was often bought from the monasteries where honey from the locally kept beehives was used, or sold, by the monks. So there was certainly no lack of good lubrication to help the digestion.

Water was, after all, completely undrinkable. It was dangerously polluted in almost all areas of the country and was used mainly for washing, though also in cooking where it was hopefully sufficiently boiled for safety. Dysentery was, however, common.

Fruit and vegetables were not particularly favoured, especially by the rich. Fresh fruit was considered extremely bad for you, and too much of any fruit could prove fatal! Death from a surfeit of berries was sometimes a doctor’s diagnosis. Fruit was used in cooking, but more commonly for brewing. Cider and Perry were popular in country areas. Vegetables were given to farm animals, but also eaten by the poor. A vegetable pottage (slow cooked stew) or a cabbage soup was both filling and easily produced.

But for the rich it was protein all the way. Meat, fish, and dairy were favoured. Fish was not always popular, but the Church insisted on no meat being eaten on Fridays, religious fasts, and many saints’ days. Abstention from these strictures could be bought or pleaded, but the rules were fairly strict and, it seems, usually upheld. Although a great variety of fish and seafood was available, the boredom of a fishy diet could be alleviated by the addition of duck, beaver, and other water or sea birds, usefully classified as fish by the helpful and hopeful clergy.

Meat was the staple diet of those who could afford it. Roasting was the favoured cooking method, meat slowly turned on a spit over a roaring open fire. Boiling in stews and soups was also common, as was frying, and smoked bacon was much utilised. Since there was no method of refrigeration available, meat and fish were preserved out of season by smoking and drying. Rich dishes of meat stuffed with onions, herbs, and raisins were popular, and apples were more often used in stuffings than as fresh fruit.

Those unable to afford such regular luxuries would still eat meat as often as was possible, but would frequently be reduced to eating simple stews of beans, barley, oatmeal, lentils, and peas.

The use of spices in cooking was considered important—not to disguise the taste of rotten meat which is another of the many myths regarding medieval affairs which still persists—but to add flavour and to pronounce wealth and status. Spices were, on the whole, enormously expensive. Therefore, the more spice added to your guests’ platters, the more they knew and respected your importance. So a fair dose of cinnamon, nutmeg, anise, caraway seeds, cloves, and even the monstrously expensive saffron might be liberally spread across your dinner.

Dishes could be either simple or complicated—roast boar crusted in mustard; pickled lampreys; buttered crabs on a bed of smoked eels; calves’ testicles filled with onion, minced lambs’ kidneys and nutmeg; capon studded with cloves and served on salad greens, clams, and beans; a galantine of three dark meats in aspic; baked pike in burned cream; larks bound in leeks in a red wine sauce; boiled tripe and sweated onions; stewed rabbit in a pastry pie…the list goes on and on—both the amazing and the horrifying.

For feasts in grand houses, three courses were normally served (there could be more), but each course was comprised of many separate dishes. Depending on how lavish the host wished to appear, twenty or more different platters might be set across the table for each course.

And even more confusing to us, each of these courses could include both sweets and savouries. Custards, spit-roast apples, creamed almonds with marzipan berries, jellies, tarts, and fruity dumplings in syrup could be served right amongst the roast meats, stews, meat pies, and fish.

The third and last course, however, often contained only wafers and a huge sugar sculpture, known as a subtlety. This could be amazing and a chef could boost his reputation by producing something to make the guests gasp.

For Christmas celebrations a whole nativity scene might be carved from sugar loaves. Swans, peacocks, angels, crowns, palaces, and many other gorgeously elegant and fragile creations made of nothing but sugar, would be carried out to the table by the chef and his assistants, greeted by clapping and cheers. All in all, not a particularly healthy diet but not, perhaps, as pernicious as English eating habits became over the following centuries.

And, of course, in those days the great chandelier swinging from the huge medieval beams was true to its name and held only candles, their light dancing across the platters and gilding meat juices golden, highlighting the tips of pastry crust, flickering over the gleaming jellies, and blurring those magnificent subtleties until the swan truly seemed to be swimming in its pool of reflections. The candlelight, and the surging light of flame from the hearth, would also shimmer across the satins, the damasks, taffetas, and jewellery of the guests. Those were the days of dressing suitably for the occasion.

The poor rarely tasted sugar, which was dreadfully expensive. They did not lack sweetening, however, as honey was plentiful. But a humble meal did not aspire to contain sweet meats or custards, and a modest sufficiency to control hunger was frequently all that could be expected.

During these final years of the medieval period, particularly during the reigns of Edward IV and Richard III, the country prospered and the poor were rarely so poor. But only the extravagant rich aspired to a three course feast, or needed to announce their reputations with the massive expense of hosting one. Aldermen, city mayors, guild dignitaries, prosperous traders, and wedding parties where one side needed to impress the other—all these spread their tables heavily until the table legs groaned.

Some guests ate to do justice to such a feast (King Edward IV is reputed to have become an overweight glutton in his later years) but many of these sumptuous dishes were afterwards relegated to the kitchens, and were then shared out to the scullions, to local alms houses and charities, and to the beggars at the doors.

The new foods discovered by the Spanish in the New World (1492/3) had not yet been introduced into the European diet, so there were no potatoes or tomatoes or the many other originally American delights we now take for granted. But what was lacking was made up for by the enormous energy and ingenuity of the cooks and their imaginative adherence to inventing new recipes and enriching old ones.

There are many fascinations to discover during this long gone age of 500 years past, but my historical novel
Sumerford’s Autumn
is not much concerned with the parties of the nobility, though some of this is mentioned. Set in 1497 it is more concerned with the poor, the disadvantaged, and those suffering the displeasure of the new Tudor king. Sumerford Castle is grand but damp, and the earl and his family are neither as rich nor as comfortable as they seem.

Rather than descriptions of feasts, there are descriptions of imprisonment, torture in the Tower, treachery, piracy, and misfortune. But the research on this time period, which I have been following with a passion for many years, covers all aspects of this remarkable era.

Dinner as It Might Have Been at Kenilworth 760 Years Ago

by Katherine Ashe

E
leanor, Countess of Leicester, is entertaining Robert Grosseteste, the Bishop of Lincoln, and Peter de Montfort, her husband’s cousin
from Gloucestershire, at her castle of Kenilworth. As is often the case, her husband is away from home. Trubody, her major d’omo, presides over the servants and will carve the principal roast meats as the sons at home, Guy, Amaury, and Richard, are still children.

It’s early afternoon. The Countess sits on the turf seat with the Bishop in her rose garden. Peter is playing at battle with young Guy with wooden swords while Amaury reads a passage in Latin for the Bishop as his tutor Geoffrey de Boscellis hovers proudly. Richard, still an infant, is suckled by his wet nurse in the nursery where, from her corner tower room, she can look down on the garden as she munches her rich, bland meal of beef and blancmange.

From the thatch-roofed bake-shed beyond the garden’s wattle wall the scents of baking savory pies and sweets perfume the breeze. Onto the crust of a chicken puree and custard pie the cook is grinding a sprinkle of white sugar from a hard, conical sugar loaf imported from Palestine. To give the custard a golden glaze she puts the big pie back under the inverted kettle that serves as oven in the hearth.

Herbs from the vegetable garden hang in bunches from the roof beams of the cook shed, beside strings of onions and medicinal garlic. Crocks of spring peas packed in lard are stacked along the walls, waiting to be winter treats. Barrels of cherries, quinces, and medlars soaked in honey and wine wait winter’s feasts as well.

Finishing with the sugar, Cook hands the cone back to Trubody, the major d’omo, who puts it into Slingaway’s basket with several boxes of spices, almonds, figs, and dates to go back to the hall where they’re kept locked in the aumbry, the serving cupboard near the main door and the cellar door.

Before he leaves the cook shed, the major d’omo lights a candle lantern; it’s full daylight and early afternoon, but he’ll need it.

Climbing the foyer steps to the castle, Trubody takes the basket and sends Slingaway to tell the household servants to bring the board and trestles for the Countess’ dining table—it’s time to set them up on the raised dais at the end of the hall. After setting his lantern on the aumbry and putting the costly “groceries” securely away behind the aumbry’s sturdy, iron-bound doors, the major d’omo checks the linens as the table is assembled, smoothing the white table cloth, seeing the napkins are at each place.

The dais’ permanent furniture, the heavy, carved oak chairs for the Countess (and the Earl when he’s at home), are adjusted at the center of the table where the Countess and the Bishop will sit. Cushioned stools are brought for the cousin and the tutor, and for young Amaury and Guy. The seating, facing out into the hall, is arranged with space enough from the rear wall for the diners and servants to pass, but most serving will be from the open side of the table.

Trubody nods now to Slingaway for the long trestle tables to be set up on the main floor of the hall for the castle’s upper staff: Lady Mary, the Countess’ principal lady-in-waiting, the almoner, the manor steward, the Countess’ treasurer, the verger of the castle’s chapel, the armorer and captain of the castle’s guards, the chief huntsman and equerry, Lady Mary’s own maids. The kitchen, household, and serving staff will take their places at the long tables when the first seating, of those who outrank them, is done and the diners at the high table have left for vespers in the chapel.

Taking up his lantern from the aumbry and selecting the cellar key from the great bunch of keys that hang from his belt, Trubody opens the door to the cellar. By the light of his lantern, he climbs down the ladder into the dark, moist pit. Gobehasty, the footman, hurrying from the kitchen with two large pewter pitchers, climbs down behind him.

In the dark, damp pit there in the cool darkness of the cellar are stacked the great casks of Bordeaux brought home when the Earl was viceroy in Gascony. Here also are iron chains and manacles fixed by massive iron staples to the wall—a reminder of King Henry’s renovations when the master, the Earl Montfort, was in exile.

Trubody finds the cask pierced by an oak spigot and fills Gobehasty’s pitchers. The lower household staff at the second seating will have beer, brought in wooden buckets from the brewster’s shed.

In the kitchen, Cook sends Garbag to tell Trubody that all is ready.

Clambering up the cellar ladder, with Gobehasty close behind, the major d’omo hurriedly unlocks the aumbry’s doors again and gives Garbag three silver goblets to set on the high table at the center places for Peter de Montfort, the Countess, and the Bishop. Treen goblets from the kitchen shed will be sufficient for everyone else.

But also for the high table, the major d’omo takes from the aumbry a fine pewter ewer shaped like a knight on horseback, the spout emerging from the horse’s mouth. Gobehasty carefully pours wine from a pitcher to the ewer as Trubody hastens to the rose garden to inform the Countess that dinner is ready.

Peter stops his play with little Guy. With the Countess and the Bishop leading, Amaury, tucking his book into the blousing of his robe, follows his tutor, and the six go up the foyer steps to the hall.

As the Countess takes her place at the center of the table, with the Bishop to her right and Peter to her left, Boscelis and Amaury to the Bishop’s right, Guy, coached by Trubody, brings a towel and bowl of rose water for the diners to dip and dry their fingers.

The Countess’ staff seat themselves on the benches at the long tables along the walls, and Slingaway, at the high table, sets a large, square-trimmed, thick slice of four-day old bread, a “trencher,” on the tablecloth at each diner’s place.

The Countess asks the Bishop to say the blessing. Never perfunctory, Grosseteste prays at length for the well-being of the Countess and for the Earl, absent in France and from whom there is no news, for the king and for the outcome of the harvest—which can never be taken for granted even in a mild and moist year.