This is what I did aided by cousin Merlin one cold day when I fancied exploring history a bit differently this time. Next week I’ll tell you about my second attempt.Cooking something up in the kitchen is always good fun, but even more fun when you try and produce a type of food completely alien to modern day cuisine. So, my first attempt at medieval cookery was not what one might call an outstanding success. We ate some of it, and I packed away the rest, thinking I may eventually try giving it some zip and using it in empanadas or calzones.

Tom pronounced it boring, and I had to agree.

It was just moist, crumbled lamb with a mild, vaguely mideastern-tasting seasoning – probably the cinnamon and saffron speaking. You may notice I haven’t rushed into saying how my pottage tasted. (That sense of the term survives today in the military, where soldiers eat in messes, in company with their messmates.) Wrong again! Brears explains that, in medieval times, a “mess” was a group of people who regularly ate their meals together and were served with certain dishes to share. A mess of pottage was the quantity necessary to feed the group. (Evidently it was actually a lentil stew see Genesis 25:30.) I’d always thought the negative connotation of that phrase came largely from the word “mess,” suggesting a sloppy heap of ill-mixed ingredients. “A mess of pottage” is now a derogatory term, derived from the Old Testament story of how Esau sold his birthright for what English translators and commentators called a mess of pottage. That’s why you see two spoons in the mess of pottage I made for Tom and me. The pottage was eaten directly from the common bowl. Pottages were brought to the table in large bowls, containing a spoon for each diner. A mere ten minutes of simmering, and it was ready to serve.īrears writes a lot about exactly how food was served in medieval times. The meat had to be chopped very fine (I used the food processor) and put into a pot with finely chopped onions, red wine, wine vinegar, salt, pepper, cinnamon, and saffron. The main reason I chose it is that it starts with lamb that has previously been roasted, and I had plenty of leftover lamb from my Easter dinner. The recipe I made, Mutton Hashed in Onion, Herb and Spiced Stock, is one of the simplest. That in fact was the most intriguing aspect of these dishes: how would those odd combinations actually taste? A great variety of herbs and spices also appear in the recipes, many in combinations that are strange to the modern palate. The common factor is a liquid medium, usually broth or wine, with the main ingredients chopped small and often the addition of a thickening substance, such as oatmeal or breadcrumbs. The nearest general term for those dishes today might be stew.

Wrong! Brears gives over 100 recipes for pottages, which can be based on meats, poultry, fish, dairy products, nuts, vegetables, or fruits, as well as cereals.

He calls it “one of the most interesting and varied forms of medieval English food.” Now, to the extent that I’d had any notion of what pottage was, I imagined it to be something like porridge – a sort of cereal mush. An expert on both medieval history and medieval cookery, the man is clearly a pottage enthusiast. Naturally, I had to try a few of those, even though I know that intellectual curiosity and palatal satisfaction don’t necessarily coincide.įor my first foray into the Middle Ages, I chose a pottage recipe from Brears’ book. Both are filled with fascinating information, illustrated with woodcuts, paintings, kitchen floor plans, menus, provender lists – and recipes, mostly from 14th- and 15th-century manuscripts, updated for modern cooks. I recently bought two books on food history: Peter Brears’ Cooking & Dining in Medieval England and Hannele Klemettilä’s The Medieval Kitchen.

Medieval foods stew