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3. Pathetic medieval recipes

After talking about living conditions, it's time to talk about food.

First of all, it must be admitted that medieval Europeans understood the tableware and finally did not have to eat directly with their fingers like the ancient Egyptians, but modern people still find it difficult to accept - the wine glass is magnificently inlaid with precious stones, but the table is shared by one person in turn, and you have to share the saliva with others while drinking; The soup spoon is also shared by two or several people, so it is best not to bring the spoon directly to your mouth to drink, but to scoop it into your own bowl; The fork was the Ming of the Byzantine Empire, and it was not brought back to Western Europe until after the Crusades, and before that, Europeans could only tear meat strips directly with their fingers, like the ancient Egyptians and modern Indians; Of course, you can also cut steak and bread with a knife and stuff it directly into your mouth instead of a fork, but the problem is that a knife is shared by several people, and only those with high status can have a knife to themselves.

Of course, these are all minutiae, and as a noble lord, you can create a special set of cutlery for yourself. However, after seeing the medieval European classics on the table, you will definitely lose most of your appetite.

From the point of view of modern Orientals, the way in which medieval Europeans ate fruit was really strange: apples and pears were roasted over the fire, plums were stewed in a pot, and salt and pepper were sprinkled...... Eating fruit raw is seen as an inferior practice.

- Medieval European medical circles generally believed that a qiē fruit was a cold food, and if it was to be eaten, it should be cooked in a hot way, or hot spices (such as pepper) should be added...... It's really unscientific!

On the other hand, most vegetables, such as carrots, turnips, cabbage, cabbage, etc., were used to eating them raw in the Middle Ages, even the pungent onions – of course, there were roasted onions soaked in gravy, but that was a haute cuisine.

- Cooked fruits and vegetables eaten raw...... It feels like the opposite of Chinese habits, and it will definitely cause gastrointestinal discomfort.

However, these problems are not the most fatal, Chinese are not unable to eat vegetable salad, as for boiled fruits with salt are not to taste, just remove these dishes from the recipe. But bread alone as a staple food can make people feel that there is nowhere to put it - the bread eaten by medieval Europeans is not at all the same thing as the fluffy bread of our modern people that has been fermented and added with white sugar and cream, but a kind of unleavened bread that is similar to a compressed biscuit, which is dry, hard and cracked...... The bread of the ancient Egyptians, although it was usually not creamed, was generally leavened.

At that time, even the noble lords ate an average weight of 4 in their daily lives. 5kg/1o lb long strips of brown bread.

Note that medieval black bread and modern black bread are not the same thing at all, and the so-called black bread is actually similar to medieval white bread in terms of taste and composition, except for the color.

Typical medieval black bread was baked with wheat flour mixed with a large amount of bran – a practice that was already considered a fine black bread in the Middle Ages. There are even some black-hearted bakers who cut corners, and often deliberately add wood chips, small stones and other miscellaneous things to the black bread, which is more abrasive and hateful than the sand that the Egyptians mixed with bread - the latter is a passive crime, and the former is an active crime!!

Well, now even the minerals are there, and if you mix in some leaves and bugs, it's a whole nutritious food......

This medieval black bread is famous for its use as a weapon - in the chronicles of the Middle Ages, there are many records of stupid thieves who sneak into the homes of poor peasants to steal, but unfortunately die under the black bread of housewives; And in the Middle Ages, when family conflicts were born, countless men died from the black bread attacks of the...... As for the taste of this thing, please imagine it for yourself.

- In the Japanese light novel "Wolves and Spices" set in the European Middle Ages, the reason why the male protagonist, Lawrence, a traveling merchant, is reluctant to gnaw black bread directly when he can, but breaks the black bread to cook gruel, because this thing is too hard.

In the Middle Ages, the biggest difference between white and brown bread was that it took a lot of time and effort to sift through the bran when making zuò, and the Catholic Church in the Middle Ages called the leavened fluffy white bread "pandemain", which means refined and holy bread. The white bread of the Middle Ages was generally relatively small, and each one was usually not enough for a normal person to eat, probably similar to the modern "breakfast bag".

Initially, white bread was the exclusive preserve of the clergy of the Church, but it was soon overturned and became a first-class meal for wealthy families in the Middle Ages. However, in the medieval aristocracy, there was often no clear dividing line between white and black bread - under normal circumstances, the kitchens of the nobles and the wealthy did not store large quantities of bread directly, but semolina, or wheat flour mixed with a lot of bran. When it's time to eat, bake the semolina into bread.

If you want to entertain guests or celebrate something, you will instruct the cooks and maids to sift the semolina. The more distinguished the guests, the cleaner the bran in the semolina, and the whiter and finer the bread will be, but the more effort will be expended.

Therefore, black bread and white bread can be baked completely in the same bag of flour, the difference is only in the labor. And the bread that the noble knights usually ate was actually between white bread and black bread - the wealthiest families could keep a few servants and sift flour from morning till night. In less affluent households, the number of times flour was sifted was reduced in order to reduce the workload of the servants and to avoid exhausting them, and also to avoid wasting the bran that would also satisfy hunger...... As for whether the bread baked in the end is black or white, it can only be seen by the wise and the wise.

In addition, in medieval Europe, there was a kind of "queen's bread" (which can also be translated as queen's bread) made by adding eggs, milk, honey and herbs with refined flour and replacing ordinary flour with brewer's yeast. The taste of this little round white bread is basically the same as that of modern high-end brioche bread, and it is probably better, and the ingredients used are absolutely green, healthy and pollution-free - but this thing is already a high-end luxury that even a king can't eat as a staple food!

According to a medieval epic, a king after a victory in a battle rewarded his army with a lot of barbecue and wine, which everyone was accustomed to. Then he rewarded each of the bravest soldiers with a piece of "Queen's Bread", but the others were envied to death......

No matter how tooth-wrenching and throat-hurting medieval black bread mixed with wood chips and gravel may be, it was still a high-class delicacy in the eyes of the lower classes of medieval Europe, who often didn't even have bread in their rice bowls – it took a lot of wood to bake and the baking process was cumbersome.

Therefore, the poor people simply took some rough wheat flour (although it was ground from wheat, it was not flour no matter how you look at it) and put it in a bowl, add some hot water to make wheat paste, and then eat this wheat paste every day. If you can get some wild vegetables, salted fish and meat, you can also pour all these things into the pot and stew them with wheat paste...... In short, it looks disgusting, similar to what we Chinese use to feed pigs, and a bit like vomit, which is prohibitive.

- In general, the serfs in the estates of medieval Europe generally ate worse than the ancient Egyptian peasants on the banks of the Nile three thousand years ago.

In addition to black and white bread, late-medieval Italians occasionally ate pasta (pasta), but this was an absolute aristocratic food, more expensive than white bread – before water-powered mills became widespread, it was a great effort to process wheat into fine flour for pasta. Moreover, pasta in the modern sense was originally born in Sicily under the occupation of the Arabs, and it was not until the 13th ~ 14th centuries that it spread to the whole of Italy, and as for the spread to other parts of Europe, it was already after the Renaissance.

Therefore, the vast majority of Europeans in the Middle Ages probably did not have the opportunity to taste the delicious taste of pasta.

In addition, rice was also introduced to Europe in the Middle Ages. However, due to the high demand for rice in terms of light and heat conditions, it is only cultivated in small quantities in places such as Italy and Spain in southern Europe, and the yield is low, and rice milling is also troublesome, resulting in a very high price of rice. As a result, rice was not generally considered a staple at the time, but was sprinkled into soups as a side dish – this is probably how paella first came about.

After talking about vegetables, fruits and staple foods, it's time to talk about meat and fish dishes. Medieval Europe was supposed to be half-farming, half-pastoral, and the land was open and wildlife, so the price of fish and meat was lower, and sometimes the price of fish was cheaper than the weight of brown bread.

But medieval Europeans did not have refrigeration conditions, meat was perishable, even noble lords could not eat fresh fish and fresh meat - ancient Chinese cities were many, consumption power was strong, and there were always slaughtered pigs for sale in the market every day. But medieval Europe was sparsely populated, and there were at most forty or fifty people in a modest castle, and it was a waste to slaughter a pig or a sheep every day. What's more, slaughtering livestock also depends on the season, and the livestock that have just survived the winter are generally very thin, and it is too uneconomical to slaughter them if they are not fattened.

On the other hand, although most of the countries of Western Europe were bordered by the sea, due to the high latitude of Europe as a whole and the lack of sunlight, it was difficult to dry salt, so the price of salt in medieval Europe was very expensive, and in some places it was even higher than the price of salt under the monopoly of the ancient Chinese government. Basically, the warmer the place, the lower the price of salt, and the colder the place, the higher the price of salt, and in the coldest Russia, one pound of salt can often be exchanged for two sheep. And the notorious Nordic specialty, Sweden's stinky canned herring, was also discovered because poor Nordic fishermen wanted to save salt.

- Readers who want to know how terrible canned Nordic stinky herring is, you can refer to the beginning of the Japanese anime "Moe Mushroom Story".

Therefore, Europeans in the Middle Ages usually ate air-dried meat, which was dried in the cold wind to mummify. Air-dried meat can be stored for a long time, and it can be eaten even if it has been kept for decades (the Europeans didn't care about dioxins and the like at the time). Before eating this air-dried meat, use a knife to scrape off the grease and oxide layer on the surface. It is then soaked in river water for a day or two before it is finally cooked and eaten. As for the taste, it can only be said that it is immortal - when ancient Europeans traveled, they always liked to eat bread instead of dried meat, and it is for this reason.

Even if you are lucky enough to get some fresh meat, the medieval Europeans were so unparticular in some respects that many places didn't even know that meat was castrated from a young age, and the final cut pork was older than the old sows, and it had an indescribable smell - for those who are used to eating modern dishes, it is guaranteed that every time they eat this "meat" will be as uncomfortable as being tortured.

Apart from salt, there were very few seasonings on the European table, no curry or salad dressing, and sugar and spices had to be imported through the territory of the Arabs, which was horribly expensive. At that time, granulated sugar was sold in pharmacies, and for Europeans it was not a daily condiment, but a high-grade tonic like ginseng in the eyes of Chinese.

As for spices, take pepper as an example, pepper in medieval Europe was always sold by the grain. If it is pepper powder, it is even more unlucky, not only to close the doors and windows when weighing, but also to check the scale over and over again for fraud...... In history, there have been cases where unscrupulous traders sold them with silver dust mixed with white pepper, which is unimaginable today.

- Lawrence, the protagonist of "Wolves and Spices", exchanged a large bag of coins for a small bag of pepper, and thought it was a very cheap price.

In medieval Europe, a grain of pepper was basically equivalent to a florin gold coin, and it was really used as money for a long time, so it was called "pepper coin". If anyone could have carried a bag of pepper to hang on their body at that time, they would definitely be a very popular rich man. Take out a pepper or two every time you pay the bill...... It's even more face-saving than the platinum VIp credit card of later generations!

In addition to sugar and spices, lemon juice was the cheapest condiment in medieval Europe, and it is often found in modern Western cuisine. Northern Europeans generally coat bread with butter, while Southern Europeans use olive oil, and there is also a more expensive option: honey.

- Still in "The Wolf and the Spice", Lawrence almost goes bankrupt in order to buy a honey-stained peach for the heroine Herlo, you can imagine how valuable honey was in the Middle Ages. It wasn't particularly unusual that there was a war between two lords over a few chests of honey back then.

As for the cheese of medieval Europe, it is generally not the neat squares of industrial production in modern cities, but a lump of green and slimy objects, like toothpaste and mustard paste, that is, not like cheese in our concept.

Due to the lack of modern disinfection and sterilization methods at that time, these medieval cheeses generally did not have the aroma of modern cheese, and if they were not good, they would have a strong rancid smell, which made many people feel unappetizing at first glance - although Chinese also eat stinky tofu, it seems that few people will eat it raw!

(On the other hand, unless you're making cheese pastries, it's rare to see anyone reheating cheese.) ）

You'll probably want to relax after a palatable medieval meal, but in medieval Europe there was neither coffee nor tea, nor hot cocoa, nor cigarettes to smoke – both cocoa and tobacco were still lying in the American jungles across the Atlantic.

The habit of drinking tea and coffee was not until after the Crusades that it slowly spread to Europe through the territory of the Guò Arabs (coffee originated in Ethiopia). Moreover, after a long journey through the whole of Eurasia and a lot of changes, the price of tea arriving in Europe has become more expensive than gold, and even the great nobles are reluctant to drink it regularly. In this case, you can only drink beer or wine for your own pastime.

However, it should be reminded that the winemaking and storage technology of medieval Europe is still very poor, so the value of the newly made wine in the market is usually ten times that of the previous year: the latter tends to become sour and slag, cannot be eaten at all, and can only be filtered and sold as vinegar at most - note that the vinegar of Europeans is also made from grapes, unlike us Chinese.

Therefore, those who travel to medieval Europe, don't make this common-sense mistake, and proudly serve out the "best red wine" of a certain year to entertain distinguished guests at the banquet, it is estimated that people will only scold you in your heart for being too stingy, and actually let them drink vinegar, or old vinegar......

In short, before the 16th century open-bottle technology and cork, Europeans did not have a long-term way to preserve alcohol. As a result, the wine that the European nobility drank at banquets in the Middle Ages was likely to be "as sour as a spear, as a razor as a blade, and like a needle." Only by putting in a large amount of spices or sugar can the sour and rancid taste of the "degraded" sake be slightly reduced, "making the sake that is poorly brewed and terrible easy to accept."

In addition, just as beer in ancient Egypt was completely different from modern beer, the concept of beer in medieval Europeans was very different from that of modern beer. If ancient Egyptian beer is more like sweet wine without sugar, then medieval European beer is more like our Chinese rice wine - no foam, brewing method is similar to rice wine, except that the raw materials are barley and oats, rather than the rice used by the Chinese to make rice wine.

In general, in the concept of ancient Europeans, beer was synonymous with a grain liquor. Any fermented liquor that is brewed from grains rather than fruits (grapes, apples) and has not been distilled is called beer.

Therefore, according to the classical classification method of Europeans, our Chinese rice wine and sweet wine, as well as Japanese sake, can also be regarded as beer.

Finally, if you distill medieval beer, it's whiskey. Distilling the wine will result in brandy.

By the way, although the food conditions in medieval Europe are really not very good, it seems to be quite loving to be a nobleman and raise a few knight squires to feed as dogs (medieval custom, when the nobles eat, the dog and the squire are behind the table waiting for the owner's bone ......), should be able to satisfy the preferences of some hardcore girls.