The Medieval Table

The food depicted in medieval manuscript cookbooks was strikingly similar across Europe. The aim was to create a single, unique flavor from many ingredients—the antithesis of today’s ideal of highlighting a single, prime ingredient by cooking it to perfection. Cookbooks of the time offered many of the same dishes, and recipes for cryspels (crêpes), darioles (custards), hastletes (skewers), galyntyne (a stew flavored with galingale root), and macaroons were available from England to Italy and west into Spain. Disguise was a preoccupation, so ingredients were hacked, boiled, pounded, and sieved out of all recognition. Color was prized when so many objects and surfaces were grey or brown, and broths and purées were brightened with saffron (golden yellow), sandalwood (red), herbs (green), or mulberries (blue). A popular early dish that survives to this day was blancmange (literally “white eating”), which could use any puréed white meat, including veal, chicken, and capon, or simply blanched almonds.