The first Crusade made it possible to connect Europe and the Middle East, which enabled people from England and France to taste more spices and flavors in the Levant. More importantly, due to the opening of the East-West trade route, food from the East can be continuously transported back to the West. This diversity is most evident in big Italian cities like Venice and Genoa, which control the Mediterranean trade routes and are closer to the producing areas of spices and other Asian foods. Even in London on the northwest edge of Europe, the diversity of people's food and drink is higher than that in the inland. For example, Londoners near the sea can get wine relatively easily, although these wines must be imported from Italy and France, and because of their weight, it is difficult to transport them on land.

Compared with modern beer, medieval beer has lower alcohol content and richer material sources, so it is a reasonable nutritional source. It is worth mentioning that in the concept of ancient Europeans, beer is synonymous with grain wine. All fermented wines that are brewed with grains instead of fruits and have not been distilled can be called beer. Therefore, according to the classical classification method of Europeans, China's yellow rice wine and liqueur, as well as Japanese sake, can also be regarded as beer. At that time, many people brewed their own beer or bought it from local brewers. Brewing and selling beer is a particularly popular job for women living in towns. Brewster (meaning female winemaker) in the surname of modern English well reflects the remains of this medieval occupation.

in the middle ages, because ovens were expensive, difficult to build and dangerous to operate in crowded wooden houses in medieval cities, most city residents did not bake their own bread. When there is a market, there will be demand. At that time, there will be several professional bakers in every place: they make dough in their own workshops and then sell them. In Paris, every village around the city has its own unique style of bread. The best bread at that time was white bread eaten by nobles, and of course it was the most expensive. On the remains found in medieval cemeteries, there is a unique wear pattern on teeth. This archaeological discovery tells us that even the bread made of the best flour in London in the late Middle Ages is coarser than modern bread.

In the big medieval cities at that time, such as London and Paris, there were still some green spaces enough for many residents to have their own gardens for growing fruits, vegetables and herbs. This provides more kinds of fresh food for the urban population and ensures a balanced diet for most people. Some people even keep animals on their small plots of land. Chickens are particularly popular, as are goats and pigs.

English people in the Middle Ages, whether nobles or civilians, ate a lot of fish, much more than most modern people. In the Middle Ages, fish was very easy to get for the British. As the saying goes, mountains depend on mountains and seas depend on the sea. As an island country, there is no place in Britain that is more than 71 miles from the coast. In addition, the restriction on diet by the dominant Christianity at that time indirectly promoted people's crazy love for seafood at that time, because eating other kinds of meat was forbidden every Friday and during Advent, Lent and other important religious festivals.

there is a deep-rooted view that medieval food, especially the heavy spices in meat cooking, is to cover up the fact that the quality of food is slightly poor (even spoiled), but this is undoubtedly a mistake. Although the methods of preserving food, especially meat, were of course limited in the Middle Ages, people in the Middle Ages could still know when food was past the time to eat. They also know that eating food in that state can lead to serious diseases. Remember: those who can always afford spices are the richest people-these people can also afford high-quality food, so they are the last people to be forced to eat bad meat.

on the contrary, there are two main reasons why we see rich spices in medieval recipes: first, people just like its taste. Compared with modern spices, people's taste in the Middle Ages seemed to prefer different combinations of spices. They especially like the contrast between sweet and sour or sweet and spicy. For example, in an ancient British cookbook in the 5th century, there was a recipe for pie, according to which it was recorded that the pie should be filled with pork stuffing seasoned with honey and black pepper. In addition, there is a recipe for fish pie in a 2114' s cookbook. To make such a fish pie that tastes strange now, it needs seasonings including white pepper, clove, ginger, cinnamon and sugar.

Secondly, spices are also a symbol of status. These dishes with a lot of spices are also attractive among social classes, because the high cost of spices makes them a status symbol. Serve the guests a dish flavored with three different peppers-as many recipes require-and tell everyone that you can afford these expensive things.

At that time, ginger, clove, pepper and saffron were the most commonly used spices. Sucrose, also considered as a spice, is cultivated in Spain and the Middle East. It is an important component of food and medicine. The use of saffron (note: saffron is not grown in Tibet, but has always been grown in large quantities in Europe, Greece and Iran in West Asia, instead of being transported to Europe from Tibet by Wan Li) seems to be more popular than now, because medieval dishes are generally single in color, and putting some saffron in food can give food a unique orange color: it makes your wealth visible. Although its cost is high. The cost didn't stop medieval chefs-or, at least, medieval cookery writers-from using it frequently.

several spices were much more common in medieval Europe than in modern Europe. For example, Galingale, which modern chefs call galangal, mainly appears in Thai cuisine today, but it is very popular in medieval recipes. According to historical records, Kyle Polo once discovered a large area of wild Alpinia officinarum during his travels. He was very happy because he knew there was a big market in Italy. Melegueta Pepper, a paradise pepper, is another spice that is more common than the modern west, and is also called the food of heaven. Today, this spice is mainly found in specialty stores in the Middle East, but recipes in Britain and France in the late Middle Ages show that chefs can easily access these spices.

All the English medieval recipes that exist in the world come from elite families: aristocrats or very rich civilians. They are the only people who need to instruct the chef how to make exquisite dishes. Only these people have access to all kinds of spices and ingredients described in the cookbook, and only these people know how to read the cookbook at the first time. A big city like London is also the only family with rich non-aristocrats-businessmen, lawyers, civil servants and jewelers-who can support this food culture.

As William Fitzstephen wrote, restaurants and restaurants are unique to cities, because only in cities will a large number of people have no kitchens to support these businesses.

In the 12th century Jerusalem, there were so many restaurants that French-speaking residents even named a street in the city Malquissinat, which means "evil cooking street", which is similar to what we now call a dark cooking street. In London at that time, restaurants were mainly concentrated in two places: near the river, which was convenient for water merchants, pilgrims and travelers; In poor communities, people living in cheap apartments have no fireplaces where they can cook. This is similar to the take-out in modern cities. Many poor medieval Londoners had to rely on take-out to provide them with food.