During the Hundred Years' War, people ate bread, cheese, pickled fat, stews, poultry and eggs. Feudal owners also had wild boar, deer and other game to eat, as well as candy, castle-shaped baked dough and gray pig intestines with batter, honey and fruit.
Bread at that time would not taste very good.
In ancient Europe, because there was not enough feed, all livestock that were not kept as breeding animals were often killed in winter to get bacon.
Without spices such as cinnamon, clove, cardamom and pepper, bacon tastes terrible. One of the advantages of bacon is that you don't need to bring salt when you go out. You only need to cut a small piece and cook it with other dishes, which explains why bacon is unbearable.
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Therefore, the Portuguese, the Spanish, the Dutch and the British … are all exploring the Spice Strait.
Spice, gold, silk, these are the things that western countries dreamed of in the Middle Ages.
The former occupies an important position.
Every ship loaded with spices returned from the East has made huge profits, which prompted people to cross the ocean without fear of stormy waves. Unfortunately, they became ghosts of foreign countries and became rich overnight.
The resulting unscrupulous and mercenary plunder, the blood and fire of the colonial era ...
A pound of cardamom can be exchanged for a flock of sheep, and a pound of cloves is equal to three times the weight of gold. In such a business, even if you kill your head, someone will try to do so!
"The spice used by a poor local in Nanyang for every meal is a luxury that European kings can't imagine ..."
Also, I read a story about the diet of a poor child in Southeast Asia, saying that he can only eat rice mixed with mashed spices (I don't know what spices) every day. ............................................................................................................................
The smell of bacon has a lot to do with smoked wood.
In the past, rural Germany was like us.
Smoke with branches such as cypress. It will have a good smell.
In fact, the real smell of bacon is not the spice.
It is the fragrance released by the interaction between meat and smoke.
This is the most natural.
In medieval Europe, in fact, where could ordinary people eat meat every day?
It is likely that some bread is good.
Busy all day, I don't have much time to pay attention to cooking.
Only aristocrats are so particular.
(But compared with modern people, Louis XIV and frederick the great are just so, hehe)
Here are some staple foods, bread, which many people can't get used to.
For example, bread here is usually made of raw wheat grains.
Sometimes sunflower seeds (not fried) are added.
It tastes sour, but it is said to be nutritious.
In fact, the nutritional status of Europeans in the Middle Ages was quite bad.
/kloc-the average height of Germans in the 0 th and 9 th centuries was only 1.6 meters.
You can see it from the castles and knight armor.
Now the real ancient castle is narrow and short in many places.
The armor of those knights is too narrow for me to wear.
Knight so, people can imagine.
Class differences and regional differences must exist at the same time and cannot be absolute.
By the way, another feature of southern European cooking is that it likes to flavor with wine.
Alcohol in wine can react with fatty acids in animal tissues to produce esters with strong flavor.
And can remove the fishy smell of fish, which is very useful for southern Europe with marine culture)
But regional differences do exist.
Because of poverty, people in some places may have to cook.
It is said that gypsies often use dead dogs, dead cats and water thrown away by Europeans.
Make delicious food
From their facilities, we can see the rapid growth of European height.
Many facilities ten or twenty years ago, such as trams, have become very unsuitable for people's height today.
I've always wondered why they don't make things bigger and save materials.
Of course, the staple food of westerners is bread, but the main component of bread is not necessarily wheat. Throughout the Middle Ages, Western Europe often fell into a staged food crisis. The causes of the crisis come from all sides. One of the main aspects is low yield-anyone who knows a little about agriculture knows that the unit yield of wheat is the lowest among the three main food crops (wheat, rice and corn). Coupled with the low level of agriculture, the climate in Europe is much colder than it is now, so on the whole.
So all kinds of substitutes, including barley, rye and double-grain wheat, are made into bread, and even chestnuts and beans are ground into flour to make bread.
The poor have been eating bread with complicated ingredients for a long time, while white bread belongs to the rich, the nobility and the privileged class of the church.
At that time, a kind of white bread was called priest bread, and another kind of refined white bread, which used milk and beer yeast instead of ordinary dough, was called queen bread.
According to French revolutionaries, it embodies the ugliness of the integration of church and monarchy.
Meat:
This is a complicated problem. At that time, Europeans ate a lot of meat, but not the steak we remember now, but pork.
At that time, there were many forests and public wasteland in Europe, and pigs were basically stocked, so there was a career similar to that of pig herders.
In the Middle Ages, pork was always the main meat in the West.
Beef and mutton also account for a certain proportion, but not high.
Sheep were raised mainly to obtain wool and dairy products. At that time, cattle were rarely raised on a large scale, mainly to obtain dairy products-cheese and butter.
By the way, Europeans are confused about our eating pig water now. In fact, Europeans at that time also ate pig water and pig blood.
This habit still exists in Eastern Europe in the 20th century.
Game is also a big source of meat, but it is basically enjoyed by nobles and nobles, including deer, wild boar, rabbits and freshwater fish.
Hunting was the first recreational activity of European aristocrats in the Middle Ages, so private hunting was strictly prohibited.
However, farmers' poaching still occurs frequently, and after the rise of cities, game began to penetrate into the public table.
Poultry:
Capon (for tender meat) and fat goose are medieval delicacies.
There are many wild birds to eat, and swans and peacocks used to be the main dishes of gourmets. As for the taste, I can't imagine.
Fish:
A historian said that in the Middle Ages of Europe, Herring was a historical figure.
During the Catholic fast, fish and eggs were the only edible meat dishes.
Therefore, pickled herring (including other fish) is a very popular commodity, and the poor eat it almost all the year round as a source of protein.
The change of herring migration route even determines the decline of Hanseatic League and the rise of Amsterdam to some extent (this statement is not appropriate, just saying).
Grease:
The Mediterranean mainly eats olive oil, while the north eats butter.
Alcohol:
Wine and beer were the two main alcoholic beverages at that time. Unlike China, wine is a standing food for Europeans, not a stimulant at celebration banquets.
No matter how rich or poor, wine is indispensable for every meal.
At that time, the military supply list had detailed regulations on how much wine and how much bread each soldier should send each meal, which was no less important than bread.
Of course, there are good and bad wines, and there are also 369 grades.
Generally speaking, wine is a popular drink in wine producing areas (southern Europe).
At that time, wine was divided into red wine and white wine, but shochu (brandy mentioned by the shopkeeper) had not yet appeared.
The wine was mainly shipped in wooden barrels, which may not be technically up to standard at that time. The value of newly brewed wine in that year is generally ten times that of old wine in the next year-because the latter is easy to turn sour and cannot be imported.
The concept of beer in the Middle Ages was different from ours. It is not appropriate to say that the similarity with modern beer is not as high as that with Chinese rice wine. At that time, some basic beer technology had not yet appeared, and the use of snakebabs was a recent thing.
Beer is synonymous with grain liquor, but it is still fermented liquor, not distilled grain liquor (whiskey is grain liquor).
Beer is popular mainly in areas where grapes are not produced. Wine is generally expensive for people in the upper class, and beer is mainly a drink for the lower class.
Spices:
In short, in medieval Europe, winter was much colder than it is now.
The lack of feed makes it necessary for livestock farmers to slaughter livestock that cannot be fed before winter comes, and spices are needed for curing bacon and cooking.
To remember this painful experience, we must use primitive bacon and educate future generations about the difficulty of starting a business. Otherwise, we always think that our ancestors always had French bread with English cheese and German sauerkraut sausage as side dishes every day.
Hahaha!
Attached:
The property list of Charlemagne Imperial Manor.
We saw a royal stone palace in the royal manor in Asnapima, which was very well built.
There are three halls with balconies and eleven women's rooms. There is a basement below, and there are two cloisters in front of the main door; In addition, there are seventeen wooden houses in the yard, with the same number of rooms and other equipment.
The building is very good; In addition, there is a stable, a kitchen, a mill, a barn and three feed rooms.
Covers include: sheets, tablecloths and towels.
Belt: two copper pots, two wine glasses, two bronze kettles, an iron pot, a wok, a weighing scale, a pair of iron hangers, a beneficial lamp, a second-hand axe, a rock (it should be a gold bottom, not a stone bottom), two drill bits, an axe, a knife, a big wooden wrench, a small wooden board, two long-handled sickles, and a large wooden wrench.
Agricultural products: Nine baskets of German wheat harvested last year can be ground into four or five pounds of flour and 100 meter of barley; This year, 10 baskets of German wheat were harvested, of which 60 baskets were used for sowing and the rest were preserved. One hundred meters of wheat, six meters of wheat for sowing, and the rest; The 98-meter Ig of rye is all used for sowing; Barley18000m, sowing11100m, and the rest; 43 ml of oats; One meter of soybeans; Twelve meters of peas, in five mills, have 800 meters of flour; In the four breweries, besides the 20-meter or 40-meter wine that has been paid to the manor priest, there are 60-meter or 50-meter wine. On two bridges, there are six meters of salt and two shillings of money; Four gardens 1 1 shilling.
Three meters of honey; One meter of butter; Ten pieces of lard were saved last year; The new lard 2oo slices, with minced meat and fat meat, collected four or three pounds of cheese this year.
Livestock: five big animals, five are three years old, seven are two years old and seven are one year old; Ten two-year-old ponies, eight one-year-old ponies and three stallions; Sixteen cows; Two donkeys and five cows with calves, two calves, three one-year-old calves and three bulls. 260 pigs, 100 piglets and 5 boars; One lamb, five sheep, two one-year-old sheep, one two rams and three.
Goats and young goats, three one-year-old goats and three male goats; Three geese; Eight chickens; Two peacocks.
Manor belonging to the above-mentioned court: In Grixiuzhuang, we saw the manor building, including three straw houses and a yard surrounded by fences.
There is also a garden with trees, ten geese, eight ducks and thirty chickens.
In another manor, we saw the manor building; A walled yard with three forage houses; There is a vineyard, a garden, fifteen geese and twenty chickens.
In the third manor, there are houses, two forage houses, a barn, a garden and a fenced yard.
There, just like in the palace, there are dry rice and wet rice.
There are no goldsmiths, silversmiths, blacksmiths, hunters or other service personnel.