At present, many major foods in the West were not introduced to Europe in medieval fashion, such as potatoes, sweet potatoes, corn, tomatoes, etc., but in ancient times, there were not even beans. Except for the staple food wheat and barley, which basically remained unchanged (but the cooking methods are also very different today and today), the diet structure of Europeans is very different today.
During the Hundred Years' War, people ate bread, cheese, pickled fat, stews, poultry, eggs, wild boar, deer and other game that feudal lords could eat, as well as sweets, baked dough in the shape of castles, and gray pork intestines-like sweets made of batter, honey and fruits.
at that time, bread would not taste very good. In ancient Europe, because there was not enough feed, all the livestock that were not kept as breeding animals were often killed for bacon in winter. There are no spices such as cinnamon, clove, cardamom and pepper, and the taste of bacon is terrible. One of the advantages of bacon is that you don't need to bring salt when you go out. You just have to cut a small piece and cook it with other dishes, which also explains why bacon is unbearable. . So the Portuguese, the Spanish, the Dutch and the British … are all exploring the spice channel.
spices, gold, silk, these are the things that western countries dreamed of in the middle ages. The former occupies an important position. Every ship that comes back from the East full of spices has made huge profits, which drives people to travel across the ocean without fear of stormy waves. Unfortunately, they have become the ghosts of foreign countries and become rich overnight. As a result, unscrupulous, mercenary plunder, blood and fire in the colonial era ...
A pound of cardamom can be exchanged for a flock of sheep, and a pound of clove is equal to three times the weight of gold. In such a business, people will try to kill their heads!
"The spices used by a poor native in Nanyang are luxuries that kings in Europe can't even imagine ..."
Besides, I have read a story about the diet of a poor child in Southeast Asia, talking about the rice that he can only eat and mash with spices (I don't know what kind of spices) every day .................................................................................
The smell of bacon has a lot to do with the smoked wood
In the past, the German countryside was smoked with branches of cypress trees, like ours
. There will be a very good smell
In fact, the smell of real bacon is not the spice
but the smell released after the interaction between meat and smoke
This is the most natural
In fact, in medieval Europe, where could ordinary people eat meat every day
Most of them had some bread
They were busy all day, and they didn't have much time to pay attention to cooking
Only aristocratic lords were so particular
(. Louis XIV and frederick the great are just like this, hehe)
Some staple breads here are not used to by many people
For example, bread is often made of raw wheat grains here
Sometimes sunflower seeds (not fried) are added
It tastes sour. However, it is said that the nutrition of Europeans in the Middle Ages was actually quite bad. The average height of Germans in the 19th century was only 1.6 meters. It can be seen from those castles and knight armor. Nowadays, many real ancient castles are very narrow and short. Those knight armor is extremely narrow, and even I can't p>19 on the knight. Ordinary people can imagine that
class differences and regional differences must exist at the same time, and cannot be absolute
(by the way, another feature of cooking in southern Europe is that they like to flavor with wine
Alcohol in wine can react with fatty acids in animal tissues to form esters with strong fragrance
and can remove the fishy smell in fish, which is very useful for southern Europe with marine culture)
But regional differences do exist
. It is said that gypsies often use dead dogs and cats and the water thrown away by Europeans to make delicious food. The rapid growth of European height can be seen from their facilities. Many facilities such as trams more than ten or twenty years ago have become very reluctant to the height of people today. I have always wondered why they don't make things bigger and save materials.
Of course, the staple food of westerners is bread, but the main ingredient of bread is not necessarily wheat. Throughout the Middle Ages, Western Europe was often in a staged food crisis, and the reasons for the crisis came from various aspects. One of the main reasons was low yield-everyone who knows a little about agriculture knows that the unit yield of wheat is the lowest among the three major food crops (wheat, rice and corn), and the climate in Europe is much colder than it is now. 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 long eaten bread with complex ingredients, while the white bread belongs to the rich, nobles and church privileged. At that time, a kind of white bread was called the bread of the priest, and there was also a kind of refined white bun with milk and beer yeast instead of ordinary dough, called the bread of the queen. According to French revolutionaries, it embodies the ugliness of the integration of church and kingship.
Meat:
This is a complicated problem. At that time, Europeans ate a lot of meat, but it was pork instead of steak as we remember it now. At that time, there were many forests and wasteland in Europe, and pigs were basically stocked, so there was such a career as pig herder. Pork has always been the main meat in the West in the Middle Ages. Beef and mutton also account for a certain proportion, but not high. Sheep are mainly raised to obtain wool and dairy products, and it was rare to raise cattle for food on a large scale at that time, mainly to obtain dairy products-cheese and butter.
By the way, Europeans are puzzled by our eating pig water now. In fact, Europeans at that time also ate pig water and pig blood. This habit remained in Eastern Europe in the 2th century.
Game is also a big source of meat, but it is basically enjoyed by lords and nobles, including deer, wild boar, rabbits and freshwater fish. Hunting was the first entertainment of European aristocrats in the Middle Ages, so private hunting was strictly prohibited. However, farmers' poaching still happens frequently, and after the rise of the city, game began to infiltrate the public's table.
birds:
capons (for the sake of tender meat) and fat geese are medieval delicacies. There are many wild birds to eat, swans and peacocks were once the big dishes of gourmets. As for the taste, I can't imagine.
Fish:
A historian said that herring was a historical figure in medieval Europe. During the Catholic fasting period, fish and eggs are 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's migration route even decided the decline of Hanseatic and the rise of Amsterdam to some extent (this statement is not very appropriate, just saying).
Oil:
Olive oil is mainly eaten in the Mediterranean, while butter is eaten in the north.
Liquor:
Wine and beer were the two main liquors at that time. Unlike China, wine was a regular food for Europeans, not a stimulant at celebration banquets. No matter how rich or poor, wine is a must for every meal. At that time, there were detailed regulations on how much wine and how much bread each soldier should deliver per meal on the munitions supply list, and its status was no less than that of bread. Of course, there are good and bad wines, and there are also 369 grades. Generally speaking, in the wine producing area (southern Europe), wine is a popular drink. At that time, wine was divided into red and white, but shochu (brandy as mentioned by the owner) had not yet appeared. Wine is 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 aged wine in the next year-because the latter tends to turn sour and cannot be imported.
The concept of beer in the Middle Ages is different from ours. It is not appropriate to say that the similarity with modern beer is not as high as that with our yellow rice wine. At that time, some basic beer techniques have not yet appeared, but the use of snakebabs is relatively recent. Beer is synonymous with grain wine, but it is still a fermented wine, not distilled grain shochu (whiskey is grain shochu). Beer is mainly popular in areas where grapes are not produced. It is generally expensive for upper-class people to drink wine, and beer is mainly a drink for the lower class.
Spice:
In short, in the Middle Ages in Europe, winter was much colder than now. Lack of feed makes it necessary for farmers who feed livestock to slaughter the livestock that they can't feed before winter comes, and spices are needed for curing bacon and cooking.
If you want to remember the bitter experience, you must use the original bacon, and you must educate future generations about the difficulty of starting a business, otherwise you will always think that the ancestors are French bread with English cheese every day, and the side dish is German sauerkraut sausage. Hahaha!
Attachment:
Property list of Charlemagne's imperial estate.
We saw a royal stone palace on the Huangzhuang in Asnapamu, which was very well built. There are three halls, all of which are surrounded by balconies, and there are 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 courtyard, with the same number of rooms and other equipment. The building is very good; In addition, there are a stable, a kitchen, a mill, a barn and a three-forage room.
The covers are: a bed sheet, a tablecloth and a towel.
Use: two copper pots, two wine glasses, two bronze kettles, an iron pot, a wok, a weight scale, a pair of iron salary racks, Yi Deng, a second-hand axe, a rock (which should be a gold-lettered bottom, not a stone-lettered bottom), two drills, an axe, a knife, a big wooden wrench, a small wooden board, two long-handled sickles, two sickles.
Agricultural products: Nine o baskets of German wheat harvested last year can be ground into four or five o pounds of flour and one hundred meters of barley; This year, 1 baskets of German wheat were harvested, and 6 baskets were used for sowing, and the rest were preserved. One hundred meters of wheat, six meters of wheat for sowing, and the rest; Bare wheat 98 meters Ig is all used for sowing; Barley is 18, meters, and 11,1 meters are used for sowing, and the rest is left; Oat 43 o Miid; One meter of soybean; Twelve meters of peas, in five mills, there are 8 meters of flour; In the four breweries, there are six or five o meters of wine, except for the two or four o meters of wine that have been paid to the manor priest. At the two bridges, there are six meters of salt and two shillings of money; Eleven shillings in four gardens. Three meters of honey; A meter of butter; Ten pieces of lard were saved last year; The new lard two OO slices, with minced meat and fat meat, collected four or three pounds of cheese this year.
Livestock: five big animals, five three-year-old, seven two-year-old and seven one-year-old; Ten two-year-old ponies, eight one-year-old ponies and three stallions; Sixteen cows; Two donkeys and five o cows with calves, two o calves, three eight one-year-old calves and three bulls; 26 pigs, 1 piglets and five boars; One five o sheep with lambs, two o one-year-old sheep, one two o rams, three. Goats with little goats, three o one-year-old goats and three male goats; Three o geese; Eight o chickens; Two peacocks.
Manor belonging to the above-mentioned court: In Grixiuzhuang, we saw manor buildings, three forage houses in the province, and a yard surrounded by a fence. There is another garden with trees, ten geese, eight ducks and thirty chickens.
In another manor, we saw a manor building; A yard with a fence wall, in which there are three forage houses; There is a vineyard, a tree garden, fifteen geese and twenty chickens.
On the third manor, there are houses, two forage houses, a barn, a garden and a fenced yard. There, as in the palace, there are dry and wet meters. There are no goldsmiths, silversmiths, blacksmiths, hunters or other people in service.