A Cultural History of Food in the Renaissance (The Cultural Histories Series, 3) 9780857850256, 1847883551, 9781847883551, 1474269926, 9781474270755, 9781350995772, 0857850253

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a cultural history of food VOLUME 3

A Cultural History of Food General Editors: Fabio Parasecoli and Peter Scholliers Volume 1 A Cultural History of Food in Antiquity Edited by Paul Erdkamp Volume 2 A Cultural History of Food in the Medieval Age Edited by Massimo Montanari Volume 3 A Cultural History of Food in the Renaissance Edited by Ken Albala Volume 4 A Cultural History of Food in the Early Modern Age Edited by Beat Kümin Volume 5 A Cultural History of Food in the Age of Empire Edited by Martin Bruegel Volume 6 A Cultural History of Food in the Modern Age Edited by Amy Bentley

A CULTURAL HISTORY OF FOOD

IN T H E RENAISSANCE VOLUME 3

Edited by Ken Albala

Bloomsbury Academic An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

LON DON• OX • NFEO WR D DE• LNHEIW• YO N ER WK YOR LON DON • N EK W •DSY E LDN H I EY • SY DN EY

Bloomsbury Academic Academic Bloomsbury An imprint imprint of of Bloomsbury Bloomsbury Publishing Publishing Plc Plc An 50Bedford BedfordSquare Square 50 London London WC1B3DP 3DP WC1B UK UK

1385 1385 Broadway Broadway New New York York NY NY 10018 10018 USA USA

www.bloomsbury.com www.bloomsbury.com First published in 2012 Berg BLOOMSBURY and the Diana logobyare trademarks of Reprinted by Bloomsbury Academic Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 2013 © Fabio and Peter Scholliers 2012 Hardback editionParasecoli first published in 2012 by Berg Publishers, an imprint of Bloomsbury Academic Fabio Parasecoli PeterfiScholliers haveinasserted right under the Copyright, Paperbackand edition rst published 2016 bythier Bloomsbury Academic Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Authors of this work. © Fabio Parasecoli and Peter Scholliers, 2012, 2016 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in anyParasecoli form or byand anyPeter means, electronic mechanical, photocopying, Fabio Scholliers haveorasserted their including right under the Copyright, recording, any information or retrieval system, without prior Designs andorPatents Act, 1988,storage to be identifi ed as Authors of this work. permission in writing from the publishers. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in No formeans, loss caused to any or including organization acting on or anyresponsibility form or by any electronic orindividual mechanical, photocopying, refraining action as a result of theor material in system, this publication can be recording,from or any information storage retrieval without prior accepted by Bloomsbury author. permission in writing from or thethe publishers. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data acting on or No responsibility for loss caused to any individual or organization A catalogue book thepublication British Library. refraining fromrecord action for as athis result of is theavailable materialfrom in this can be accepted by Bloomsbury or the authors. ISBN: HB: 978-0-8578-5025-6 (volume 3) (set) British Library978-1-8478-8355-1 Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for ISBN: this book from the Library of Congress. HB:is available 978-0-8578-5025-6 HB set: 978-1-8478-8355-1 Typeset PB: by Apex978-1-4742-6992-6 CoVantage, LLC Printed and bound in Great Britain PB set: 978-1-4742-7075-5 EPDF: 978-1-3509-9577-2

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contents

Series Preface

vii

Introduction Ken Albala

1

1 Food Production Allen J. Grieco

29

2 Food Systems: Pepper, Herring, and Beer Michael Krondl

45

3 Food Security, Safety, and Crises Philip Slavin

63

4 Food and Politics Eric R. Dursteler

83

5 Eating Out Paul Freedman

101

6 Professional Cooking, Kitchens, and Service Work Ken Albala

117

7 Family and Domesticity Alison A. Smith

135

8 Body and Soul Joan Fitzpatrick

151

vi

CONTENTS

9 Food in Painting Gillian Riley 10 World Developments Fabio Parasecoli

171

183

Notes

195

Bibliography

211

Notes on Contributors

231

Index

235

series preface general editors, fabio parasecoli and peter scholliers

A Cultural History of Food presents an authoritative survey from ancient times to the present. This set of six volumes covers nearly 3,000 years of food and its physical, spiritual, social, and cultural dimensions. Volume editors and authors, representing different nationalities and cultural traditions, constitute the cutting edge in historical research on food and offer an overview of the field that reflects the state of the art of the discipline. While the volumes focus mostly on the West (Europe in its broadest sense and North America), they also draw in comparative material and each volume concludes with a brief final chapter on contemporaneous developments in food ideas and practices outside the West. These works will contribute to the expansion of the food history research in Asia, Africa, Oceania, and South America, which is already growing at an increasingly fast pace. The six volumes, which follow the traditional approach to examining the past in Western cultures, divide the history of food as follows: Volume 1: A Cultural History of Food in Antiquity (800 bce–500 ce) Volume 2: A Cultural History of Food in the Medieval Age (500–1300) Volume 3: A Cultural History of Food in the Renaissance (1300–1600) Volume 4: A Cultural History of Food in the Early Modern Age (1600–1800) Volume 5: A Cultural History of Food in the Age of Empire (1800–1900) Volume 6: A Cultural History of Food in the Modern Age (1920–2000)

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This periodization does not necessarily reflect the realities and the historical dynamics of non-Western regions, but the relevance of cultural and material exchanges among different civilizations in each period is emphasized. Each volume discusses the same themes in its chapters: 1. Food Production. These chapters examine agriculture, husbandry, fishing, hunting, and foraging at any given period, considering the environmental impact of technological and social innovations, and the adaptation to the climate and environment changes. 2. Food Systems. These chapters explore the whole range of the transportation, distribution, marketing, advertising, and retailing of food, emphasizing trade, commerce, and the international routes that have crisscrossed the world since antiquity. 3. Food Security, Safety, and Crises. We cannot have a complete picture of the history of food without discussing how societies dealt with moments of crisis and disruption of food production and distribution, such as wars, famines, shortages, and epidemics. These essays reflect on the cultural, institutional, economic, and social ways of coping with such crises. 4. Food and Politics. These chapters focus on the political aspects of public food consumption: food aspects of public ceremonies and feasts, the impact on public life, regulations, controls, and taxation over food and alcohol production, exchange, and consumption. 5. Eating Out. The communal and public aspects of eating constitute the main focus of these essays. Authors consider hospitality for guests, at home and in public spaces (banquets and celebrations), and discuss public places to eat and drink in urban and rural environments, including street food, marketplaces, and fairs. 6. Professional Cooking, Kitchens, and Service Work. These chapters look at the various roles involved in food preparation outside the family nucleus: slaves, cooks, servants, waiters, maitre d’hotel etc., investigating also the most relevant cooking techniques, technologies, and tools for each period, giving special consideration to innovations. 7. Family and Domesticity. The acquisition, shopping and storage, preparation, consumption, and disposal of food in a domestic setting

SERIES PREFACE

ix

are among the most important aspects of food culture. These chapters analyze family habits in different periods of time, paying particular attention to gender roles and the material culture of the domestic kitchen. 8. Body and Soul. These chapters examine fundamental material aspects such as nutritional patterns, food constituents, and foodrelated diseases. Furthermore, spiritual and cultural aspects of thinking about and consuming food are highlighted, including religion, philosophy, as well as health and diet theories. 9. Food Representations. These essays analyze cultural and discursive reflections about food, which not only contributed to the way people conceive of food, but also to the social and geographical diffusion of techniques and behavior. 10. World Developments. These brief chapters overview developments, dynamics, products, food-related behaviors, social structures, and concepts in cultural environments that often found themselves at the margins of Western modernity. Rather than embracing the encyclopedic model, the authors apply a broad multidisciplinary framework to examine the production, distribution, and consumption of food, as grounded in the cultural experiences of the six historical periods. This structure allows readers to obtain a broad overview of a period by reading a volume, or to follow a theme through history by reading the relevant chapter in each volume. Highly illustrated, the full six-volume set combines to present the most authoritative and comprehensive survey available on food through history.

Introduction ken albal a

The time frame covered by this volume should accurately be described as two distinct, though connected, periods in the history of food and gastronomy. First, the late Middle Ages stretched from 1300 to the end of the fifteenth century. Economically and demographically, this was a time of disruption, beginning with crop failures early in the fourteenth century and especially after 1348, in the wake of the Bubonic Plague, which wiped out approximately one-third of the European population. Paradoxically, this catastrophe left resources more evenly distributed through various strata of society; the demand for labor was greater and wages were higher for the average European. This period has even been called the golden age of meat, since most people could afford it on a regular basis. Access to the cuisine of elites, most notably in the use of spices and exotic flavorings imported from the East, meant that cuisine, much like Gothic art, flourished not only in the courts of kings and powerful magnates but among mercantile and professional classes of less-exalted wealth. For this and other reasons, late medieval cuisine was international in appeal. Common recipes and techniques were shared from region to region and trickled down from the nobility to the middling ranks of society. These particular economic circumstances made possible the cultural and artistic efflorescence known as the

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INTRODUCTION

Renaissance, particularly in Italy as well as the Low Countries (modern-day Belgium and the Netherlands), which prospered from trade and industry. The late Middle Ages was distinct from the sixteenth century, the start of the early modern period, for several important reasons. First was the development of the modern nation-state, which could marshal resources not only to wage war on a grander scale, and feast in comparable proportion; but also to finance overseas ventures. The discovery of the New World is another factor that distinguishes this century, despite the fact that New World products often took several generations to catch on; or perhaps more accurately, to be recorded in cookbooks. The development of a global economy, with European merchants traversing the world to trade directly with far-flung peoples, is without doubt a feature that marks this century as inherently different from those that precede it. A demographic surge; consequent inflation; and a greater proportion of the average household income being spent on basic staples such as wheat all contribute to the sixteenth century as a major turning point. Despite the presence of an affluent, aspiring middle class, the disparity between rich and poor grew much greater, and as a consequence food became associated with class. Coarse bread, cabbages, and beans were stigmatized as poverty foods; while delicate pastries, fruits, and white-fleshed fowl were hailed as aristocratic. The Reformation and its impact on fast days and other eating habits should not be underestimated. Even in regions that remained Catholic, there was a reassessment of the meaning of fasting, and controversies over food were often at the center of denominational polemics. The Renaissance encompasses both periods, and is justly recognized as a period of remarkable achievements in the arts and humanities. This is no less true of the gastronomic arts. The level of culinary sophistication was well recognized by contemporaries; the great humanist and papal librarian Bartolomeo Sacchi, known as Platina, stated that there is no “reason why the gourmandism of the ancients should be preferred to ours, for if we are surpassed in almost all other arts, in gastronomy alone we are not conquered, there is nothing in the whole world that has not been employed by our culinary masters, and everyone rigorously debates the seasoning of dishes.”1 It was only subsequent centuries that failed to give proper credit to cooking among the noble human arts. The first cookbook ever printed was stuffed into Platina’s work on honest gastronomic pleasure and health,

INTRODUCTION

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De honesta voluptate, and was actually written by Maestro Martino of Como, though he is given only brief passing credit in the text. Printing itself, especially inexpensive popular cookbooks and food literature, also separates the Renaissance from the late Middle Ages. Prior to this, cookbooks circulated in only a few hand-copied and expensive manuscripts. Throughout this volume, the term Renaissance will be used to describe all three centuries covered when discussing cultural and intellectual developments, in line with historiographic tradition. For economic and social movements, and for gastronomic topics, the late Middle Ages will be distinguished from the Early Modern period. Ideas about food across these three centuries were recorded in many different types of gastronomic literature. Cookbooks are, of course, the most revealing; but it is important to remember that these, by and large, only record the cooking of the wealthiest households. There was also an extensive corpus of agronomic literature, herbals, and household management texts which sometimes reveal more common eating habits; or at least the ingredients that were grown, stocked in larders, and used in cooking. Dietary literature can tell us much about practices of which physicians disapproved. Theological tracts debating the complex strictures on fasting offer a glimpse of ordinary diets, as do books on manners and etiquette—particularly when they point out the mistakes of those raised without the social graces appropriate for the table. From this body of literature a full picture of the food and eating culture of the Renaissance begins to emerge. This picture can be supplemented with surviving personal narratives, tax records, household and commercial account books, and diaries of trade and exploration. To introduce the topic of food, we will focus on the cookbook and related gastronomic texts. The first and most important influence on the development of late medieval cuisine was the reestablishment of trade with the eastern Mediterranean, in part the result of open commerce with the crusader states. In the centuries after those states fell, trade was largely handled by the Venetians, Genoese, and other Italian mercantile cities. Contact with Muslim civilization brought science, medicine, philosophy, and many products that either had not reached Western Europe since antiquity or were so rare that only the wealthiest of consumers could afford them. This exchange took place in the Levant and during the reconquest of Spain, as well as in the once Muslimcontrolled Sicily. These new products included pepper and cinnamon from

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INTRODUCTION

India, cloves and nutmeg from what is now Indonesia, ginger, dried fruits, nuts like almonds and pine kernels, and sweet and sour sauces. Sugar was also an imported delicacy, and, by the time of the Renaissance, was lavished on dishes liberally. Eventually added to this repertoire were grains of paradise from the Meleguetta coast of Western Africa, cubebs and long pepper, cassia buds, spikenard, and galangal, all of which have completely disappeared from modern European cuisine. In a sense, late medieval cuisine was closer aesthetically to modern Indian cuisine, which was itself influenced by medieval Islamic cooking. Why spices were used in such profusion has long been a matter of debate. They were definitely not used to mask the odor of rotting meat, as anyone who could afford the spices could afford fresh meat as well. Nor do spices have any noticeable preservative qualities; certainly not as great as salt or sugar. There may be some historical validity to the purported therapeutic effects of “hot” spices, as they were classified in the system of humoral physiology, as correctives either to an individual considered excessively cold, or to an imbalanced dish. By this logic, a cold, phlegmatic food would become balanced by the addition of a hot spice like pepper. This rationale does not really play out in the recipes themselves, though. More likely, spices conferred status. As expensive consumables, they denoted wealth and distinction. However, their use continued throughout the centuries covered here, long after their rarity and price diminished. Along with these spices came a penchant for coloring foods: yellow with saffron, green using herbs, or red with sandalwood or alkanet. Food could even be adorned with gold for the truly profligate. There was also a penchant for disguised foods, or subtleties as they came to be called in English, and tricks like a cooked peacock re-sewn into its feathers, presented with flames spewing out of its mouth. Medieval diners were also fond of finely pounded and sieved sauces, thickened with breadcrumbs and tinged sour with vinegar or verjus, the juice of unripe grapes. Almond milk was a unique invention of medieval chefs, used in place of regular milk during Lent. Foods redolent of perfume, especially rosewater, were also legacies of the Middle Eastern influence. Despite our persistent image of whole beasts roasting over an open fire, medieval cooking was quite elegant and even dainty. Food was eaten with the fingers, and often served on a thin slice of bread or trencher.

INTRODUCTION

5

The Libellus de arte coquinaria (Little Book of Culinary Art)2 is the oldest surviving cookbook in the medieval West, excluding those written in Moorish Spain. It is known through a handful of translations made probably at the end of the thirteenth century. The original probably dates to the previous century and was most likely written in Latin, since the titles for each recipe remain in Latin in the various surviving translations in low German, Danish, and even Icelandic. These versions suggest that the elite cuisine flourishing across Europe appealed to people at the northern extremes, the descendants of Vikings who had settled down only a generation before and now wanted to eat like their southern counterparts. The spices called for, like saffron, cardamom, cloves, and Mediterranean nuts like almonds and walnuts, were likely imported along with the cookbook. The Libellus also provides evidence for culinary technology in this period; though most of the recipes are cooked on coals in an open hearth, some call for a grill, turnspits, or an oven. Most importantly, there is also a mortar for pounding almonds to make almond milk or for making smooth textured sauces. Apart from some noticeably absent ingredients like dried fruits and sugar, this cookbook is remarkably similar to those produced in subsequent centuries at the height of late medieval cooking. The recipe for a sauce for lords is typical in this regard: One should take cloves and nutmeg, cardamom, pepper, cinnamon, ginger an equal weight of each except cinnamon, which shall weigh as much as all the others, and as much toasted bread as all that are mentioned before: Grind it together, and blend it with strong vinegar, and place it in a cask. That is their sauce, and it lasts about one season.3 Although there are scant records of what most people ate in the early fourteenth century, an indication can be gleaned from agricultural literature. The most important work, the Ruralia Commoda, was written by Petrus de Crescentiis (or Pietro Crescenzi, c. 1233–1321).4 Although drawing heavily on ancient agronomic authors like Cato, Varro, and Columella, the book gives us a close view of tasks undertaken on farms of this century: choosing a site for a house, planting various vegetables and grains, and cultivating vines. It explains how to manage trees and meadows, plant gardens, and keep bees for honey. Foods rarely mentioned in gastronomic

6

INTRODUCTION

texts are mentioned here: for example, a wide array of legumes like fava beans, lentils, and lupins, which not only enrich the soil, but serve as food for animals and people. Another invaluable source is dietary literature, which reveals what physicians thought people should not be eating. The Regimen of Health by Magninus Mediolanensis (Maino de Maineri, d. c. 1364) is even more detailed, and contains a chapter on sauces, the Opusculum de Saporibus.5 Although he recognizes that people invented sauces for pleasure and often over-indulge, the author still thinks they may serve a valuable purpose in maintaining health, to correct the potentially harmful qualities of certain foods, or to aid in digestion. For example, he tells us that for boiled veal we need green sauce, which is made with parsley, rosemary, toasted bread, ginger, clove and some vinegar, especially to counteract summer’s heat. For roast pork, cooks should use the drippings with wine and onions in winter, or just mustard or arugula. The logic here is that the hot mustard cuts through the viscous flesh and makes it more digestible. There’s no concrete evidence that any cook considered this logic when devising recipes, but it does reveal many details not contained in cookbooks.6 The most important cookbook of the late Middle Ages is known as the Viandier. The Viandier is attributed to Taillevent, or Guillaume Tirel. Taillevent means “wind slicer,” which is presumably what he was doing with knives in the kitchen. Tirel was chef to King Charles V of France from the 1360s onward, and later for his successor Charles VI; he enjoyed immense popularity at court and was even ennobled and given a coat of arms with three stewpots. Although Tirel was probably not the author of the recipes in the cookbook, many of which are found in manuscript sources written before he was born, he either compiled them or they were attributed to him as the most famous chef of his day. In any case, the cookbook reflects late medieval cuisine at its apogee. The recipes of the extant Viandier manuscripts suggest that this was written for professional chefs, who needed few precise instructions, measurements, or cooking times. They are often shorthand jottings seemingly meant merely to jog the cook’s memory. Nonetheless, they are emblematic of aristocratic dining in this period. Dense clusters of spices predominate the flavor profile. We find large hunted game animals like venison and wild boar, parboiled, larded with strips of fat sewn into the flesh, then re-boiled

INTRODUCTION

7

and served with cameline (a cinnamon-based sauce) or mustard. Subjecting food to two separate cooking methods, often parboiling and roasting, was very common. So too was cooking food in a pastry crust or “coffin,” which was freestanding and not meant to be eaten; but, in a sense, an adaptable cooking vessel that would help food last longer since the cooked meat was hermetically sealed within the thick crust. This is a typical dish, called a boussac, of hares or rabbits: Sear them on a spit or on the grill, then cut them up by members and fry them in bacon grease; infuse burnt toast in beef broth with wine in it, strain it and boil everything together; then add ground ginger, cinnamon, cloves and grains of paradise, infused in verjus. It should be dark brown and not too thick.7 The Viandier is also replete with sliced gelatin-based dishes, which in England were called leches. These could be tri-colored and filled with various ingredients. They are, surprisingly enough, the ancestors of gelatin molds so popular in the mid-twentieth century. Perhaps the most typical dish of the period, intended for invalids, is the blancmange—a thick combination of pounded and strained capon breast and almond milk, garnished with pomegranate seeds and sprinkled with sugar. Later cookbooks would embellish it with rosewater and bind it with rice starch. Its descendant is a sweet almond pudding, without the capon. Le Menagier de Paris is a household manual written in the late fourteenth century by a professional man for his young bride, with the curious though not uncommon expectation that when he died she would need certain skills to attract a new husband. Among general advice, it contains a section on cooking partly drawn verbatim from Taillevent. This is indirect evidence that courtly dining was being imitated by the middling ranks of society, which in turn served as a catalyst to the evolution of cooking at court. Naturally, when your social inferiors can begin to afford the same ingredients and entertain in a style that approaches your own, such cuisine no longer serves as a marker of distinction, and you are forced to innovate, finding new modes of expression others cannot emulate. This constant refashioning might be considered the driving force behind culinary progress from this point right down to the present. The Menagier is also

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INTRODUCTION

a remarkably rich source of ordinary details about shopping, preparing menus, and stocking the larder. For example, in one section he describes to his bride the various butcher shops one will find in each market around Paris, and even what one can expect to pay for sirloin (three sols) and for mutton (ten sols). He advises how to prevent a pot from burning or boiling over, and how to choose hare, ducks, carp, and eel. This sort of detailed advice is found practically nowhere else in medieval gastronomic literature.8 A number of manuscript cookbooks were also produced in England. The most important of these is The Forme of Cury, which is comparable to Taillevent’s work, though written for the court of King Richard II. It too contains international dishes common throughout Europe, rich with spices, coloring agents, dried fruits, and nuts. This Mawmenee recipe is typical and is essentially a spiced wine sauce with pine nuts, dates and shredded chicken: Take a potell of wyne greke and ii pounde of sugar; take and claryfye the sugur with a quantite of wyne & drawe it thurgh a straynour in to a pot of erthe. Take flour of rys and medle with sum of the wyne & cast togedre. Take pynes with dates and frye hem a litell in grece other in oyle and cast hem togydre. Take clowes & flour of canel hool and cast therto. Take powdour gynger, canel, clowes; colour it with saunders a lytel yf hit be nede. Cast salt therto, and lat it seeth warly with a slowe fyre and not to thyk. Take brawn of capouns yteysed other of fesauntes teysed small and cast therto.9 Although the order of a grand medieval English meal is rather different from our own, there is a certain logic to it. The more substantial dishes would come first: pottages and roasts. Then more delicate foods like fowl would follow, along with sweets. Another feature, seemingly rude to our modern egalitarian sensibilities, was that the best food would be reserved for the noblest table. Should the lord deign to share these delicacies, he could grace another table by sending them down after they had been picked at. The lord would often literally be seated above others on a raised dais, with lesser guests seated “below the salt”—i.e. salt cellar, an elaborate vessel placed conspicuously on the head table. In this context, we can begin to understand how exceptional a round table would have been, and its meaning in Arthurian lore.

INTRODUCTION

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There are also some Italian cookbook manuscripts of the fourteenth century: one, called the Libro di cucina, by an anonymous Venetian10; and another, known as the Libro della cocina, by an anonymous Tuscan.11 What is immediately striking about the former is its use of exact measurements. It is also organized alphabetically for easier reference. This suggests that the book is meant to be used by someone learning to cook. The proportions are also small enough to serve a single household: an ambrosino recipe, for example, specifies twelve people. It is a sweet spiced capon and almond dish much like those above, but scaled down to bourgeois proportions. While there is no way to tell exactly who might have used such a text, it once again indicates that the cooking of royal courts did indeed trickle down to more modest households; though in this case, especially given the “great quantity” of spices used, certainly not of modest means. The Tuscan text is also intended to teach cooking, as it is organized by ingredient. It offers several different methods for dealing with fairly simple ingredients, including a wide variety of vegetables. There are recipes for leeks, turnips, chickpeas, and fava beans. Clearly there is no social stigma against these ingredients. Most interestingly, dishes that would come to be classics of Italian cuisine, like lasagna, also begin to appear; here cooked in capon broth rather than layered with tomato sauce. Two Latin cookbooks also survive from the fourteenth century, the Liber de coquina and Tractatus de modo preparandi et condiendi omnia cibaria.12 The former was probably written in Italy, since it mentions dishes from many other countries, but not from Italy itself. The social setting for these texts is fascinating, since presumably a learned reader or cook, perhaps a cleric, would be the only type of person able to read it. The recipes are also quite simple, using common ingredients like cabbage. Though one preparation following the use of emperors suggests some social emulation, it is simple and free of spices. Unspecified spices do appear in some recipes, but in general the focus on vegetables like greens, chickpeas, and fava beans, and their use in fast days, again suggests a religious order. This simple recipe from Tractatus gives an indication of the level of cooking and culinary technology. Incidentally, it is a perfectly workable recipe to this day. On Sausages: to make sausages, take good raw pork, not too fat nor too lean, and cut up very finely with a knife, at mix with it good spices

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INTRODUCTION

and salty, fill your well cleaned intestines and place them to smoke. Some tie them into fingers [links] some not. Later you can cook them in water or on coals or in a pan, whatever way you wish. The Tractatus also contains a large section on how to correct faults in wine using various spices, which must have been a common occurrence. The arrangement of the work, from fowl to meats and sauce, thence to fish, and lastly vegetables, implies a scale of desirability as well. This would be fitting for the projected audience here, which is decidedly not laborers, as is stated in the opening paragraph of recipes. A notable Catalan cookbook was also composed in this century, the anonymous Libre de Sent Sovi. The opening lines indicate that this book is written for squires stationed with great lords and gentleman, presumably serving as cooks, and in one manuscript establishes the credentials of the author by claiming he was summoned to cook for the king of England. In fact, the recipes are thoroughly Catalan. We find a classic escabetx, a fried fish in vinegar sauce, and techniques like the sofregit, here called sosenga; a fried combination of vegetables that often begins a recipe, though here obviously without peppers and tomatoes. There are other dishes made from rice, spinach, and eggplants, which bespeak the culinary heritage of Spain. Nonetheless, there are also medieval standards like menjar blanc (blancmange) and spice-laden sauces spiked with vinegar. Another Catalan cookbook attests to what was widely recognized as a preeminent cuisine in its day: the Libre del coch composed by one Mestre Robert, or Rupert of Nola as he came to be known in the Castilian translation of his book.13 Robert was chef to the Aragonese court in Naples under Ferrante I, and in fact several of his recipes appear to have been adapted by Italian authors such as Martino of Como. For example, a genestada: a rice flour, milk, or almond milk combination, boiled down with sugar, to which are added pine nuts and dates, is also found in a manuscript of Martino and identified as a zenestrato ala catellana. In Rupert there appears a Mirraust, in which almonds are toasted and pounded, then mixed with broth-soaked bread, strained, and then cooked with cinnamon and a half pound of sugar. Then pigeons are half-roasted, cut up, and cooked further in the sauce. This recipe is adapted with different wording and a different order of procedures in Martino, where it is called Mirrause Catalano,

INTRODUCTION

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clearly identifying its origin.14 These connections aside, Robert’s cookbook also includes typically Iberian dishes like eggplants in a casserole, baked rice dishes, and fideus, a kind of thin noodle. Spices are used as elsewhere in Europe, but we also find citrus fruits used liberally, quinces, and flans— all of which are indicative of Iberian cuisine—as well as a full array of fish dishes. The book also contains a section on carving, a necessary part of elegant service, as well as a description of various offices in the household. Robert’s book was printed in Catalan in 1520, and then in Castilian five years later; it would come to constitute a foundational text for Spanish cuisine. A fascinating glimpse into the workings of an enormous ducal kitchen can be found in Chiquart Amiczo, Du fait de cuisine, written in 1420.15 It is clear that Amiczo is aiming to extoll the largesse of his patron, Duke Amadeo I of Savoy, and his efforts appear to have worked for the duke, who later became Pope Felix V. The book is largely written with professional chefs in mind, and has been described as the first true complete cookbook of the Middle Ages. It not only describes culinary techniques, but how to fit recipes together to form whole meals, and how to plan a grand banquet. The audience is presumably other chefs of similar station hoping to impress their own patrons, which is hard to imagine given the sheer scale of dining. One banquet calls for 100 head of cattle, 130 sheep, 120 pigs and 200 piglets, 200 lambs, 100 calves, 2,000 hens, and 12,000 eggs. Literally tons of food probably took an army of cooks to prepare, and despite what must have been a gargantuan crowd, took two days of feasting to consume. Chiquart’s cooking, apart from his interesting obsession with cleanliness, is still thoroughly medieval. He uses the full panoply of spices like pepper, ginger, grains of paradise, nutmeg, cloves, and galangal, not to mention sugar in profusion. We find boar’s heads breathing fire, an entremet, or entertainment piece, a multi-colored blancmange, peacocks, wild game, even dolphin for fish days (as the mammal would then have been categorized). But there are also less-exalted dishes, and even dishes for convalescents, as the health of the duke and his court would also have fallen under the purview of the steward/banquet manager. In the fifteenth century there are also a number of revealing and lesser-known cookery manuscripts. One Dutch example is known as the

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INTRODUCTION

Keukenboek, also called Wel ende edelike spijse (the words with which the text opens, meaning “to prepare good and noble food.”)16 Included are the standard medieval presentation pieces like boar’s head, heron, and peacock; but also a number of simple homey dishes. A simple spiced pork and hard-boiled egg stuffing is used in various other dishes like chicken, pancakes and fritters, and even apples. There are also some remarkable Lenten dishes, like a pancake stuffed with pike and figs, white “sausages” made of fish wrapped in dough, boiled and then grilled, and roasted dough and salmon formed in the shape of little partridges. This is medieval inventiveness and playfulness at its best.17 Mention must also be made of two English cookbook manuscripts of this same era, Harleian mss 279 and 4016.18 These books reveal not only the wide array of ingredients considered acceptable or even elegant on medieval tables, but occasional remarkable surprises. A recipe for garbage, for example, is exactly that. The “gysowrys” in the recipe are gizzards. Garbage—Take fayre garbagys of chykonys, as the hed, the fete, the lyverys, and the gysowrys; washe hem clene, an caste hem in a fayre potte, an caste ther-to freysshe brothe of Beef or ellys of moton, an let it boyle, an a-lye it wyth brede, an ley on Pepir an Safroun, Maces, Clowys, an a lytil verious an salt, an serve forth in the maner as a Sewe.19 Two other culinary curiosities of the fifteenth century are worthy of discussion. One is a northern English cookbook in verse called the Liber cure cocorum. A brief excerpt will give an indication of the author’s culinary and poetic talents: Lamprayes in browet Take lamprayes and scalde hom by kynde, Sythyn, rost hom on gredyl, and grynde Peper and safrone; welle hit with alle, So tho lampreyes and serve hit in sale.20 The other is a text by Jean de Bockenheim, called Registrum coquine. Along with recipes, the book describes exactly which dishes are appropriate for certain kinds of people according to his observations in cosmopolitan

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Rome at the time of Pope Martin V in the early fifteenth century.21 Thus an almond soup laden with cloves and cinnamon is fit for princes and magnates, no doubt because of the expense, while a simpler bread soup is good for Italians. A boiled sheep dish with dill, onions, and vinegar is for Germans; so too is stockfish. A beef pie, fittingly enough, is for Englishmen. For monks there is a fascinating egg dish made with stuffed, almost devilled, eggs, cooked into an omelet. But an herb and cheese omelet is for copyists and their wives. A truly bizarre recipe of an edible sponge doused in almond milk and roasted on a spit, is, for some inexplicable reason, for whores. Despite these amusing asides, the recipes themselves are perfectly workable, and probably reflect the habits of ordinary people better than most courtly cookbooks. Although no cookbook survives from Burgundy, no discussion of late medieval dining would be complete without this court under Charles the Bold (1467–77), which in many ways was the trend-setter of the era. Burgundy was also wealthy and powerful in the fifteenth century, as it ruled over the Netherlands as well. Olivier de la Marche documented the feasts thrown by the duke. Apart from exotic animals like swan and peacock, and gilded dishes, the lavish ceremonial nature of dining is immediately striking. The presentation of dishes, tasting for poison, elegant carving, and offering of wines was all handled by an enormous staff of napkin-bearing servants. In many ways this style of courtliness presages what would follow in the next century, especially as Charles V, King of Spain and Holy Roman Emperor, inheritor of these lands, adopted the ceremonies of his Burgundian ancestors.22 We must not forget Germany, which also had a thriving culinary culture in the late Middle Ages. Daz buoch von guoter spise (The Book of Good Food) was written in the mid-fourteenth century in connection with the Bishop of Würzburg.23 It is the oldest German cookbook. It reveals that many of the same flavors and techniques were used here as elsewhere, including imported saffron, rice, and sugar, alongside more ordinary German ingredients like pork and bacon, chicken, and freshwater fish. Pounding food into a creamy consistency is likewise here, as are culinary novelties. A salmon dish, for example is divided and cut into pieces, sprinkled with parsley, sage, ginger, pepper, anise, and salt, then encased in pastry and pressed into a mold—a very typical combination of local and imported ingredients prepared with a flourish. The book also includes exotic Greek

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and Saracen dishes, as well as a few joke dishes like a “Heathen’s Head,” made with meat, chicken, apples, and eggs, one of the surprises so typical of this period. The following century witnessed the production of several dozen cooking manuscripts in Germany, no doubt reflecting a growing demand spurred on by expendable wealth. These often freely plagiarized from earlier works. Some were mere compilations, like those of Meister Eberhard and Meister Hannsen. Platina’s De honesta voluptate (On Honest Pleasure, c. 1470) has been hailed as the first modern cookbook; it is indeed the first printed one, and on that score if nothing else, it is distinguished from all those preceding it.24 More precisely, the parts of the book written by Platina himself are quintessentially Renaissance and reflect the current intellectual movement known as humanism. In a nutshell, humanism sought to revive the culture of the ancient Greeks and Romans through artistic and poetic imitation, and most importantly, through a revision of the curriculum, which stressed practical human affairs over abstract hair-splitting theology. The introduction of history, oratory, and practical ethics, inspired by classical antiquity, were all meant to fashion a well-rounded Renaissance man. Platina, as papal historian and the first papal librarian at the Vatican library, fits squarely into this intellectual milieu. His book sought to reconcile the tenets of healthy eating with gastronomic pleasure, a modern goal if ever there was one. Whether he succeeded is a matter for debate. Platina’s discussion of basic foodstuffs, studded with classical quotations drawn from medical authorities and natural histories, does indeed present a balanced, rational approach to eating very different from the guilt-laden medieval scholastic emphasis on food as the gateway to sin. On the other hand, the recipes with which he interlarded his text all come from Maestro Martino of Como, chef to Cardinal Trevisan, whose midcentury cookbook was still for the most part medieval.25 The two halves sit uncomfortably together. Platina adds an appendix to some recipes, to the effect that this is a truly unhealthy dish and should be fed only to your enemies. In other words, the lavish late medieval cooking of Martino does not always square well with the medical precepts drawn from antiquity. Martino does offer us a magnificent cookbook with many innovations, and in many ways it does point toward the future. For example, we get a

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clear sense that the pie crusts called for in the many tarts are meant to be eaten, being laden with butter, and not merely casings for the contents. The dishes also look more recognizably Italian. There are several for macaroni, the generic name for all pasta at the time. Here, the Roman version is cut fresh noodles, as well as ravioli, which were probably originally shaped like little purses cinched at the top like radishes. There is also a Sicilian macaroni formed into hollow tubes on an iron rod. Martino insists they will last two or three years after drying. Although these are not durum semolina pasta as one would find in a box today, they are a dried product, which remarkably should be simmered for two hours!26 The recipes offered also include an array of sauces; many based on fruit, pies made with cheese, eggs, and even ingredients like vine tendrils. There are delicate fritters, and the emphasis on fried crispy sweet morsels is novel. Eggs (even roasted on a spit) and dairy products are featured in many recipes, again a trend that will continue in the next century. Although Martino’s name would not be identified until the twentieth century as the author of these recipes, they did gain wide circulation through the many printings and translations of Platina, which was the best-selling cookbook of the sixteenth century. Germany also produced an early printed cookbook, the Kuchenmeysterey, which appeared in 1485 in Passau. The recipes are not particularly lavish, and include common ingredients like pork and bacon, chicken, and eggs; there are recipes for vinegar and medieval standbys like “compost” of vegetables, apple sauce and baked apples, salmon and crab, as well as the ubiquitous almond-based dishes. The overall repertoire is thus quite distinct from its Italian counterpart, and regional foodways are becoming more distinct; or at least a cookbook such as this, geared more likely for a bourgeois audience rather than noble courts, is more dependent on local ingredients and traditions. The English followed suit only a few years later as the first printed English cookbook appeared in 1500, entitled This is the Boke of Cokery.27 The contents, however, are from the fifteenth century and differ little from similar works of that era. The book is a good example of the difficulty of using culinary texts as an indication of what people actually ate. These recipes may have been completely out of fashion and the book itself more a literary piece. Or it may have been enthusiastically read by people who had never been exposed to aristocratic dining and wanted to upgrade their

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INTRODUCTION

formal meals. Because a printer saw fit to publish a work gives us no clue about how it was received, and the fact that only a single copy survives may indicate that it was not widely read. On the other hand, the kitchen-stained copies may all have been destroyed with overuse. All we can say confidently is that readers were presented with recipes like this. The tongue in the following recipe is sliced, rolled around a stuffing, and then simmered and served with a spiced wine sauce. For to make longe de beef To made longe de beef take oxe tonges & shrape them & wasshe them than leche them thynne than take datts smale mynced & yolkes crommed smale onyons mynced smale raysyns of corans p(er)cely ysape tyme savery & a quantyte of sage & a quantyte of pouder marchant pouder of peper & salte it and stuf the leche therewith & roll them togyder & boyle them in swete broth tyll the lycour be boyled in than make a syrupe with wyne & of the same stuffe & boyle it up and color it with saffron and put thereto a quantyte of vynegre and salt and serve it.28 The Netherlands was also early to the cookbook printing business, as with printing in general. Een Notabel Boecxhen van Cokeryen appeared in Brussels in about 1508, compiled by Thomas Vander Noot. Here too the recipes are familiarly medieval, with the ubiquitous blancmange, gelatins, spiced and colored dishes, pastries, and even ravioli. It is perhaps the last of a long line of medieval cookbooks, which were naturally those to hit the printing presses first. The early sixteenth century also witnessed a fairly new genre aimed at teaching manners. Not that manners per se were anything new; courtiers had prided themselves on their elegant table behavior through the Middle Ages. But teaching manners to neophytes, especially to young boys who might not have been habituated to them at home, and in print, was novel. It has been argued that the proliferation of manners among a broader range of social classes is a distinctly early modern phenomenon, linked conceptually to a court culture in which violence was monopolized by the state. Banishing all potential forms of violence, literal and figurative in possible

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misunderstanding, is manifest in polite ritual ways of greeting, going about daily tasks, and of course eating.29 It is not coincidental that forks came into common usage for the first time only in the sixteenth century. The possible cause for these developments aside, books of manners do reveal another side of the culture of food in the Renaissance. The most famous guidebook was written by the great Dutch humanist Desiderius Erasmus, entitled De civilitate morum puerilium (On Civil Behavior of Boys, 1530).30 In it he warns young potential courtiers that they should not pull food out of their mouths, but discretely put it in a napkin or toss it somewhere. Nor should one shift excessively in one’s seat, lest one arouse the suspicion of having passed gas. The details here are amusing, but they point to the fact that there is significant social mobility. Entrance into court society meant learning to speak well, dress well, behave well (as described in Castiglione’s Courtier), and of course eat with refinement and grace. The first cookbooks which begin to reflect a new cooking style of the early sixteenth century were printed in the 1540s, and they may be distantly related, as they share certain recipes and taste preferences. Most importantly, they begin to depart from standard medieval favorites and might rightly be considered the first clutch of modern cookbooks. The first is the almost unknown Livre fort excellent de cuysine published in Lyons in 1542, reissued in 1555, and then again later in the century under the new title Le grand cuisiner tres-utile et profitable (1576).31 Although most accounts of French cooking describe an enormous lacuna between the age of Taillevent and La Varenne in the mid-seventeenth century, this book does offer a decent image of taste preferences in the sixteenth century. The confusion over its importance largely stems from a set of related cookbooks issuing from the same publisher, most of which borrowed medieval recipes, which has led scholars to assume that these were merely a rehash of older work.32 In fact, the recipes in this edition are unique. They also reflect shifting taste preferences, most notably the prevalence of dairy products in sauces and other recipes. For example, there is a simple pike recipe in which the fish is fried in butter and sprinkled with verjus and orange.33 Likewise, a salmon is poached and garnished with finely chopped onion and parsley and a splash of olive oil and vinegar. Spices become somewhat less prominent, though sugar remains an important and even universal flavoring. The author specifies in many recipes

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INTRODUCTION

not a hint but a “great deal of sugar.” Instead of dense, complex clusters of spice, we move toward lightness and grace, with straightforward vegetable dishes and the use of fruits. For example, we find a roasted capon in a sauce of red wine, orange, and rosemary, with a lot of sugar. A recipe for cresme bastarde is made with white wine, fresh butter, bread crumbs, sugar and a little saffron, “not too much” thickened with egg yolk. There are no other spices called for. In other recipes the author warns “be careful that it not be too spiced.”34 Cresme fritte is similar, a kind of custard made with milk and no spices. Many of the recipes use wine and bouillon for flavor, and herbs alone, again gradually departing from medieval preferences and pointing the way toward classical French haute cuisine. Another remarkable recipe for capilotaste (presumably a relative of the Spanish capirotada) is made with layers of bread and finely chopped partridge, garlic, and cheese, all soaked in beef broth, but no spices whatsoever. It would be a mistake to claim that spices disappear. They do remain important throughout the sixteenth century. Although by this time the Portuguese had discovered a direct sea route to the East Indies and were importing spices directly into Europe, they were nonetheless very careful to maintain a monopoly and had little incentive to lower prices despite the increased volume arriving. But it may be this greater availability that explains the shift over the course of the century away from spices, which no longer conferred status, as ordinary people were increasingly using them. They remain in cookbooks, but they do eventually lose favor, at first among elites. The next cookbook of this generation is the Banchetti of Cristoforo di Messisbugo, published in Ferrara in 1549. It records the author’s many years of service as majordomo to the Este Court, with precise details of dozens of meals eaten there down to the number of plates used, as well as recipes for practically everything mentioned.35 To start, the menus are a wild profusion of dishes in many courses, each punctuated by entertainment. The sheer amount of food presented is staggering, and although the number of guests ranges from small to under 100, the food prepared, in leftover form, will clearly feed hundreds more. Although cold appetizers begin on a credenza and fruits and confections end the meal, there is seemingly no rational order to the courses in between. Fish, meat, soups, pastries, and sweets are served in virtually every course, presumably so the diner can choose whatever he or she likes in each. In fact, physicians complained

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bitterly about precisely this tendency for banquet-goers to eat a complete jumble of contrary foods with no rational order in the same meal. One also gets the distinct impression that the chef is displaying his virtuosity in every dish. Sometimes the same ingredient will appear in every course, each time cooked in a different way. Sometimes the flavor combinations are willfully subversive, inventive, and perhaps intended to surprise, titillate, and perplex diners. Known as Mannerism, this was the reigning aesthetic of this period in painting and architecture. The rational ordered and balanced compositions of the Renaissance (and of Platina) gave way to odd juxtapositions, figures defying gravity and anatomical reality, all in the name of sophistication and elegance. It may be that chefs were prompted to constantly reinvent themselves precisely because the older recipes were now within the financial reach of rising professional classes emulating their superiors. The sheer scale and inventiveness displayed here could only be supported by the wealthiest of dukes—and thus distinction through dining is maintained. As for the recipes, there are foreign dishes: German, Spanish, Turkish, French, even a Hebraic dish of chopped veal, herbs, raisins and spices formed around a hard-boiled egg yolk and cooked in broth—all of which were perfectly fitting for this very cosmopolitan court. Butter and sugar are liberally used throughout, along with a profusion of pastries and cakes. This arresting dish stands out among the strangest. Understandably, is it unfair to judge any recipe by foreign cultural standards, but this would nonetheless made an excellent feature on Fear Factor.

To Make a Sfogliata Pastry of Eyes, Sweetbread of Veal or Calf’s Udder First make the sflogliata dough, as is said above, and place a sheet (of pastry) in a pan, and place on two ounces of sugar, and a quarter of fine cinnamon, two ounces of cleaned raisins, and then over this place a half pound of fine prosciutto finely chopped. Then have many slices of cooked veal sweetbreads, or veal’s eyes, or veal udder, one or the other, whichever you have, and make a layer above the sheet, interposing with slices of dry prosciutto, and having made this layer, place on two ounces of sugar and a quarter of cinnamon, two ounces raisins, and two cleaned pine nuts and the juice of three oranges, or

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INTRODUCTION

verjuice, and three ounces of fresh butter on top, and and place some unborn [fertilized] eggs, they will not be unbecoming, and then place on that another sheet, with three ounces of fresh butter over it, and then having cooked it, place on three ounces of sugar, but be careful, that you not spare any expense. This pastry will be better with two layers placed on another sheet between the top and the bottom layer, this layer will be better fried, and if you’re not able to fry it whole, fry it in quarters, because it won’t cook as well as a raw sheet, and then place it in between. But notice that the filling that’s gone in the first layer, in place of the leaf above, you can place thin sheets of pasta, which if you must make, is described in another place.36 The Proper Newe Booke of Cokerye is the first cookbook of Renaissance England that is not a mere printing of an earlier work.37 Like the others of this decade, it begins to diverge from previous centuries. Herbs are given greater emphasis and spices are used judiciously, though sugar and cinnamon remain prominent. For example, venison is emphatically seasoned only with pepper and salt, perhaps with bacon, if lean. But crabs are picked, then flavored with butter, cinnamon and sugar, and stuffed back into their shells. Butter, dairy products, and eggs are featured, and though officially Lenten restrictions remained in force after the English Reformation, the prominence of these may reflect greater usage throughout the year and laxity in enforcing outdated rules. In fact, for a custard recipe the author says that in fish days you should use just butter rather than marrow, which reflects a general loosening of rules throughout Europe, even among Catholics. Butter would have been forbidden during Lent in the previous century. This may indirectly account for the growing role butter would take in sauces, especially on light fish dishes. There may also have been mutual influence among cookbooks of this generation. For example, the new fashion for cream in desserts such as darioles (a little custard in a mold) and flans38 is found in the Livre fort excellent, and it seems that such desserts were consistently associated with France. Messisbugo calls this crema alla francese, and uses it to fill tart shells.39 He also has a Tardiola di latte all Francese, which is made with a pastry crust filled with eggs and milk and saffron, ginger, sugar, and rosewater.40 The Proper Newe Booke contains a similar recipe specifically designated as

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French—a “cover tart after the frenche fashion” made with a pint of cream, ten eggs, and butter, all cooked first until thick, placed within pastry crusts and baked.41 It is clear that French developments were imitated elsewhere, at both the level of aristocratic courts and more modest households. The Proper Newe also targets households of middling income. The serving sizes are relatively small, the ingredients purchased in shops rather than supplied on one’s own estate, and there is not the wild extravagance found in contemporary Continental works. We have here simple pies, of green apples or chicken. Modest egg dishes, tarts of cheese or fruits, fritters, substantial stewed beef and mutton dishes—it is perhaps the first account of what ordinary meals were like among common people. Of this same generation is the Latin Ars magirica (The art of cooking) of Iodoco Willich, published in 1556 in Zurich.42 One might assume from the language that a scholarly audience is intended here, and it opens with a discussion of the importance of knowing about the properties of food for the maintenance of health. However, it is also a cookbook, featuring frugality and moderation, rather than wild sybaritic luxury. In a sense it fulfills the demands set forth by Platina in the previous century. How many working cooks could read Latin is impossible to guess, but the instructions here definitely reflect real practical experience; he is not an armchair gourmand. For example, the author discusses the importance of managing hot coals carefully, removing them to a container or putting them under a grate for cooking. The properties of various materials for vessels, although studded with commentary drawn from the ancients, is nonetheless useful. Comparisons with the present are always at hand: the sartago of the ancients is now used for frying, in oil, butter, or liquefied lard, which is commonly called “ein pfann.”43 His asides often reveal practices among lower classes too. In discussing grains of paradise, he says “these the plebeians use, no less than pepper itself.”44 This is indirect, but convincing evidence that spices had begun to go out of fashion among the elite. But sugar retained its place: it is found “in gruels, in broths, in sweets, I don’t know where it isn’t.”45 The book also contains a marvelously detailed discussion of how to make Swiss cheese, written by Jacob Biffront, in the form of a letter addressed to Conrad Gesner. In the sixteenth century there was also an efflorescence of agricultural literature. Gabriel Alonso Hererra’s Obra de Agricultura, first published

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INTRODUCTION

in 1513, offers detailed descriptions of farming in central Spain, but also of ordinary habits not evident elsewhere. In a chapter on anise, we are told that it stimulates milk production in breast-feeding mothers, it dispels bad breath first thing in the morning, and it unclogs the liver; but also that when placed under a loaf of bread in baking it toasts and flavors the bread. Before a meal it stimulates the appetite, and after it aids digestion.46 Some of these works were more literary, like Luigi Alamanni’s La Coltivazione published in 1546,47 or like Thomas Tusser’s Hundred Points of Good Husbandry (1557), later expanded to 500 points (1573). Through his frugal advice he often reveals gastronomic customs of his day. In one verse he says “When Easter come who knows not than/ That veal and bacon is the man/ And Martilmas beef doth bear good tack/ When country folks do dainties lack.”48 In other words, when country people can’t afford more expensive foods, they are content with salted smoked beef, something rarely even mentioned in cooking texts. The most popular text in this genre was a book first published in Latin as Praedium Rusticum by Charles Etienne and then expanded by his nephew Jean Liebault, which is best known under its French title Maison rustique, or as it was published in the English of Richard Surflet, The Country Farme (1616). Much of the advice reveals the type of plants which came into fashion in the early modern era, which would have been cultivated as a holy by men of leisure. We are told that in April it is time to set out the orange trees which were kept indoors in the winter, being careful to trim all the boughs to equal length before replanting. Pomegranates, olives, and mulberries should also be planted at this time. Figs, cherries, and chestnuts should be grafted, and vines cut back. Obviously this advice could not have been of much use in Northern Europe, but it does reveal the kinds of fruits which men of wealth desired on their tables, and which, if they could provide them from hothouses, were marks of real distinction.49 Another vital source for food history in this period are the literally hundreds of dietary texts which will be discussed in a following chapter. Some actually range broadly on the topic of food culture and customs, and deserve brief mention here. In 1560 the physician Jean Bruyerin-Champier set out to write a reference work on food, ostensibly about the health benefits of individual ingredients, which was by this time a set genre. Instead he composed a twenty-two book reference work on every food custom

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he had heard about around the world, published as De re cibaria (On Food), a book not at all unlike the many food encyclopedias in circulation today.50 Its stated purpose is not to discuss cooking per se but rather what people think about food from the perspective of theology, philosophy, and medicine, in an effort to combat what he considered the insane gluttony of his own age. The most fascinating parts of the book border on the ethnographic. We are told that during famine people resort not only to wild vegetables, roots, and leaves, and this is common practice in Asia, but even sometimes in desperation poisonous plants like hemlock and henbane.51 He makes a concerted argument that the character of many peoples stems from their diet. Hence we find maritime peoples like Britons, Normans, and Flemings to be phlegmatic, because they eat so much fish, drinks made of fruit, and dairy products.52 The odd ingredients used in certain places, like chestnuts in the Cevennes used to make bread, or garlic used so extensively by foul-breathed Gascons, similarly effect their habits overall. Scots are naturally ferocious because of their wild food.53 Despite these xenophobic comments, Bruyerin was surprisingly well informed about food habits around the world. He knows about rice-based drinks in the Orient, powerful intoxicants (presumably a kind of vodka) distilled from oats in Russia, or Lapps who drink soured milk.54 His knowledge even goes further afield, to Senegal where they make palm wine, and even to the Americas where they use maize.55 Returning to the culinary texts, in 1560 La Singolare dottrina di M. Domenico Romoli sopranominato Panunto, Dell’ufficio dello Scalco was published, written by the Florentine Domenico Romoli, known as Panunto.56 Romoli was a professional banquet manager or scalco, and the book includes details concerning the organization of the kitchen, which will be included in another chapter below. The work is also unique in containing an entire huge section on the various qualities of ingredients and their effect on health. But it is the section where he describes “ordinary meals day by day” that is most intriguing. One immediately notices the number of vegetables that appear, in salads and as separate dishes, even in the final dessert course, when “fruits” include artichokes and fennel, plus sweets. Usually Romoli will start with appetizers, move to a boiled course, then a fried course, and then fruits and sweets to end. When meat is served, there might be a pasta course to start, then vegetables as the third course. Thus,

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INTRODUCTION

there is a discernable order to Romoli’s menus, more so than Messisbugo, nonetheless, the same Mannerist aesthetic reigns. Diversity, profusion, showcasing the creative vertù of the chef as artist: all these are evident in the directions, especially for grander banquet menus, which might have as many as five courses and many different dishes per course. Sugar and cinnamon appear everywhere, much as we would use salt and pepper. The Opera (1570) of Bartolomeo Scappi is without question the largest, most comprehensive, and arguably the most instructive of all cookbooks written in this three-century period.57 The Opera is designed to teach a neophyte cook. Thus it includes directions for shopping, choosing ingredients at the peak of freshness, becoming knowledgeable about the provenance of food, and where the best of each variety can be found. It describes the equipment necessary for the various kitchens and how they should be organized. It covers every single ingredient Scappi had ever heard of, organized rationally and indexed, and offers multiple options for dealing with each. Most importantly, Scappi is not a stickler for exacting recipes. As any practical cook must be flexible, he offers alternate ingredients, several different methods, and truly guides the reader to get the best results according to his own experience. Above all else, the Opera is the first fully illustrated cookbook. We are shown kitchen utensils; foods being prepared in situ; even working kitchens replete with various tasks being performed, such as making dairy products, rolling out pasta, and roasting meat on a spit. Furthermore, there are menus showing exactly how full meals can be assembled according to the season. Scappi himself was from Dumenza, in the north of Italy near Lake Como, and his recipes often betray his origins. He worked his way up the ranks in the service of the papacy, eventually cooking for Paul IV and becoming personal chef for Pius V, an ironic position given Pius’s reputation for asceticism. Scappi’s personal experience at the Vatican is amply illustrated, especially in a depiction of the conclave, sequestered for the election of a new pope, in which servers ceremonially usher in dishes to the seated cardinals. Meals there, despite the gloomy Counter-Reformation austerity that set in during Scappi’s final productive years, would have been resplendent, as profuse and varied as any royal court. Scappi also devotes an entire book to menus. These vary according to season. Dinners, the larger mid-day meal, differ from smaller suppers or

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collations. There is also an important distinction between hot courses, prepared in the cook’s kitchen, and cold courses, which would be set on a credenza, and would normally be the responsibility of a separate credenziero, or pantler. The logic here is partly to have cold foods ready when guests arrive, so they are not greeted with an empty table, but it is also so the hot food kitchen has time to prepare between courses. That is, the cold courses often come between the hot ones. A typical meal, dinner on June 25, has four credenza services, and four from the kitchen, is served in units of ten places, each of which would suffice for a table or section of table. So we can imagine fifty or sixty people, served by ten stewards and ten carvers.58 The first cold course included twenty pounds of sugared strawberries on ten platters; thirty pounds of cherries; and 300 plums, 150 apricots, marzipan biscuits, mostaccioli cookies, pine nut confections, sweet sugared citrons, and cream and sweetened butter passed through a syringe. Then a second cold course appeared with pastry tarts, pasties of giblets, large cold veal pie, sausages cooked in wine sliced and served with sliced lemons, a prosciutto cooked and shredded served with raisins and sugar, and roasted veal loin finely chopped with lemon juice capers and sugar. The first hot kitchen course includes cherry tarts, sweetbread pastry with eyes and ears of kid, little stuffed turkeys roasted with sugar and lemon, a royal sauce, a crostata of pigeon and beef marrow (note one of these for every table), plus half a roasted kid (times ten), quails, lambs’ testicles, hares, and elderflower fritters. The second hot course has young capons, ducks, boiled stuffed veal, white sauce, stuffed pigeons with peas, chicken pastries, capirotada of cheese, flans, sweet milk soup, and capon aspic. The third hot course: roast veal loin, roast rabbit, ducklings, veal loin in adobbo, veal meatballs in a pie, preserved fresh grapes from the season before, stuffed capons, and cream tarts. The fourth hot course is much the same, with the third cold course including artichokes, fruits, cheeses, shrimp, milk snow (a cream and egg white confection) and more pastries. The fourth cold course includes fennel, toothpicks, and sweets. There is a kind of progression through the many courses, though sweet dishes and pastries appear everywhere. There is also little distinction among savory dishes, all of which appear in the middle hot courses. The idea is not progressing from soup to nuts, or from delicate to strongly flavored dishes. Rather, every diner has a choice of basically anything desired in the majority of courses. The arrangement of dishes, as well

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INTRODUCTION

as the flavors in each dish, are meant to contrast and create counterpoint rather than harmony, much like the music of this era. Scappi’s impact on cooking across Europe was enormous. His recipes were lifted whole and translated in the Spanish cookbook of Diego Granado.59 They show up adapted in Lancelot de Casteau in Liege early in the next century, as well as in Marx Rumpolt in Germany.60 It is perhaps not surprising that few authors even attempt a large comprehensive cookbook until the middle of the next century—although we should make an exception for early seventeenth-century Spain, which produced a number. But the cookbooks written in the latter half of the sixteenth century are of a different nature than these grand courtly cookbooks. They were often devised explicitly for housewives, and often include household remedies, directions for making preserves, and sometimes distillation. The English Good Huswifes Handmaide for the Kitchin of 1588 is typical of this genre.61 It may have been written for a woman living in the country, because wild game is called for in some of the recipes. Otherwise the proportions suggest a moderate-sized family. A meal of mutton or capon is often cooked as a one-pot meal in a pipkin, a small three-legged ceramic vessel that goes into hot embers in a fireplace. Spices are called for in a few recipes, as well as sugar, but they are used with a sparing hand. Many of the dishes are simply boiled or stewed, but it is clear the household also would have had an oven since there are many tarts and pies, and small white manchet breads. A similar book, The Good Hous-wives Treasurie, appeared in the same year, and again, the recipes are simple and straightforward, homey and nothing extravagant. This recipe for fritters is typical: To Make Fritters: Take a little faire warme water, as much Sack, and take half flower half bread, mingle them altogether: then take five or six egges and break therin whites and all, a little nutmeg, Pepper and salt, and cut in Appells very small: then take a faire skillet with Suet and let it boyle on the fier and so put the batter in it.62 Thomas Dawson’s The Good Huswife’s Jewell of 1596 is similar in scope and intent, and all these cookbooks point the way toward an efflorescence of culinary literature aimed at housewives in the following centuries, often written by women.63

INTRODUCTION

27

The first cookbook with a woman’s name attached was produced in 1553 in Germany, penned by Sabina Welserin.64 It was not published in her lifetime, but nonetheless gives a detailed description of what would have been a fairly wealthy bourgeois household in Augsburg. There are recipes for sausages, preserving game, smoking pork or beef, and instructions on how to keep beer from going sour; so one gets an image of a real working household. Yet the recipes are not entirely provincial: there is also ravioli stuffed with spinach and cheese—properly cooked for as long as it takes to soft boil an egg. We also find the humble stockfish, homey puddings and tarts, and holiday fritters. What is perhaps most remarkable is that some of the recipes are attributed to chefs or people who taught her how to make various dishes, like “Jörg Fugger’s Smoked Tongue.” Like few other books of these centuries, we have here a working manuscript that seems to have been used by its owner. Another cookbook was written by Anna Weckerin, whose husband Johann Jacob was a prominent physician/alchemist in Basel. Not surprisingly, much of the focus here is food for convalescents.65 It was published as Ein Köstlich new Kochbuch (A Delicious New Cookbook, 1598), which went through many editions through the next century, with significant additions added by others. Fittingly, the book opens with a recipe for almond milk, which is perhaps an ingredient that ties together this enormous body of culinary literature, for it differs little from the directions in the Libellus written three centuries earlier with which this introduction opened. A pound or two of almonds are crushed, soaked in hot water, and strained. The milk may be flavored with rosewater or sweetened, but is used exactly the same way as it would have been in the Middle Ages, cooked into various recipes. In many respects, despite the major economic shifts and regional differences, these cookbooks all fit together in many ways. Though spices had begun to lose dominance, and dairy products and lighter meats came to the fore, the same basic ingredients and procedures were still used, and the recipes were not drastically different. The major changes would come with the adoption of New World plants like tomatoes and potatoes, the arrival of new drinks like coffee and tea, and the widespread use of distilled alcohol, which in the late Middle Ages and even into the sixteenth century was still considered medicine. In a certain sense the ingredients that

28

INTRODUCTION

would truly change European cuisine were introduced in the sixteenth century. They were by and large indulgence foods, considered highly desirable yet dangerous, among which we should include chocolate and tobacco. But it would take the colonial plantations and mercantile economy of the seventeenth century to make these products common, everyday articles of consumption. Hopefully this broad overview has given some general outlines of culinary culture and the vast resources available for food history in this period. The chapters that follow will delve more deeply into particular aspects of the food culture of the late Middle Ages and Renaissance from a variety of perspectives, examining topics such as food systems, crises, politics, and eating out and dining within families; as well as topics like food in art and food for health.

CHAPTER ONE

Food Production allen j. grieco

While food production in late medieval and early modern Europe1 was undeniably conditioned by the growing and rearing conditions that the environment provided, it was also influenced by social and cultural factors, which left a deep and lasting imprint; an imprint that has persisted, in large part, to recent times. Environment and climate imposed themselves on the extended parts of the population who lived barely above subsistence level, but for the upper strata of the population, environment and climate were less decisive factors. The higher levels of society often disregarded what might have been more rational and high-yield food production solutions in favor of low-yield foodstuffs that were particularly in demand among the more privileged. For example, in central Italy durum wheat was sown continuously, despite low yields and problems of hybridizing. Cattle rearing for veal or beef consumption in Mediterranean climates, where pasture has never been available year-round, is another example of upper-class models of consumption. In both cases, production for elite consumption was heavily influenced by the need to satisfy culturally determined requirements. Although the lower strata of society was not necessarily excluded, its access to such foods was inevitably restricted. Much of the European continent shared a diet predominantly made up of bread (mostly made with wheat flour); wine (from grapes), which could be substituted with beer or ale;

30

FOOD PRODUCTION

meat of various kinds; and vegetables. These elements composed a large part of all continental diets, albeit in different proportions according to social classes and geographic locations. This relative uniformity is all the more remarkable when considering that the European continent can be divided into five basic climate regimes, each with a substantially different potential for food production. Two of these were by far the most important, given the demographic distribution of the population in this period. The northernmost climate zones—the taiga and the tundra—were very sparsely inhabited.2 The fifth climate zone—prevailing in the southeastern part of the continent and comprised of grassland characterized by hot summers, cold winters, and abundant rainfall—was inhabited by nomadic peoples. As with the first two climate areas, the grasslands constituted a marginal reality in terms of population concentration. The food habits of the nomadic peoples associated with this part of Eurasia in this historical period remain dramatically understudied.3 Demographically speaking, the two remaining climate areas—the Mediterranean and the areas of Europe in which deciduous forests prevailed—are much more important in this period. The former, characterized by warm temperatures and rainy periods concentrated in autumn and winter, covers the coastal areas of the Mediterranean basin, the Italian peninsula, and what today is Greece. The latter comprises much of northern and eastern Europe, and has distinct seasons, warm summers, and cold winters. Following the groundbreaking work of Georges Duby,4 historians have argued that medieval and early modern Europe can be subdivided into two distinct food cultures: a Roman and Mediterranean culture and a northern and Germanic culture. In the course of the transition between late antiquity and the Middle Ages, these two cultures met and confronted each other in a process of osmotic acculturation that has never really ended.5 According to this theory, the Greco-Roman civilization that spread throughout the Mediterranean basin practiced a food production system centered around wheat cultivation and arboriculture, which focused on the grapevine and olive tree; thus bringing about the time-honored triad of wine, olive oil, and bread. To these three basic elements were added small amounts of meat (largely mutton and goat) and more substantial quantities of cheese (produced by the same flocks that provided the meat supply). In opposition to this model, the northern food culture practiced by semi-nomadic, Germanic,

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and Celtic populations was based on hunting, fishing, the gathering of wild fruit, and the extensive raising of animals (particularly pigs) that grazed on the fallow lands and forests of continental Europe. The predominantly carnivorous diet that characterized the northern mode of production was supplemented with vegetable gardens and some wheat. Although wheat was not unknown, it was never grown as extensively as in the south, remaining “sporadic and intermittent, destined above all to the making of beer.”6 Massimo Montanari points out that, in the transition between Late Antiquity and the High Middle Ages, these two models merged to a certain extent and produced what he calls a “mixed model,” incorporating elements from each. Thus, for example, viticulture and the cultivation of grain were promoted in more northern climes thanks to the fact that bread and wine had taken on a central role in the symbolism and ritual of the Christian religion. Olive oil underwent a similar development, even though its production could not be pushed as far north as that of the wine grape, which was grown in central England and southern Scandinavia in the fourteenth century. The fact that olive oil replaced animal fats during Lent and fast days stimulated a long-distance commerce of this foodstuff, which remains to be studied in greater depth.7 Montanari posits that the southern model was probably embraced by the upper classes in the north, who adopted a consumption of bread and wine that accompanied the Christianization of these parts of Europe. At the same time, the reverse happened in Mediterranean Europe, where the upper classes adopted, among other things, the consumption of large quantities of meat. Although this is a tempting way to see things, above all because of its schematic clarity, it does raise a variety of questions. First, how closely does the model fit the evidence that recent work has uncovered? Second, how much does such a model owe to our modern notion of the Mediterranean diet, a concept formulated by the American scientist Ancel Keys and popularized since the 1950s? Third, and perhaps most important of all, how was food production concretely influenced by the consumption patterns of different social classes? Work since the 1990s has uncovered evidence concerning production and consumption patterns in Europe that undermines the neat structural model, whose tidy oppositions do not bear up to closer scrutiny. There are a number of significant areas where the opposition between a northern

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FOOD PRODUCTION

and southern model reveals weaknesses. For example, the undoubtedly attractive idea that pig rearing was a custom characteristic to Germanic and Celtic peoples is contradicted by archeological and iconographic evidence that indicates intensive activity in this field in Roman Italy. In fact, osteological evidence shows that these animals were quite common in the Mediterranean and were actually raised in two different ways: both free range (producing relatively small individuals) as well as on farms where they were most probably stabled, producing much larger specimens.8 This latter practice almost certainly disappeared during the Middle Ages, when archaeological remains suggest that there was a reversal to extensive rearing,9 based on free-roaming animals in oak forests that were often measured in terms of the number of people they could feed. While the polarized schema of north-south food production relegates arboriculture and fruit production to transalpine areas, research has also shown that this type of production was very advanced in Roman times, judging from the many cultivars of different fruit they grew.10 This wealth of varieties diminished throughout the course of the High Middle Ages, when many fruit cultivars seem to have been lost, only to regain importance and expand significantly in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.11 Fruit had a somewhat particular status during the Middle Ages and the early modern period due to the medical theories current at the time; according to which, fruit belonged to the category of foods that did not nourish the body, but were rather a kind of condiment. Fruit was thus perceived as a somewhat unnecessary item in diets, which did not prevent it from becoming a much sought-after luxury that commanded high prices, especially when out of season. The southern interest in fruit cultivation is also apparent in the visual representations of the medieval Labors of the Months, where this somewhat specialized production appears in 60 percent of the Italian twelve-month cycles (sometimes even twice) and in only three cases in the French cycles.12 By the sixteenth century, fruit growing had become a fashionable undertaking, possibly beginning in Italy and spreading subsequently to the rest of the continent. The late sixteenth- and seventeenthcentury collections of fruit trees maintained by the Medicis in Florence, as well as those cultivated by other noble and ruling families in Europe, are a signal of how fruit had shrugged off the negative image of the Middle Ages and grown into a full-fledged luxury foodstuff—despite the bad press

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33

it still got from doctors. Fruit had such a success that it even became a subject of paintings, such as those of the Italian painter Bartolomeo Bimbi (1648–1730), who recorded in great detail the marvels produced in the princely orchards of Tuscany. Recent work on the collections of the French court and the Netherlands show to what extent the interest for fruit trees and their produce spread throughout the continent, giving rise to increasingly sophisticated horticultural practices and pruning techniques. At the same time, interest grew for new varieties, selected to satisfy the increasingly exigent market that had developed for both fresh and candied fruit.13 Because the olive grows more or less exclusively in the Mediterranean basin, it is usually associated with Mediterranean diets. Yet olive oil presents a complex and nuanced case when examined more closely. The idea that the consumption of animal fat is an incontrovertible sign of a northern European food culture is, in actual fact, rather hard to argue. Although olive oil production was mostly limited to a few important sites in the Mediterranean—such as the area south of Naples, the countryside around Lucca, and small areas in Southern France—it is important to point out that the oil they produced was meant to cater to a specific and relatively limited consumption, which persisted well into the early modern period. In fact, olive oil was consumed exclusively during Lent and on fast days when Lenten food was prescribed by the church. In other words, animal fats were the most common fats consumed in both northern and southern Europe in most of the period under examination. This practice is made explicit in Italian cookbooks of the fourteenth to seventeenth centuries, where recipes calling for olive oil range from a maximum of 26.7 percent to a minimum of 6.7 percent.14 The limited production and consumption of olive oil observed in southern Europe would only begin to pick up in the late sixteenth century (expanding in the eighteenth century), when vegetables and salads became fashionable in upper-class diets. This new interest in vegetables and salads first developed in the Italian peninsula and in Spain before spreading slowly to northern Europe. The resulting change in eating habits brought with it an observable expansion of olive cultivation and an increased presence of the olive grove in the Mediterranean landscape, on a scale that had not been known since Roman times.15 To what extent does the idea of a north-south opposition, synonymous with a Roman world as opposed to a Germanic/Celtic one, actually mirror

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FOOD PRODUCTION

the much more recent debate on a Mediterranean diet in contrast with a northern European/North American one? The characteristic traits of both modern diets are much the same as those of the past: oil versus animal fats, carbohydrates of various kinds, and small amounts of proteins versus large amounts of animal proteins. The so-called Mediterranean diet is, in fact, a term coined and promoted by the American scientist Ancel Keys (1904– 2004) in the 1950s. This term is used today as a shorthand for a dietary formula seen as necessary for a healthy lifestyle, but the elements composing this diet are hardly consonant with the dietary habits of late medieval and Renaissance Europe. The danger is to try and fit European diets of the past into a model that is ultimately anachronistic, reflecting parameters and interpretations of our own age rather than relying on historical evidence. A less anachronistic approach might be to examine how food production and linked consumption patterns were perceived in the past. A particularly appropriate source for this kind of investigation are the iconographic cycles, called Labors of the Months, which were sculpted, portrayed in stained glass windows, and reproduced in manuscripts and illustrated calendars throughout much of continental Europe. While the cycles are often associated with a somewhat earlier period of European history, these calendars continued to be widely reproduced until at least the end of the sixteenth century. In her monumental work on the subject, Perrine Mane16 has shown that these cycles did not simply repeat a kind of deep-rooted topos or rhetorical commonplace, impermeable to varying local conditions. Seventy-five percent of French cycles show the wheat harvest taking place in July. The remaining 25 percent, from the northern part of the country, show the harvest taking place in August; thus reflecting the somewhat cooler climates of this area. In Italy, on the other hand, 60 percent of these scenes are situated in the month of June and only 40 percent in the month of July.17 Ultimately, all the European cycles stress the importance of wheat, which often occupies several scenes in any given calendar. Wheat cultivation begins with sowing (represented in almost half of the cycles), continues with the tilling of fields (less often depicted), reaping (represented in all cycles examined for both countries), and threshing (appearing in 76% of the French cycles and 54% of the Italian ones). The importance of wheat production is underscored by the fact that one-third of the French and two thirds of the Italian cycles depict this cereal in at least three out of the

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35

twelve calendar months. The significance accorded to wheat in the Labors of the Months is clearly not just an iconographic artifice; it is also borne out by data that has been collected for decades on wheat and bread consumption throughout most of the European continent. Those few areas in which the cultivation and consumption of wheat was not prevalent struck contemporary travelers as anomalous. When Enea Silvio Piccolomini, the future Pope Pius II, visited Scotland in the middle of the fifteenth century, he described the “wonder” that some loaves of bread provoked among the “barbarians, who had never seen . . . white bread”!18 In much the same way, sixteenth-century Spaniards and other Europeans exploring and settling in South America all draw attention to the hardship of living without bread. On a continent where the indigenous populations was deemed barbaric (as barbaric as were the Scottish to Enea Piccolimini), the distinction between civilization and barbarism was largely due to the lack of bread, an item that the Europeans considered the staff of life. The role that wheat and bread played in the diets of Europeans of this period is hard to exaggerate, particularly among the lower classes. The farther one descends the social ladder, the greater the amount of bread consumed, and the greater the percentage of income devoted to buying bread. In the south of France in the late fourteenth century, rural workers spent as much as half of their food budget on bread. This state of affairs corresponded to lower-class food budgets in Italy at the same time, even though the extreme volatility of wheat prices was such that it is not always easy to determine what would have been considered normal prices. The work of historians on other parts of Europe has shown that it would be wrong to think that the high incidence of bread in diets, and the fact that percentage variations in consumption were directly linked to social differences, was somehow a prerogative of southern Europe. Christopher Dyer,19 for example, has shown that bread played an important role in England, even though the figures he has come up with suggest a more precocious movement towards diets where bread no longer played such a significant role amongst the lower classes.20 While the diets of harvest workers were dominated by bread from the middle of the thirteenth century to the first decades of the fourteenth century (ranging from 41% to 49% of foodstuffs consumed), these figures begin to slip in the following decades. From 1326 to 1424 in England, bread gradually retreats from the lion’s share of the

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FOOD PRODUCTION

food budget from a high of 39 percent to a low of only 15 percent. This conspicuous drop is partly due to a relative drop in the cost of wheat during this period as compared to other food prices. In fact, as Dyer points out, calculating food allowances in terms of calories rather than by monetary value changes the picture somewhat. In the middle of the thirteenth century, bread accounted for almost 50 percent of the food budget and 74 percent of calories consumed, whereas by 1424 bread accounted for only 15 percent of the budget, but nevertheless represented a very consistent 40 percent of the calories consumed by English labourers.21 The second most important item in the Labors of the Months was, not surprisingly, the grapevine and its produce. Rare are the cases where the tasks associated with winemaking appeared in only one month of the year. Many of the cycles make room for at least two separate tasks out of the four possible activities associated with the vineyard: pruning, hoeing, picking grapes, and making wine. No less than 40 percent of the Italian cycles (and 15% of the French) dedicate as much as three months to these tasks, while in some cases—such as Parma and Cremona in central Italy—they occupy as many as four out of the twelve months. The importance accorded to the production of wine reflects the place that wine held in the diets of people in all areas where grapevines could be grown, or where wine could be transported without incurring prohibitive costs.22 The high levels of consumption observed in the areas where wine was readily available at low cost ranged from a minimum of 66 to more than 105 gallons per year per capita, including women and children.23 Such levels of consumption could represent an expenditure of 30 percent or more of the overall food budget of the working classes. According to recent studies, a human body weighing 145–55 pounds can metabolize as many as 700 calories per day from alcohol, which implies that wine provided a significant contribution to the quest for calories. Where wine could not be produced or was not available at reasonable prices, beer played much the same role,24 both as a drink and as a source of calories. The consumption figures calculated for beer are remarkably similar to those mentioned previously, varying from around 53 gallons per year per capita to as many as 92 gallons or more.25 A clear delimitation of the wine- and beer-drinking areas of the continent probably never existed; in many border areas, these two alcoholic drinks were not mutually

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37

exclusive, even though they tended to appeal to different social groups. The difference in appeal was due in part to the different cost of each beverage in the areas where both were available. A well-studied example is that of England, where the local wine production disappeared during the course of the fourteenth century with the onset of a colder climate, only to be replaced with more expensive, imported wine. If one can speak of a border between northern beer drinking areas and southern wine drinking areas, it would seem that, during the course of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, this border moved further south.26 It is not clear, however, whether this was due to the appeal of hopped beer, or to the movement of wine production to southern areas of the continent as a consequence of the increasingly cold climate. The image of a civilized and upper-class wine versus a lowerclass, barbaric beer was already current in antiquity.27 This juxtaposition is misleading, however, since it hides the fact that the distinction involves class differences within a social group rather than culturally distinct geographic zones. A good example of the different social connotations these two drinks had in England in the early seventeenth century is provided by a dialogue, or play, first published in London in 1629. Here, in conclusion to a debate on the merits of the different types of drinks, a parson advocating for water intervenes and declares that: Wine, shall be in most request among Courtiers, Gallants, Gentlemen and Poetical wits, Qui melioris luti hominess, being of a refined mould . . . You Beere, shall be in most grace with the Citizens, as being a more stayed liquor fit for them that purpose retirement and gravitie . . . Yow Ale I remit to the Countrie, as more fit to live where you were bred: your credit shall not be inferior, for people of all sorts shall desire your acquaintance.28 Bread and wine or beer were basic foodstuffs for a majority of the European population, supplemented by the foods that were classified as companage, a word derived from the Latin companagium (literally, “with bread”). Other than bread, the most important solid food was meat. Different kinds of meat were produced for the food market in response to a high demand, not least because of the prestige meat conferred on those who could afford to eat it. Although meat production on the European

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FOOD PRODUCTION

continent was quite diversified, the Labors of the Months are most attentive to pigs, which are often depicted during the slaughtering and/or autumnal pasturing phase of their lives. Some 50 percent of the French calendars depict both of these scenes, while in Italy the presence of pigs in these cycles shrinks to a mere 17 percent. Calendars portraying cattle or sheep raising are practically nonexistent: there are only two examples. However, it would be incorrect to conclude that pork was quantitatively the most important meat to be consumed during the period under examination. In fact, in the case of pork there was a significant evolution. In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, when these cycles developed as a genre, the consumption of pork was distinctly higher in relation to other types of meat. This situation changed in the Renaissance and early modern periods. While pork still played a role in the form of salted meat (fresh pork was a luxury item highly discouraged by medical authorities of the time), it was replaced with mutton in Mediterranean regions,29 and with beef in the northern regions of the continent.30 This model constitutes a rule-of-thumb generalization but varies in different regions, as has been shown by recent work published on meat consumption in the Iberian peninsula.31 Meat consumption figures for the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries show that this commodity was relatively scarce in both Italy and more generally the northern reaches of the Mediterranean basin compared to Germany and other northern European countries. Per capita meat consumption in Italy did not come anywhere near the figures that have been proposed by the early and not entirely reliable work on Germany by Wilhelm Abel, who estimated the consumption of beef alone to have reached about 220 pounds per capita per annum.32 This high figure was questioned by Louis Stouff, but may not be entirely erroneous, since almost the same amount of meat (224 lbs per capita per annum) was consumed on royal properties in Sweden in 1573.33 Although this level of meat consumption came at a time when much of Europe had emerged from a pattern of low meat consumption to greater meat availability in the fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries,34 such figures suggest significant differences between northern and southern consumption patterns. Studies of meat consumption in England during the mid-fourteenth century show that this commodity was readily available, since even the peasantry managed to have “a daily allowance, on meat days, in the region of

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39

½ a lb.”35 On a yearly basis, excluding the six weeks of Lent, and fast days like Friday, Saturday, and vigils when meat was not eaten, this meant that more than 100 pounds of meat were available to a social group that was far from affluent. This was much less meat than the amount consumed in Germany and Sweden but, considering the social class examined, still more meat than was average for the Mediterranean countries. In the Italian peninsula, such levels of meat consumption were reached only in regions where the demographic pressure was low enough to allow for extensive grazing. For example, Sicily in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries had a small population and abundant pasture land, and meat consumption was correspondingly high. Research on Sicily for this period has shown that consumption varied from a minimum of 35 pounds per year to more than 88 pounds. Agricultural workers ate meat at least three times a week. By the mid-sixteenth century, however, conditions had changed. Although in much of Europe meat production resulted in higher consumption figures, exactly the opposite was happening in Sicily. The allowance of agricultural workers no longer included any meat at all; meat was replaced with cheese and salted fish.36 Such shifts serve to remind us that general trends observed on a continental level did not necessarily reflect more regional trends. In the town of Carpentras, in Provence, the per capita consumption of meat in 1472–1473 was calculated to have been only 57 pounds per person a year37; the same amount is found a century later at Valladolid in Spain.38 In Italy, per capita consumption figures are hard to come by. Those proposed by Emilio Fiumi more than fifty years ago for the central Italian cities of Prato in the 1320s and Florence in 133839 (almost 88 lbs per person) are clearly too high, since he did not make allowances for the much smaller size of medieval animals. The more reliable figures calculated by Giampiero Nigro for Prato at the end of the fourteenth century indicate, in fact, a much more contained consumption of just over 30 pounds per person.40 Even such problematic and fragmentary information conveys the fact that meat was a rare commodity in most of the Mediterranean area. However, a recent article shows how certain parts of Spain (in particular the Castilian plateau) produced and consumed beef, while the parts of the country with a more Mediterranean climate were more inclined to the production and consumption of mutton. The oft-repeated generalization,

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FOOD PRODUCTION

that beef was predominant in Northern Europe where pastures were more easily available, while southern Europe was a producer and consumer of mutton, is only partially true.41 Social and economic differences played an important role in consumption patterns. As Ramón Banegas López points out, Mediterranean climate zone cities such as Rome, Venice, and Bologna had an abnormally high consumption of veal and beef compared to mutton. This consumption pattern reflects the high proportion of upper-class consumers in these locations,42 and can be applied to other Mediterranean cities as of the second half of the fifteenth century.43 The concluding remarks of this brief overview of the production and consumption of food in late medieval and early modern Europe must mention, even if briefly, the production and consumption of vegetables. Vegetables were grown in gardens of varying sizes all over the continent. Although many of these gardens were small and private, large-scale vegetable cultivation was undertaken by important institutions such as monasteries and hospitals. Unfortunately, not much scholarly attention has been dedicated to this topic; in part because vegetable gardens generated negligible economic yields and, consequently, a sparse paper trail. However, the tempting glimpses of market scenes—such as the marvelous late fifteenth-century fresco at the castle of Issogne in Val d’Aosta, depicting men and women selling onions, garlic, leeks, cabbage, turnips, and other such staples—suggests that vegetables were not produced exclusively for in-house consumption and in some cases constituted a modest but important source of income. Private vegetable gardens in England might have actually declined in the later Middle Ages, due to greater reliance on readily available market vegetables.44 There are almost no reliable statistics on vegetables consumed by the lower ranks of society which, if one is to trust literary evidence, probably consumed more vegetables than any other social group. It is easier to track vegetable consumption in the diets of the more affluent, thanks to the profusion of records that were kept of all food expenditures. In such milieus, we see that the amount of money spent on less socially prestigious vegetables was always far outstripped by the money spent on fruit, which accounted for more purchases and two or three times as much money spent. This phenomenon can be observed all over the continent, beginning with Italy, Spain and France; at least when the accounts are detailed enough to

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separate fruits and vegetables. Dietary budgets show that in the wealthiest strata of the population the expenditure on vegetables was usually less than 3 percent of the total, while fruit could easily account for 7–10 percent or more. While fruit—both fresh and dried—was a more expensive commodity than vegetables, the frequency of acquisitions and total expenditure imply a greater consumption of this delicacy. The Florentine Priors, who governed the city in the late fourteenth century, spent more than 9 percent of their budget on fruit and only 1.9 percent on vegetables.45 The expenditures of the Todos santos confraternity, a very upper-class group of notables in Valladolid, Spain, parallels the Florentine results.46 Vegetables seem to practically disappear from the diet of this confraternity, although we do not have exact percentages. Adeline Rucquoi, who studied the Todos santos, even comes to doubt her sources and points out that the results are in stark contrast with the flourishing vegetable market of the town. Fruit, on the other hand, commands about 8 percent of this upper-class Spanish food budget, a figure that is very much in line with the percentages observed in Florence. Among the merchant classes, percentages show that vegetables have a more dominant place in diets, while expenditures devoted to fruit shrink considerably. The fruit and vegetable consumption of a branch office of Tuscan merchants residing in Valencia in 1404–1405 demonstrates this phenomenon. In this case, vegetables account for 3.6 percent of the food budget (more than double that of the Florentine priors), while the money spent on fruit sinks to 3.4 percent of the total. This trend likely continued into the lower strata of society, where the consumption of vegetables would seem to have overtaken fruit, even though we do not have enough hard facts to fully substantiate this assertion.47 In conclusion, it is not an easy task to account for the food production of the European continent without taking into consideration the issue of consumption. If there are any shared traits in such a diversified geographic area they are due to culturally determined factors as much as they are attributable to the specifics of climate and soil. The Mediterranean food system was exported to the rest of the continent via the spread of Christianity. Similarly, northern production models spread to southern Europe via the recurrent invasions of northern peoples. At least one other major factor needs to be taken into account whenever discussing consumption patterns

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FIGURE 1.1: Comparison of meals eaten by laborers and nobility served by the Albergo

della Stella in Prato (1396–1397). Food groups are shown as percentages of the total price of the meal.

and their ultimate impact on food production. Class and income differences weighed heavily in an age where periodic food shortages (only partially overcome after the plague of 1348 and regularly recurring as of the second half of the fifteenth century) did not allow for much dietary choice among a majority of the population. How else can one explain the differences between the meals consumed in the tavern of La Stella in a small town north of Florence in the later fourteenth century (see Figure 1.1)? A breakdown of payments made for the food consumed by a group of mule drivers, as compared to the cost of meals consumed by a young Florentine nobleman and his retainers, provides a stark reminder of how different food consumption could be between social classes eating in the very same location. The mule drivers spent 95 percent of their bill on wine, bread and vegetables (salad, leeks and cabbage). The nobleman Tosetto di Pitti

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spent the most on meat (just under 72%), especially luxury items such as quail and partridge; less-prestigious pork (12% of the bill) was probably destined for his retainers.48 Although both meals feature more or less the same food categories, radical differences separate these two groups of consumers: a clear reminder that social and cultural differences cut deeply into the geographically determined similarities.

CHAPTER TWO

Food Systems: Pepper, Herring, and Beer michael krondl

CROSSING BORDERS On April 4, 1561, Alessandro Magno, a young Venetian nobleman, climbed up onto the deck of the Crose as the ship readied to make the 1,550-mile sail to Alexandria. He found his miniscule cabin and carefully locked away the two thousand ducats and the silk cloth he had brought to trade for spices once he reached Egypt. He brought his diary, too, which is why we know so much about his trip. Much had changed in the long-distance trade over the previous two centuries. In the Mediterranean, tubby sailing ships such as the Crose had replaced earlier galleys and other narrow-hulled craft. In the old days, Italian traders would spend the month-long (or longer) trip to Alexandria on deck, with no more than a canopy to keep the elements at bay. Now there was even room for a cabin. In Venice, the nature of the business had also shifted. Over the years, the spice trade in particular had come to be controlled by fewer and richer merchants. But the real game changer for the pepper traders came in 1498 when Vasco da Gama returned from India, his ship loaded with spice. The change in the spice trade was simply

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one symptom of the shift in the power dynamics of Europe in the sixteenth century, from the south to the north, from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic. Still, in other respects, the Venetian spice business was much as it had been since the days of the Crusades. As so many had before him, Alessandro sailed as an independent agent, risking his investors’ money to buy spices and, in particular, pepper. In Alexandria, this turned out to be a multimonth process, as the young trader had to sit on his hands waiting for the caravans to arrive. Because of the timing of the Indian Ocean monsoons, spices usually arrived in Egypt in the late fall. But this year they were late. Not that this seemed to concern the impatient captain of the Crose, who planned to sail on schedule no matter what. So with the local price of pepper increasing day by day and no caravans in sight, Alessandro had to act fast. He decided to change tack and put his ducats into cloves and ginger. And none too soon, for in a few days the ship would sail with more than half a million pounds of spices packed into its hold.1 Back home, Alessandro reported that he sold the spices for roughly twice what he’d paid for them, which meant that the eight-month-long trip had netted him 266 ducats; a fairly modest return on a relatively highrisk investment. A hundred years earlier Venetian traders used to make net profit of some 40 percent from spices; by comparison, Florence’s great Renaissance bankers were getting half that return on their capital.2 From Venice, Alessandro’s spices would have been shipped all over Europe by mule train or oxcart across the Alps and by ship to England, the Low Countries, and as far as the Baltic. By the sixteenth century, not only had the routes of the spice trade shifted, so had the networks of distribution. In the Middle Ages, spices and other long-distance trade goods tended to be exchanged at great fairs, where merchants would assemble for days or weeks to haggle and deal. The best known of these were the fairs held in the towns of Champagne in the early Middle Ages. Later, Geneva, Lyon, and Leipzig would play a similar role, though increasingly these temporary marketplaces were replaced by year-round operations based in strategically located cities. In Alessandro’s day, Antwerp was vastly more important than any fair, not only for spices but also for sugar and other foreign foodstuffs.

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The spices that had started their trip in Indonesia eventually found their way to retail shops in places such as London or Augsburg, where the welltravelled berries and seeds were finally distributed by apothecaries or by way of a dedicated spice shop, the épicérie of France or spezzeria of Italy. (Both terms are still in use, although they refer to more generalized groceries.) Admittedly, the rich and powerful often bought wholesale and in bulk. From 1452 to 1453, the Duke of Buckingham, one of England’s great nobles, bought some two to three hundred pounds of pepper and ginger for his considerable household; but to put that into context, he also bought 1,500 sheep, 250 cattle, and 80 pigs.3 On the other hand, the middling classes bought their spices by the ounce, or less. Seventeenth-century paintings show little paper cones filled with maybe a few ounces of pepper. It is fair to surmise that spices were retailed similarly a hundred years earlier. Of course spices were the most glamorous foodstuffs of the Renaissance. The only other foodstuff to be shipped across the ocean in the fifteenth and sixteenth century was sugar. In its early days, sugar was considered a spice, and was sold along with pepper and galingale at the apothecaries. Here too the Venetians were involved, initially trading sugar produced in the Middle East and Egypt and later setting up their own slave-run plantations on Cyprus and Crete. The boiled-down cane juice was processed back in Venice and sold to satisfy the European sweet tooth. You can still find ancient Venetian confections sweetened with molasses, the mostly unsellable byproduct of the refining process. (Elsewhere, molasses would be fed to slaves and livestock until the early 1600s, when the English figured out that it could be resold as rum.) As in the case of spices, the Portuguese took over much of the production of sugar, first in Madeira beginning around 1450 and then in Brazil some seventy years later. By 1600 Brazil alone was exporting some 10,000 tons.4 Though freeholders operated some of the early Atlantic sugar plantations, eventually the Venetian slave-run regime was adopted, though with one innovation: the almost exclusive use of African slaves. The first slave ships arrived in Brazil in the 1530s; the opening round of the execrable trade that would send human beings across the Atlantic to return with cargos of sugar in the other direction. The Portuguese turned out to be better sailors than businessmen. Unlike the Venetians, they sent the sugar to be refined

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(and further marked up) in Antwerp. From there it travelled in barges up the Rhine and in small sailing ships to the Hansa cities of the Baltic. Yet not every luxury food came from the Orient, and not all food traded over hundreds of miles was a luxury. The most expensive spice then (as now) was saffron, which was cultivated in many parts of Europe (English saffron was highly prized in its day) and transported in sturdy locked boxes to keep out intruding hands. The moneyed classes of northern Europe could show off just as much with less exotic southern luxuries such as raisins, dried figs, almonds, and the sweet wines of Greece and Spain. One particular favorite tipple was Cretan malmsey, which was sweeter and higher in alcohol than the wines of France or Germany. That meant that it travelled better, lasted longer, and accordingly demanded a high premium over its thin, acidic, northern rivals. Even in sunny Florence, Chianti went for one florin for a 26 gallons in 1398, while malmsey cost ten or twelve.5 All the same, the trade in luxury goods was dwarfed by the transshipment of much more mundane foods: barrels of ordinary wine, beer and olive oil; wheels of cheese; sacks of macaroni; bundles of dried cod and tubs of salted herring; but most especially grain and salt. Long before they ventured round the Cape of Good Hope, Lisbon merchantmen cut their teeth shipping salt to Flanders and the Baltic ports. Salt was indispensable to the meat-fetishizing northern European food culture. The very wealthy few could afford (and preferred) fresh meat, but for everyone else salt-preserved meat (or its Lenten substitute, fish) was much more typical. There were two sources of salt, then as now. Salt could be mined, as it was in the city of Salzburg (literally “salt fortress”). However, the white mineral was a relatively low-value, high-weight commodity, which made it uneconomical to transport over great distances, at least by land. Sea salt, which was mostly evaporated in places where the Mediterranean sun shone, was often cheaper, despite the distance, because it could be sent by ship. Grain normally did not travel quite as far. The Venetians, for example, depended mostly on the wheat from Apulia to supply the city, although in case of crop failures in Italy wheat was shipped in from as far as the Black Sea. But Venice was always unusual in this respect. In one study of English market towns around 1600, grain seldom traveled more than 10 miles overland, and half that was more typical. No matter the commodity, transport

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was expensive. As late as the eighteenth century, the French economist Richard Cantillon noted, “the carriage of wines from Burgundy to Paris often costs more than the wine itself does on the spot.”6 Yet even while land-based transport did not see much advance in technology—or decline in cost—until the arrival of the railroads in the nineteenth century, shipping by sea became ever more efficient and economical from the beginning of the second millennium right through the introduction of steam. According to some estimates, land transport cost ten times as much as carriage by sea before the first glimmer of the Industrial Revolution.7 An early innovation in sea transport, which had become common by the early Middle Ages, was the cog: a large, broad ship with a single squarerigged mass and a single rudder set on the sternpost. Not only were these ships more capacious than their predecessors, they were stable enough to weather the storms of the North Sea. This gave them a critical advantage over river transport, since the merchantmen could avoid the extortionate tolls set by just about every jurisdiction on virtually every river and canal in Continental Europe. In the Mediterranean, cogs only began to replace the earlier lateen-rigged ships after 1303, when a Basque cog piloted by pirates showed up in Italy.8 By the 1400s, the Portuguese had begun to combine the Mediterranean triangular lateen sail with the northern square rig to gain ever-greater flexibility. The result was the caravela redonda and later the larger nau (or naõ), also called a carrack; ships that allowed the Portuguese and others to travel half way round the world. Columbus’s Niña and Pinta were caravela redondas and the Santa Maria was a smallish nau. Regions and town came to specialize in certain products because they were on the sea routes. The island of Crete, for example, was not only known for its wine but it also became a noted cheese exporter in the fifteenth century. Cheese, biscuits, wine, salt pork, and beans were the staple diet of Venetian sailors. It is not clear that Cretan cheese was especially tastier than other kinds, but it did have an ideal location on the eastern Mediterranean transportation corridors and, even more importantly, Venetian capital to stimulate production. The cheese became a kind of Eastern Mediterranean currency, exchanged in the Syria and Egypt for spices and other exotics.9 When it came to wine, most did not have the prestige (or cost) of Cretan malmsey; but no matter where, location was

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everything. Thus coastal Bordeaux, a manageable sail from London and Bristol, shipped some ten million gallons of wine to England annually in the early fourteenth century.10 The port city of Hamburg specialized in beer, though it was the savvy merchants of Amsterdam who raked in the profits in selling it to their fellow Dutchmen. Around 1365, an impressive 2,500 tons, or about third of Hamburg’s total beer export, was shipped through Amsterdam each month.11 One critical motivation for intra-European trade in foodstuffs before the Reformation was the dietary regime of the Catholic Church. According to the rules, meat and dairy were off-limits not only during the forty days of Lent but also on Fridays and many other fast days—adding up to about a third of the year in all. The system, designed in the Mediterranean, with its temperate climate and year-round fishing season, naturally did not take into account the very different conditions north of the Alps. But it could not have been better designed for the southern producers and exporters of olive oil and almonds. (The first was needed for frying on fast days and the second for producing almond milk, the ubiquitous dairy substitute of the Middle Ages.) There was even profit to be made in not shipping oil to the captive market of transalpine Europe. The Catholic Church made money hand over fist by allowing individuals to buy indulgences so they could eat butter year-round. Few were as fortunate as Anne of Brittany, who received a dispensation from the Holy See upon her marriage to Charles VIII in 1491; not only for herself but for her entire duchy to eat their beloved butter every day. In 1495 the same exemption was granted to Bohemia, Germany, and Hungary, and later all of France, although in these cases the indulgences cost a pretty penny.12 It is little wonder that Martin Luther and his fellow travelers wanted no part of it. Getting an exemption for eating meat was not as common, with the result that there was a vibrant demand for fish across Christendom. In inland Europe, the Church’s dietary restrictions stimulated the constructions of fish farms, huge in scale in some cases. Today, in southern Bohemia, there are more than 500 man-made carp ponds covering more than 28 square miles, many dating from the Middle Ages and Renaissance. There were already some twenty ponds by the first half of the fifteenth century, while many more were constructed throughout the next 120 years.13 Fresh fish, of course, needed to be consumed on the spot, but dried, smoked, or pickled

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sea fish could be traded great distances. Basque fishermen ventured as far as the Grand Banks, perhaps as early as the fifteenth century, and dried their codfish on the rocky shores of Newfoundland before re-crossing the Atlantic.14 In the fourteenth century, Dutch sailors honed their skill in the North Sea, netting vast shoals of herring that were processed on board by soaking them in barrels of brine. Amsterdam’s second claim to fame (after the beer) was as the herring wholesaler of Europe. Amsterdammers boasted that their city was built on herring bones.15 According to one theory, the city’s entry into the spice trade (its third claim to fame) in the waning years of the sixteenth century was the result of the decline in the herring catch during the 1500s, which had been caused by climate change, over-fishing, or both. It is also true that the herring business was not what it used to be once Martin Luther’s ideas took hold and Protestants gave up their fast days. In England the Tudor monarchs tried to maintain meatless days, a so-called political Lent, in order to keep the whole fishing industry from collapsing––admittedly with little success.16

TO MARKET, TO MARKET International trade, whether in pepper or in herring, was a demanding, risky business requiring not only capital but also a network of suppliers, factors, and financiers. Once a product reached the marketplace, however, a completely different constellation of merchants, shopkeepers, and market women took over food distribution. A market woman did not need letters of credit or even an oxcart to transport her goods. Typically, she could make do with little more than a bench and a few baskets and earthenware pots to do her selling. Men may have had a near monopoly on long distance trade and wholesaling, but at the local level it was women who did most of the buying and selling. In a fascinating study of women’s work, Working Women in Renaissance Germany, Merry Wiesner studied the marketing conditions in several south German towns around 1500.17 These are the kinds of markets you still find all over Europe, with their sharp elbows and hustle and bustle, with their piles of fruits and vegetables, their sausage-festooned stands, and their shady peddlers. In smaller towns they are still often held on the main square right in front of the church, as they were in ages past.

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Five hundred years ago, it was women who were in charge of virtually all retail sales here: from ladles to leeks, used shoes to schnapps. In some cases, the market woman was reselling goods bought from wholesalers or other sources, but more often she was simply hawking excess fruit or vegetables from her garden, or medicinal herbs and mushrooms she had gathered in the forest. Interestingly, in a town like Strasbourg, the market regulations distinguished between the two forms of sale. Only those reselling goods were legally considered businesswomen. Almost by definition, what distinguished a town from a village was that it had a market. The bigger the town, the more markets. In medieval Prague, for example, some half-dozen markets were dedicated to fruit, charcoal, livestock, horses, and so on. But even smaller towns could make a name for themselves (and attract business from far and wide) with a specialized market. Of the 800 or so markets held regularly in Elizabethan England, at least 300 confined themselves to a single type of commodity like grain, fish, swine, cheese, or malt, just to name a few.18 Given the importance of the markets to the wealth and health of both town and country, it is not surprising that they were heavily regulated. There were rules about opening hours, permitted locations and size of booths, prices, cleanliness, product quality, purity, and size. Bread was almost always supposed to be sold in standard sizes and made with designated types of grain. In the case of certain specialty goods, though, the rules were even more detailed. In 1417 the council of the Dutch city of Deventer prescribed just what could go into Deventerkoek, a kind of gingerbread for which the town was renowned. Anyone who deviated from the recipe was faced with an astronomical fine of 666 guilders.19 To discourage unscrupulous merchants many towns set up officially sanctioned scales, right in the middle of the marketplace. To limit competition in the south German towns of Wiesner’s study, each woman could run only one stand selling only one kind of merchandise. Goods were segregated by kind to make it easier to for the authorities to control compliance with the rules, but also for reasons of hygiene. The smelly fish market was typically confined to a remote corner of the marketplace if not moved altogether to the edge of town. Men were usually the ones to do the fishing, but it was up to the fishwife to prepare and sell them. She might also sell salted or preserved fish brought in by cart or barge,

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though here too there were local ordinances to limit how much she could sell. Inland communities feared that competition from cheap imported herring would drive local fishermen out of business. Not surprisingly, butchers were heavily regulated as well. Not only did all meat (except beef) have to be sold the day it was slaughtered, the butcher was required to prove its origin, and different kinds of meat had to be kept separate. The butcher’s premises and scales were supposed to be inspected on a regular basis to safeguard the customers. They seemed to need it. In Munich, 90 percent of the cases brought before the court responsible for market regulations involved butchers or bakers. The most common offence was selling house to house, a practice that made it almost impossible to supervise the merchandise. Except in large cities like Paris or Venice, markets were not a daily occurrence. In smaller towns they might take place only once a week. As towns grew, many of these temporary stalls turned into permanent shops. These too came under regulatory authority of the local lord or town council. They were also controlled by their own guild regulations. In most European cities only a guild master could set up shop producing and selling foods. (Interestingly, a few European cities like Nuremberg forbade the formation of guilds, fearing their potential power.) Thus in early fourteenth-century London there was a guild of fishmongers, butchers, cheesemongers, bakers, pepperers (spice sellers), vintners, and bakers, among others. In the much larger city of Paris, the author of the Ménagier de Paris (a kind of how-to guide to medieval household management from the late 1300s) describes the arrangements for a wedding which called on the services of a bread baker, pastry cook, wine dealer, butcher, waferer (specialist in crisp wafers), poulterer, and an apothecary, as well as an épicier for spices, candied fruit, sugared nuts, loaf sugar, pomegranates, and rice flour. The lines between what each guild could sell were often fuzzy: in France, the roast cooks, who made pies and cooked dishes, often also sold fresh meat and poultry on the side, much to the fury of the butchers and poulterers.20 The épiciers and apothecaries of Paris bickered for centuries about their right to sell sugar. Officially, the former were allowed to sell the likes of spices, comfits, preserves, and candied almonds, but they were forbidden to make them.21 In France the guild system lasted until the Revolution, but elsewhere––in Austria, for example––there is even today an officially recognized system of guilds and apprenticeships.

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One pronounced feature of the shift from the medieval to the premodern economy was the increase in the economic heft of cities. Europe was a more urban place in 1600 than it had been in 1300, with perhaps twice as many Europeans living in towns. Admittedly this is not saying much. According to estimates by the Dutch historian Jan de Vries, northern Europe had less than 9 percent of its population living in towns; in the Mediterranean it was perhaps double that.22 All the same, it was here among the town dwellers where most of the exchange took place, where wages were paid, and where money circulated.

SYSTEMS OF EXCHANGE Rather than thinking of the medieval economy as one integrated system, it is more useful to think of several different economies using a different set of assumptions, value systems, and even media of exchange. These economies overlapped and interacted—and are often hard to disentangle—but they functioned in different ways. Since all but a small minority was engaged in producing, processing, or distributing it, food was the most common medium of exchange. Food was money. In the peasant barter economy the mechanism was fairly simple. A woman would go to the local market to trade surplus eggs for beer or some apples for honey. Or even more likely, she would just swap with her neighbors. In towns and cities money might actually circulate. The butcher would pay the baker in specie that he had received from the candlestick maker. Carpenters and masons might have received payment in shillings and pence (or soldi and denari) but many others exchanged their labor for little more than food and shelter. At least two studies have shown that laborers given food as part of their pay received less than half in cash compared to those given no food, which gives some insight into the painful lot of the working class.23 After all, the workers still had to feed, clothe and house their families with the remaining half of their wages—even if some of their paltry income must have been augmented by what their wives and children could earn. It is worth keeping in mind that there was never enough specie in medieval Europe for most of the economy to be monetized and, in particular, there was a tremendous shortage of small change. Accordingly,

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non-metallic commodities, preferably ones of fairly standardized quality, came to be used as currency. Probably the most common was salt since it could be weighed out, and the government often controlled its price. Spices were occasionally used in this way as well. In the northern African port of Ceuta, prices were quoted at times in gold and melegueta pepper, much as we might quote a price in dollars and cents.24 Apprentices typically got nothing but their room and board—and ideally an education—for their labor. Slaves, of course, were lucky to get a square meal as their compensation. Slavery was generally tangential to the medieval European economy, but became increasingly critical to sugar production; first as the Venetians introduced a system of slave-operated sugar plantations in their Eastern Mediterranean colonies and then later as the Portuguese adopted and expanded that system in Madeira and later Brazil. Alongside the copper, silver, and gold coins that became increasingly commonplace by the time of the Renaissance, we find the appearance of a notional money of account used to transfer funds from one place to another. One advantage of this abstracted currency was that it would not fluctuate depending on the whim of a government mint or the weight of any specific coin. It could also be safely transported from spot to spot in the form of a letter of credit. Thus a merchant in Cologne could sell his cargo of Cretan wine for a note in Venetian lire, which he could then exchange in Venice for a shipload of Apulian wheat. Theoretically, of course, the paper could be converted into cold hard cash, although that was always a tricky transaction in an era of slippery exchange rates. Besides the exchange mechanisms based on money and barter there was a system that might best be described as an economy of coercion. Slavery, of course is the most blatant example of this. Feudalism was another. Here the powerless handed over a payment—often in the form of grain, eggs or other comestibles—to the powerful in exchange for protection from harm. This may have made some sense in the dangerous days of Attila the Hun, but by the high Middle Ages the system increasingly came to resemble a Mafiastyle protection racket. Theoretically, feudalism demanded that those at the top of the food chain looked after the best interests of those beneath them. Many lords did have a paternalistic regard for the plight of their subjects: distributing food on special occasions, regulating markets, and improving the land; but needless to say, it was a highly uneven exchange.

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Perhaps what is most alien to our capitalist way of thinking is what some historians have referred to as the gift economy. This still exists at the periphery of our society, but it has virtually no economic importance. Now imagine the court of Charles V, the Hapsburg Holy Roman Emperor, whose realm stretched from Manila to Lima and from Valencia to Vienna. His courtiers and admirals were often not paid a salary for their services at all; they were rewarded with gifts in much the way that lower-level servants were. (Servants might get a nominal salary, but they depended just as much on tips or the sale or barter of leftovers from the master’s mess.) There was, among both servants and aristocrats, an understanding of what was appropriate as a gift, though the negotiation had none of the straightforwardness of the exchange between the butcher and the fishwife.

A LIVING WAGE? We know very little about how much people at the lowest level of the economy earned or spent on food. The thousands of market towns depended on the surplus of the peasant millions, but since the exchange was in kind––in barter––it is almost impossible to quantify. All the same, the assumption made by most scholars is that most medieval peasants had minimal interaction with the market economy. They survived on what they could gather, forage, or grow. Perennial impoverishment was occasionally relieved by a feast, a festival, or a spasm of magnanimousness from the local lord. Famine, however, stalked the countryside. A description by the fifteenth-century Tuscan poet Burchiello may not be so far off the mark in describing the lot of all too many Europeans: “Near Parma I saw on a doorstep / Poor barefoot devils girt with rushes / Standing on one leg like pillars, / Eating unshelled beans without bread, / Spitting out the husks any old way, / The stuff was all over their chins, chests and nails.”25 Nevertheless, there were periodic pockets of prosperity among the rural majority: in Holland where the peasants could sell their bacon and cheese, in Hungary where they exported their cattle as far as Germany and Italy, and in the environs of cities everywhere where they could sell their fruits and vegetables. Contemporary literature is full of cautionary tales of peasants acting like their betters: of overeating or eating food above their status. Surely there must be a grain of truth to some of these stories. The

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Black Death freed up many more resources for country folk: more rabbits to snare, more garden plots to plant and harvest. When it comes to city dwellers, the data is much more plentiful––though, as with all statistics from that era, it is hard to build too solid a construction on their foundations. Still, even if we do not take the exact numbers too much to heart we can discern a very rough outline. Naturally, knowing how much workers got paid is only useful if you know how much they needed to spend. Economic historians like to translate wages into wheat or another grain, with the assumption that bread or gruel was the primary source of calories for most Europeans. Presuming this is correct, the cost of living decreased in the late fourteenth century after the Black Death, stabilized in the following hundred years, and then got increasingly expensive in the sixteenth century and beyond. It is widely believed that the living standard of Europe’s working poor did not again reach the high levels of the fifteenth century until the middle years of the Industrial Revolution. Of course what these long-term trends disguise is the enormous volatility of the price of staples. In England (which yields some of the most comprehensive statistics), prices routinely fluctuated by 30 or 40 percent between one year and the next. However, much greater swings occurred all too often, as they did between 1319 and 1322 when the cost of wheat rose from five and a half pence a bushel to almost eighteen pence, or in 1527 when the cost more than doubled. Sure, the price inevitably fell, but if we assume that many families spent somewhere between 60 and 80 percent of their income on grain-based food, that was not much consolation. Governments tried to mitigate the impact of these wild price gyrations by imposing price controls, but with limited effect.26 Wages varied according to profession and location. Skilled craftsmen could make a decent living in flourishing trade centers like Florence and Venice in the 1400s, even if everyone’s wages were eroded by the inflation of the sixteenth century. So what could a medieval craftsman expect to earn? In Venice, in 1389, a master builder and a master carpenter would earn respectively some thirtytwo and forty soldi per day. This would allow them to buy about 48 pounds of bread, providing enough calories to feed twenty-six adult males—if they were to live on bread alone.27 Admittedly, this is based on wholesale prices, so their actual purchasing power was probably lower. A hundred years on,

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the same professions would have had their purchasing power reduced by a third.28 Looked at another way, our carpenter needed to work about thirty minutes to earn 2 pounds of bread in 1389 and forty-five minutes a hundred years later. By comparison, the average European today would expect to work between ten and twenty minutes for that same loaf of bread.29 Two hundred and seventeen miles to the north, in the Bavarian city of Augsburg, the cost of living was not substantially different. Here, for a day’s wage in 1500, a carpenter could afford to buy about 29 pounds of rye (yielding roughly 33 lbs of bread), 11 pounds of beef, about a dozen herring, 8 gallons of beer, or 4 gallons of salt.30 If, for the sake of argument, we assume our Bavarian carpenter had to support a household that included his wife, two children, an elderly relative, and one teenage apprentice, he could get away with spending about a third of his wages on rye bread to supply them with all the needed calories. Which is another way of saying that he could probably afford plenty of beer, a regular piece of meat, and the occasional herring.31 A similar ratio was deduced by historians studying the percentage of income devoted to bread by the overseers of René of Anjou’s properties some twenty-five years earlier.32 But in Augsburg, as elsewhere, things only got worse in the next hundred years. In the last decade of the sixteenth century, the Augsburg carpenter had to pay more than twice as much for his rye bread even though his wages had not budged. Admittedly, by that date Augsburg was no longer the thriving regional magnet it had been in the Middle Ages, and thus the demand for the building trades was not what it used to be. In more dynamic places like London, Paris, and Amsterdam, wages for skilled labor had increased, but nowhere near enough to keep up with inflation. Of course the unskilled working poor had it much worse, and probably did live primarily on coarse bread or gruel. With some consistency, skilled labor was rewarded with wages some 50 to 100 percent higher than unskilled workers everywhere in Europe.33 Historians have collected reams of data on working-class wages, but remarkably little on what we might call the middle class: the shopkeepers, bureaucrats, physicians, and lawyers. There is, of course, the problem of how you define the middle class, especially since such a concept did not really exist in the Middle Ages and Renaissance. But there was certainly a bourgeoisie who had cash left over after they’d taken care of life’s necessities. In Florence, in 1551, it is estimated that some 18 percent of all

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households contained two to five servants, surely a sign of modest affluence.34 While it is true that a smaller proportion of middle-class wealth was probably spent on food overall, the main difference was not just how much, but what kind of food the moderately affluent city folk bought and ate. There was likely to be more money devoted to meat, cheese, and the more affordable spices. A rare but intriguing example of food expenditure comes from the account books of Bernardo Morosini, a Venetian aristocrat of middling means who lived in the first half of the fourteenth century. Bernardo devoted some ten and a half lire to food during a period of six months to feed a household of eight and the occasional visitor. Of this, more than a third was spent on meat, poultry, fish, and eggs bought in extremely generous quantities. In the two months leading up to Lent, Bernardo bought some 440 pounds of beef as well as smaller quantities of pork, lamb, chicken, and fish!35 Expenditures on vegetables were much more modest. The sample menus from the Parisian Ménagier, a decidedly bourgeois tract from later in the same century, once again suggest that plenty of meat and a modicum of spice was what distinguished the diet of the middle class from those lower down the economic scale. The genuinely wealthy spent a much lower proportion of their expenditures on food. The Italian economic historian Carlo Cipolla estimated that the rich spent some 15–35 percent of their total consumption on food, and the well-to-do 25–50 percent.36 For the top 1 or 2 percent the price of bread—or even saffron—had little impact on their dining habits. Their diet was determined by availability and more esoteric considerations like prestige, health, and fashion.

GINGER AND SHEEP For everybody else, especially the urban population, price mattered. In the Middle Ages, the relative cost of foods tended to be different than it is today. Given the relatively inefficient forms of agriculture, grain was surprisingly expensive, especially since so many people depended on it for survival. In Vienna, in 1531, a 2.5-gallon bag of wheat (which would yield about 11 lbs of white flour—but of course milling added to the cost) was worth about 36 eggs, 3 pounds of beef, 4.5 gallons of beer,

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1.5 ounces of pepper, and 0.8 ounces of cinnamon.37 Today, flour is comparatively much less expensive. Admittedly the comparison is not exactly apples to apples. One reason beef was relatively cheap compared to, say, eggs, was all the dairy cows and oxen that were sent to the butcher because they had outlived their usefulness. Filet mignon this was definitely not. Mutton was even less expensive because of the extensive flocks raised for their wool. When historians point out that you could buy a sheep for a pound of ginger in medieval England, it says a great deal more about the cheapness of mutton than it does the dearness of the Asian spice. Beer and wine tended to be relatively inexpensive compared to today, at least if they were local. Quality naturally influenced prices as well, something that is not immediately evident from the statistics. Not every batch of cheese is as good as the next. New herring was dearer than herring that had sat in barrels for months. So-called white (untreated) ginger cost more than the redtinted mecchino ginger that was preserved in clay. And what happened to all the spoiled, moldy pepper that arrived at the very bottom of the holds of the Portuguese pepper fleet? Surely it went for a much lower price than pepper that had not undergone water damage. Yet even while prices varied from year to year and locale to locale, in the aggregate prices of many staples were surprisingly similar across Europe—much more than wages—which points to a remarkable degree of interconnectedness across the continent. Regional specialties that were transported over long distances were naturally much cheaper at home than at their destination. Even while our Augsburg carpenter could only afford a dozen herring for a day’s wage, his colleague in Amsterdam might have been able to buy several times that number.38 Mediterranean products like dried fruit and olive oil were expensive luxuries in the north. Olive oil that had to travel by sea, river, and land to arrive in Wroclaw in the 1520s may have cost as much as fifty times what it cost in Castile.39 The inflationary spiral that more than doubled the price of wheat in the sixteenth century did not involve every food, and not everyone was evenly affected by it. In Augsburg, for example, rye and beef more than doubled in price even while dry peas and cheese remained steady. Setting aside a brief period when the Portuguese tried to enforce a monopoly, the

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price of spice—the medieval luxury food additive par excellence—did not rise either. Wages in Holland more or less kept up with inflation; in Italy they did not. The upper classes may have even seen their living expenses go down. Even while the price of necessities was rising, the cost of the luxury goods that made up a much larger fraction of their budgets—spices, books, servants, and so on—was actually going down, once you account for inflation.

NEW WORLD, OLD WORLD In 1600 the eating and shopping habits of the vast majority of people in Continental Europe had not changed much as a result of the mind-boggling expansion of western European power outside of the confines of the little continent. Very few of the New World foods had yet made any inroads to speak of: Germany was devoid of potatoes, Italians had no tomato sauce, and Paris knew nothing of chocolate. There were some exceptions. Turkeys were quickly accepted as a tastier alternative to peacocks by the very few who could afford such things. Peasants in Tuscany had probably started to grow a few New World beans here and there. In southern Spain, at least, chili peppers had become fairly commonplace, though the elite would have nothing to do with them. If, in the higher stratospheres of cuisine, the winds of change had started to shift, it was a barely noticeable breeze. More ready access to Ceylon and the Spice Islands meant that the spice mixtures used to season banquets in Ferrara and Dijon relied more heavily on cinnamon and cloves than before; and the increased flow of sugar from Madeira and the Canaries had the result that practically every elite dish— at least in trend-setting Italy—was now seasoned with sugar. But for the vast majority who could afford neither cinnamon nor sugar, the world was much as it had been in 1300. If anything, day-to-day life had gotten tougher. All over Europe there were more mouths to feed with fewer resources. Famines were common. The great rural majority were outside of a monetary economy, exchanging a day’s worth of work for a measure of grain, or sending a daughter to market to exchange a few eggs for a small sack of salt. For the minority who lived in towns and cities and were actually part of a monetary economy, the Spanish conquest of Mesoamerica and the subsequent influx of silver only led to inflation. Yet even as wheat

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grew dearer, wages stagnated. And the seventeenth century promised even worse. If the illiterate masses had been able to read the millenarian prophesies of Nostradamus, they would have surely believed much of them. The elite, on the other hand, may have been more interested in reading another work written by the famous physician and prophet: a book devoted to recipes for sweets.

CHAPTER THREE

Food Security, Safety, and Crises philip sl avin

Late medieval Europe was essentially a rural society, with the majority of the population living and working on land, either as free or unfree peasants and landholders. At the same time, European society underwent a significant process of urbanization, chiefly from about 1100 onward. The degree of urbanization was, naturally, different in every region. Thus, by about 1300, only about 15 percent of Englishmen lived in towns. The figures for Germany were lower and only a meager proportion of Scandinavians were town-dwellers. On the other hand, the Low Countries, Southern France, Italy, and Spain, were much more urbanized. Some towns were truly gargantuan by pre-Industrial standards. Thus, the population of Paris may have approached 160,000 people in 1300. The figures for Venice, Genoa, Milan, and Florence were high also, in the area of 100,000 each. In the Low Countries, Bruges and Ghent may have housed between fifty and sixty thousand inhabitants each. London was home to some seventy thousand during that period.1 These were, however, exceptions, and in the majority of cases, an average medieval town had anywhere between 1,000 and 10,000 inhabitants. The nonagricultural occupations of urban dwellers meant that food, and chiefly grain provisioning, was an everyday issue in

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medieval towns. A steady food supply and distribution depended on strong ties between the town and the countryside, and on a good collaboration between rural producers and urban distributors. However, food production and distribution was equally a quotidian problem in the countryside. Despite a certain agricultural progress in some regions, medieval peasants were entirely dependent on the vagaries of weather. Rainy or dry years meant lower crop yields, which affected not only humans but also domestic animals. Institutional interferences, such as sudden taxation or compulsory sales of grain, known as purveyance, contributed further to food crises. Animal murrains could lead to scarcity of dairy- and meat-based products, and, in the case of oxen, to losses of the main plowing force. The issue of food security and crisis, both in towns and the countryside, was never as sensitive and challenging as in the late Middle Ages, and especially in the fourteenth century. It was a century of several environmental, biological, economic, and institutional shocks that had a deep impact on the process of food production and consumption. After some 100 years of relatively warm temperatures, we witness the first signs of weather deterioration around 1290, culminating between 1314 and 1317, when excessive rainfall and low temperatures depressed crop yields all over northern Europe, from Poland to Scandinavia. Arguably, some 10–15 percent of the northern European population perished in the famine of 1314–1322.2 To be sure, this famine was not the only instance of a harsh environmental crisis. In northern Europe in general, and England in particular, bad weather and low crop yields are reported in 1339 and 1349–1351 (the Black Death years), 1437–1438, 1457, 1472, and 1476–1477.3 The rest of the continent experienced a series of bad years, too. Languedoc was devastated by recurrent grain failures between 1302–1310, 1329–1351, 1368–1376, 1419–1421, 1456–1459, 1471–1474, and 1480–1483.4 Tuscany had its own famine between 1367 and 1374.5 The western Mediterranean, chiefly Catalonia, Valencia, and Sicily, coped with a disastrous starvation between 1374 and 1376, and then again in 1383.6 In some cases, the harvest failures were caused by an excess or lack of precipitation, while in other cases they were brought about by temperature anomalies. At the same time, Europe was hit by two major pestilences: the Great Cattle Plague of 1315–1321 and the Black Death of 1347–1352. The cattle panzootic, most likely rinderpest, ravaged virtually all of northern and eastern Europe.7 In England, the disease claimed some 65 percent of its

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bovine beasts.8 Although no comparable statistics are available for other parts of Europe, we may speculate that figures may have been similar elsewhere, judging from hysterical rhetoric of contemporary chroniclers. Some thirty years later, another mysterious pathogen arrived in Europe, killing at least 40 percent of its population, while in some places the figures were undoubtedly higher.9 The first attack was followed by further outbreaks from 1361 until the early fifteenth century. To make things even worse, however, much of Europe was involved in ongoing warfare. Between 1296 and 1328 England conducted a violent war against Scotland, while trying simultaneously to crush Irish and Welsh revolts in 1315. England was also involved in war with France, from 1294 to 1303, in 1324, and most famously the Hundred Years’ War from 1337 to 1453. Although formally it was a war between England and France, virtually all of Europe was involved, whether directly or indirectly. At the same time, we witness chaotic warfare in the German Empire: both civil strife and never-ending Guelph-Ghibelline Italian wars. In Italy proper, there was a series of conflicts between the two leading mercantile city-states, Venice and Genoa, over trademonopoly and control in the Black Sea and the eastern Mediterranean. These took place chiefly in 1291–1299, 1350–1355, and 1378–1381. Between 1375 and 1378, no fewer than eight Italian city-states were involved in a war known as the War of the Eight Saints. From 1282 onward, the western Mediterranean was ravaged by several armed conflicts, commencing with the Wars of the Sicilian Vespers. Both Christian and Muslim parts of Spain suffered from recurring Berber invasions from 1275 on. The Catalan mercenaries ravaged parts of Greece during their ill-fated crusade of 1303–1312. Other parts of the once-glorious Byzantine Empire were plundered and conquered by the Ottoman Turks until the eventual fall of Constantinople in 1453 and Trebizond in 1461. Warfare of this scale had not been seen since Carolingian times. The impact of war on the food crisis of the fourteenth century is an intriguing, yet under-studied topic, inviting meticulous research.

SECURING FOOD SUPPLY: LAND AND ANIMAL RESOURCES Before dealing with food crises proper, let us pose a question: Where did food come from? Late medieval society was by no means uniform, and each

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social stratum had to rely on different sources and channels of food provisioning—each source corresponding to socioeconomic possibilities and limits. Landlords, both greater and smaller, would rely on rural estates comprised of manors, the single most important source of agricultural production. Naturally, these estates in general and manors in particular varied a great deal in their size and scale. In 1314 Gilbert de Clare, Earl of Gloucester, died in possession of 161 manors, covering just under 19,000 acres. They stretched from Ireland to East Anglia and were worth £6,840.10 De Clare was a clear exception, and very few individual magnates could boast about estates of a similar magnitude. In the majority of cases, a lay landlord would have held less than 500 acres.11 Petty landlords of lower social status held just one or two manors. Corporate lords—ecclesiastical or collegial institutions—and bishops were another important class of landowners. Again, the size of their holdings varied according to their social standing and prestige. Thus, Westminster Abbey circa 1300, patronized by the king, had more than fifty manors comprising 14,500 acres. The Bishop of Winchester held some sixty manors with 13,000 acres around the same time. By the end of the thirteenth century, the Abbey of St. Martin of Tournai controlled thirty-seven manors, spread across 12,500 acres.12 The Great Hospital of Norwich, on the other hand, owned only six manors, rendering around 500 quarters of grain a year (a quarter is equal to 28 pounds).13 What were the arable and pastoral limits of the demesne? To a large degree, these were determined by regional geological and climatic factors. For instance, the relatively fertile soils and mild climate of East Anglia were better suited for intensive spring cropping and cattle farming than, say, the acidic soils and high rainfall of Northern English counties, which were biased toward extensive oat growing and sheep husbandry. These factors, in turn, dictated the allocation of the available land resources for different purposes. To a large degree they also shaped the structure and composition of regional diets. For instance, in Norfolk some 50 percent of the total arable land was sown with barley, while in northern counties lords allocated large portions of their arable to oats and barley was cultivated on a very limited scale. There was a clear dichotomy between barley-ale and oat-ale counties. Similarly, northern England, Scotland, Wales, the Alps, and parts of Scandinavia practiced pastoral-oriented regimes, which inevitably resulted in a higher intake of dairy products and beef than other parts of England and the Continent.

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In the hills of Catalonia, cattle rearing was practically nonexistent. Instead, local peasants relied on sheep and swine husbandry. It is hardly surprising, then, that pork and mutton were the predominant kinds of meat there. How much could a lord extract from his demesne? Again, the scale of food provisioning varied from community to community. Around 1300, Norwich Cathedral Priory—home to some 300 people (including 60 monks and about 240 servants and laborers)—received around 2,800 quarters of wheat and malted barley per annum from its landed demesnes. This figure represented approximately one-half of the total grain harvest on the demesnes. The total grain supply exceeded the actual dietary needs of the priory by at least 35 percent. In other words, the Norwich Priory authorities could extract much more than they needed, not counting the surplus sold at markets. Grain products were only a part of the daily ration of the Norwich monks, constituting about 55–60 percent of the monks’ total caloric intake. The remainder came in the form of non-farinaceous products— mostly dairy, fish, and meat. With some exceptions, the priory relied here on local markets, rather than on direct supply from the demesnes.14 After all, these were perishable products, requiring rapid transportation and consumption. Moreover, an average size of demesne livestock was insufficient to sustain a large monastic household for an entire year. Direct management was not the only form of demesne exploitation. From the thirteenth century onwards, there was an increasing tendency to farm out the demesne to better-off peasants. Thus, in 1289 the count of Namur (present-day Belgium) retained sixteen demesne manors, while nine further manors were leased out.15 Between 1290 and 1325, the authorities of Durham Cathedral Priory were farming out fourteen demesnes, keeping only eight in hand.16 In the 1330s, Norwich Cathedral Priory leased out three of its Norfolk manors.17 As a result, the lords came to rely increasingly on local markets to buy food supplies. At Norwich Cathedral Priory, between the 1280s and the 1370s, about 80 percent of the total grain supply came from the demesne, while the remaining 20 percent was purchased at local markets, chiefly at or around Norwich.18 It was not until after the Black Death, however, that the disintegration of the demesne was in full force, both in England and parts of the Continent.19 As far as the individual peasant families are concerned, their holdings were naturally much smaller than those of their seigniorial counterparts.

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Although it has recently been estimated that at least eighteen acres per peasant family was sufficient to avoid subsistence crisis, the sources reveal that in reality the majority of peasant households held less than that.20 In some cases, there were families getting by on less than an acre of arable land. Our knowledge of the scale and composition of the peasant sector is very scarce, deriving mostly from taxation records, manorial surveys, and tithe accounts. A recent study on tithe records from late medieval England reveals that the levels of peasant productivity, crop structure, and crop yields were similar to those within the demesne sector.21 Calorific requirements differed from class to class, and from community to community. Thus, an average male English peasant in 1300 would consume approximately 2,900 kcals on a daily basis,22 and it is unlikely that this figure was much different in 1600. The aristocrats demanded a much larger intake, whether consumed entirely or partially. Thus, at Westminster Abbey and Norwich Cathedral Priory, an average monk would be offered a plate of well over 6,000 kcals on a nonfasting day.23 Even assuming that only some 45–55 percent were actually consumed, we still arrive at astonishingly high caloric figures. Lay aristocracy would similarly consume large portions of food: evidence from Provence suggests that the average noble consumed about 4,500 kcals daily.24 In other words, it would require significantly more acres and bushels per capita to feed a noble than a peasant. This is hardly surprising. First, a peasant household had much less grain-producing land resources available to satisfy its dietary needs. Second, the very idea of conspicuous consumption, in terms of scale and preference of food, was deeply embedded into the social and cultural values and norms of late medieval aristocracy. The ability to recruit large amounts of foodstuffs—whether by direct exploitation or purchase—was an important conspicuous feature of higher strata, distinguishing them from people and communities of lower standing. It is only natural, then, that the main victims of food crises were the poor masses: rustics and especially townsfolk, whose access to food supplies was more limited than their rural counterparts.

RIDERS ON THE STORM: CROP FAILURES, PESTILENCE, AND WARFARE Let us begin with the most obvious reason for food crises: crop failures. Recently, some scholars spoke of ecological and biological vagaries as the

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single most important factor in shaping and determining agricultural trends in the late medieval period.25 As we have seen, there was a long list of crop failures in different parts of Europe in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. However, the single worst crisis of them all was the Great Famine of 1314– 1322. The degree to which northern European society was overcome by the agrarian crisis is well illustrated by English sources. During the famine years of 1314–1317, crop yields were on average forty percent below their average levels in normal—that is, nonfamine—years. Winter grains, namely winter wheat and rye, seem to have suffered much worse than their spring counterparts. In 1316 the mean yields (number of grains harvested per seed planted) were 2.20:1.00 for wheat, 2.45:1.00 for rye, 1.90:1.00 for oats, and 2.60:1.00 for barley (compared with 3.75:1.00, 4.00:1.00, 2.80:1.00, and 3.50:1.00, respectively, in noncrisis years).26 It is unclear how bad grain yields in other parts of northern Europe were; the yield levels were by no means uniform in different regions in normal years. The yields were undoubtedly very low in Poland and Scandinavia, perhaps as low as 2.00:1.00, even in normal years.27 In southern Germany the yields seem to have been higher, standing at around 6.00:1.00 for spelt and rye and 5.00:1.00 for oats and barley.28 In the Duchy of Artois and the Ile-de-France region, on the other hand, a farmer could expect his harvest to be ten times higher than the seed.29 With the exception of the Black Death (1348–1351) and the disastrous years of 1437–1439, the Great Famine years mark the lowest point in the history of crop yields in the late Middle Ages. The crop statistics from England indicate that its population was in a state of subsistence crisis. The figures are supported by widespread cries of contemporary chroniclers from different countries and regions. There were a number of local famines in northern Europe over the course of the sixteenth century. None of them are comparable in proportion and impact to the famine of 1595–1603, which ravaged all the way from Muscovy in the east to Ireland in the west. The disaster of 1595–1603 resulted directly from a series of failed harvests, as did the Great Famine of 1314–1322. In England, there were four back-to-back harvest failures from 1594–1597, bringing about a rise in grain prices and lowering real wages to an abysmally low point.30 In addition to worsening standards of living, England’s population was also decimated by starvation in 1597–1598. Some Catalan evidence illustrates the Mediterranean crop failures during the 1370s. An example from Sitges Castle in Catalonia is particularly

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revealing. Between 1354 and 1410, barley yields were between 10.00:1.00 and 15.00:1.00; wheat yields stood at just below 10.00:1.00; and fava bean yields averaged 7.00:1.00. During the famine years of 1374–1375 the yields were indeed considerably lower, but they did not fall below 8.00:1.00 for barley, and 5.00:1.00 for wheat. It was fava beans that were performing badly, and they stood just above 1.00:1.00.31 In other words, the severity of the crisis must have been different from place to place. The most immediate market consequence of grain failures was a steep rise in grain prices. In England, crop prices—especially wheat— skyrocketed during the famine years of 1315 and 1316. During the fiscal year 1314–1315, wheat was selling, on average, for 12 pence a bushel (compared with 7.5 pence between 1312 and 1314). In 1315–1316, the prices stood at 22 pence, while in 1316–1317 they rose to 24 pence a bushel.32 The lack of solar activity also created a catastrophic dearth of salt, the price of which soared to an unprecedented level. In 1315– 1316 salt cost 13 shillings, although it fell to about 11 shillings the year after (compared with just 3 shillings a quarter in the 1300s and 1310s). Speculation flourished all over the place. Thus, in 1316 in London, a bushel of wheat was selling for 60 pence, while at Leicester some speculators managed to sell wheat for 66 pence a bushel. In 1315–1316, salt could be sold for as much as 40 shillings a quarter.33 Princely attempts to impose price controls seem to have been unsuccessful. In England, Edward II issued two writs in 1315 and 1317, which fixed livestock and ale prices. In addition, he exhorted hoarders to sell their grain livestock and encouraged traders and landlords to market their produce at distant markets.34 Another exogenous or biological factor creating food shortage—often in conjunction with weather anomalies and famine—was disease of pandemic or panzootic proportions. The fourteenth century experienced two major outbreaks of pestilence, the Great Cattle Plague (most likely rinderpest) and the Black Death. The cattle pestilence of the 1310s was by no means the first and only animal disease of panzootic proportions. Various references to animal (chiefly cattle) mortality are found in medieval chronicles. However, the thirteenth century is the first time period for which we have solid statistical data that allows us to reconstruct the extent and impact of these diseases.

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Unfortunately, continental sources provide little information about the pestilence and its consequences, and as a result we have to rely on insular sources. In England proper, the Cattle Plague was followed by at least two more major outbreaks of viral animal diseases within the span of fifty years. In 1269–1270 there was an outbreak of porcine mortality, while between 1315 and 1317 many goat and sheep flocks were decimated. The impact of these diseases on changes in food consumption patterns is yet to be studied, and a meticulous analysis is likely to render some exciting results. The panzootic of the 1310s may have originated on the steppes of Mongolia around 1288. Arriving in Central Europe around 1314, it spread westward toward northern France (1317–1318), the Low Countries (1318), Denmark (1318), England (1319), Wales (1320), and Ireland (1321).35 In England and Wales alone the pathogen claimed some 65 percent of the local bovids. This colossal figure meant that the English lords and peasants were deprived of their single most important plowing force, as well as some vital sources of protein and fertilizing agents. As one contemporary chronicler stated, there were so few oxen left alive that men had to plough together with horses.36 This inability to recruit sufficient plowing force compelled some lords to contract the arable portion of their demesne. Thus, the total arable of Winchester Bishopric fell from some 8,881 acres in 1319 to 8,181 acres in 1326.37 Similar contraction is found on some other manors. England also experienced a disastrous crop failure in 1321, which may have been a combination of bad weather and oxen shortage. Overall, composite grain yields were about 30 percent below their normal level. Barley yields were particularly low. However, since the crop failures were created by both inclement weather and scarcity of plowing power, the cattle pestilence alone should not be blamed as the primary harbinger of agricultural disaster in that year. In any event, grain prices remained high until 1326. Since grain was the single most important food component in the preindustrial era, it is no wonder that the lords and their bailiffs did their best to replenish their oxen stock as swiftly as possible. By 1332, oxen stock amounted to 80 percent of pre-1319 levels. This, however, came at the price of a slow restocking of dairy and beef cattle. This selective restocking policy had a profound effect on the dairy produce sector. During the years of pestilence (1319–1320) the overall levels of milk production per cow fell drastically from about 130 to 40 gallons per year, as some Winchester Bishopric

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accounts reveal.38 Once the panzootic was over, the average productivity per cow increased, exceeding its pre-1319 levels. This can be partially ascribed to improvements in cattle nutrition, with an increased ratio of pasture to beast. At the same time, however, this could not compensate for massive cattle losses from the murrain. The demographic recovery of cows was slow; it did not begin until the early 1330s, and it was not until the Black Death that the replenishment was more or less complete.39 Furthermore, between 1325 and 1327, some manors experienced yet another outbreak of bovine disease, apparently different in nature from the panzootic of 1319–1320. It was characterized by physical debilitation, abortion, failed calving, and termination of milk production. Cattle eventually recovered and returned to fields and dairy-houses. Overall, the death rates were low, and in the majority of cases the animals recovered after a prolonged period of the disease. At the same time, however, milk production fell further. The overall decline in the dairy sector meant that less protein was available for human consumption. This fact is reflected in some diet accounts. At Martham (Norfolk), a daily allowance of dairy products fell from about 0.66 to 0.24 gallons per harvest worker between 1320 and 1321.40 The post-1319 human malnourishment, caused by cattle scarcity and a decreased intake of dairy and beef products—and, thus, protein nutrients—must have weakened the human population and made it more susceptible to various pathogens and diseases. The link between the cattle pestilence of 1319–1320 and the human mortality of 1348–1351 is yet to be studied in a detail. What is truly intriguing, however, is that both pestilences had similar effects on food production and supply. It has often been assumed that the Black Death led immediately to the improvement in living standards of the peasantry, with the drastic alteration in the labor to land ratio. This view, however, has recently been revisited and called into question: real wages did not rise, in fact, until around 1376.41 Equally important is that the Black Death years also saw a series of disastrous crop failures. Arguably, these had little to do with the scarcity of working hands, for the availability of labor force is not an indicator of harvest success or failure. Instead, the crop failures of 1349–1351 were caused by bad weather, which accompanied the pestilence. In England, crop yields were about 35 percent below their average level during these years.42 In other words, these catastrophic years witnessed both dearth of food and

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still-incomprehensible human mortality. Unlike the 1314–1322 crisis, however, the crop failures of 1349–1351 do not seem to have created famine in England and elsewhere: the total aggregate produce within the agrarian sector was undoubtedly sufficient to feed the survivors. The connection between famine and human pestilence is perhaps too obvious. Malnourished and weakened humans tend to become easy victims of various pathogens. Although the main wave of the Black Death occurred between 1347 and 1351, its recurrent outbreaks continued on a smaller scale until at least the 1720s. However plague was by no means the only type of contagious disease in late medieval and early modern Europe. Contagious diseases included outbreaks of smallpox, influenza (from about 1580 onward), and typhus. In some instances, these epidemics broke out in the course of or shortly after a period of mass starvation. The outbreak of human mortality—perhaps from typhus—in England in 1587–1588 seems to have been directly connected to failed harvests and subsequent famine in those years.43 In Spain the recurrent attacks of plague often went hand in hand with starvation, as in 1506–1507, 1528–1530, and 1596–1602.44 Many more examples could be added here. Warfare was also a decisive factory in food supply disruption. As mentioned above, the fourteenth century saw an unprecedented rise in military conflicts between two or more political entities. Warfare tends to have some negative effects on various economic sectors, including protective coinage debasement; public debts; excessive taxation; new tolls; asset plundering; bans of exports and contraction of international trade; and shrinkage and destruction of labor. All these impacts would inevitably lead to some form of food crisis. Between 1275 and 1306, Edward I of England imposed no fewer than thirteen taxes on movables (practically all property apart from buildings) on their lay subjects.45 In addition, he attempted to lay taxes on the clergy between 1294 and 1297.46 The main purpose of this taxation was to finance his multifrontal warfare and pay off his cumulative debts. It was, naturally, the peasantry that suffered the most from the royal fiscal demands.47 At the same time, however, there is clear evidence that higher echelons were also affected. Between 1294 and 1298 the monks of the Canterbury cathedral priory had to cut their annual expenditure on wine from about £127 to £20.48 Similarly, during the recurrent Scottish raids into Northern England, the authorities of Bolton Priory spent only 29 shillings

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and 3 shillings, 4 pence on wine in 1316–1317 and 1317–1318, respectively, compared with 20 pounds, 12 shillings a year between 1301–1312 and 1315–1316. Similarly, the Bolton monks had to decrease their annual expenditure on various foodstuffs from some £100 in 1311–1314 to about £57 in 1315–1318.49 Taxation was only one burden imposed by the royal authorities. In England, the king administrated yet another demanding institution, known as purveyance. In essence, purveyance meant forced sales of provisions for exceedingly lowered prices to supply the king’s armies. This institution became fully developed by the days of Edward I’s reign (1272–1307), especially during the Welsh Campaign of 1277–1282. The scale of provisioning varied from year to year and from county to county. For instance, during the Welsh Campaign, Edward relied mainly on the bordering counties, as well as the March of Wales and the Lordship of Ireland. In 1296, at the height of the war over Gascony, Edward ordered as many as 100,000 quarters of grain to be collected from his subjects all over the country (in reality, he managed to obtain only 63 percent of the required amount). The royal demands seem to have been somewhat fairer during the opening stages of the Hundred Years’ War, in the late 1330s and the early 1340s. In 1336–1337, merely 1,150 quarters of wheat were taken from east and midland counties. Between 1337 and 1338, nine southern counties supplied Edward III’s armies with some 2,100 quarters of wheat and oats. In the north, about 2,000 quarters of wheat were provisioned to the English garrisons at Newcastle and Berwick-upon-Tweed between 1338 and 1341.50 Purveyance was especially burdensome during the widespread food shortage and starvation of the famine years, which also coincided with the Scottish War of Independence and the domestic conflict between Edward II and Thomas, earl of Lancaster, in 1321–1322. Thus, in the disastrous year of 1316, Berwick-upon-Tweed was purveyed no less than five times, with victuals arriving from as far as Southampton and the Channel. While there is no doubt that the forced appropriation of victuals was profitable for Berwick-upon-Tweed’s populace and garrisons, it also increased starvation elsewhere in the country. The situation got even worse with the outbreak of the cattle plague in 1319. As one chronicle stated, all cattle driven to the Siege of Berwick-upon-Tweed in August that year, died “all at sudden.”51 From Berwick-upon-Tweed, the pathogen penetrated into Scotland

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proper.52 One may argue that it was high nutritional requirements of the English soldier that made purveyance especially challenging. According to two early fourteenth-century victualling schedules, an average soldier was to be offered a daily plate worth of approximately 5,500 kcal, an exceedingly high figure when compared to dietary requirements of other countries’ soldiers.53 Such a figure was enough to sustain a male peasant for two days. Food plundering was another issue associated with warfare and famine. Following the English defeat at Bannockburn in 1314, Scottish marauders gave much trouble to lords and peasants in Northern England. In June 1315 they attacked at Bearpark (county Durham). Having sacked a local manor house, the marauders seized a large animal booty, including 60 horses and 180 cows.54 Between 1312 and 1322 the town of Durham was raided five times. Its granaries were burnt.55 Similarly, the Scots disrupted the food supply of Bolton Priory, one of many victims of the ongoing warfare. In 1318–1319 the raiders laid waste to Halton, one of the priory’s manors, plundering ten quarters of wheat, over two quarters of barley, nearly eight quarters of beans, seven quarters of oats, and thirty quarters of malt. In addition, they carried away forty-three oxen.56 In September 1319 the Scots raided Bolton itself during the harvest season. Faced with insecurity, the Bolton community fled to Skipton Castle in 1322 and dispersed several years later. Judging from the surviving tithe accounts, the Scottish raids wreaked much havoc upon the peasant produce and food supply. At Billingham (Durham), the overall level of grain production within the peasant sector amounted to less than half its 1304 level in 1315, 1320, and 1323. A similar situation prevailed elsewhere in the region and beyond.57 Thus, between 1410 and 1450, there was a pronounced decline in tithe receipts in English-occupied Normandy, which suffered much from plunder of food supplies, destruction of mills and granaries, depopulation and arbitrary taxation.58 During the war between Peter IV the Ceremonious of Aragon and his nemesis, James IV of Mallorca in 1374–1375, food shortages occurred at the town of Perpignan, which suffered a great deal from recurrent attacks of James’s soldiers.59 In 1368, during Louis of Anjou’s invasion of the domain of Joan of Naples, much damage was done to the Languedoc countryside—which was already undergoing difficult times associated with famine and plague.60 Between 1370 and 1383 there were

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several recurrent mercenary raids in and around Siena, resulting in harvest destruction and plundering of the grain supply. Again, these raids took place in difficult times, when the Sienese already had to cope with starvation, pestilence, and economic downturn.61 Apart from field fighting and raids, however, sieges played an enormous role in late-medieval warfare. The lengths of sieges varied from war to war, but they often tended to create conditions of food pressure and scarcity regardless of their duration. These famines could be either local—confined to one castle’s garrison—or regional (or collective), inflicted upon an entire urban community. When the Scots besieged Sterling Castle, forty English guards were forced to starve.62 During the Siege of Orléans (1428–1429), on the other hand, the entire local population, approaching perhaps 30,000 inhabitants, was affected by the food scarcity created by the AngloBurgundian circumvallations.63 Ongoing warfare, alongside failed harvests, also gave a rise to unprecedented levels of grain speculation and black marketing. Black markets seem to have been particularly widespread in areas affected by war. Berwick-upon-Tweed-upon-Tweed, an epicenter of political and military tensions between the English and the Scots, is just one such example.64 The situation was equally bad on the Continent, as many chroniclers and legal documents attest. In the midst of the Umbrian famine of 1328–1330, following Louis the Bavarian’s attack, one witnesses complaints against grain speculators based in and around Perugia.65 As we have seen already, princely attempts to fix price ceilings proved to be unsuccessful. Speculation flourished during the late-sixteenth-century European famine. In England, Elizabeth I issued the Book of Orders (1586–1587 and 1594), which attempted to control the situation and kept grain trade as local as possible. It established an effective system of poor relief and forbade shipments of grain out of the country. In addition, Elizabeth appointed special officials, who were put in charge of supervising the supply of grain to local markets and regulated grain prices.66 Another effect created by ongoing military activities was widespread disruption of food trade. One natural reaction of governments at war is to ban exports or any form of trade with an enemy state. Thus, in July 1374, the Avignon Papacy forbade its Italian subjects to export grain to Florence.67 During the conflict between Peter IV of Aragon and James IV of

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Majorca, the former passed several grain export bans in order to ensure a steady victual supply to his subjects, both armed and unarmed. In addition, he ordered his Catalan subjects to provision some fortified areas with their grain supply.68 The late medieval food crisis was created by a combination of adverse factors affecting and complementing each other. Famine, pestilence, and war—the Horsemen of the Apocalypse—were an everyday reality. Perhaps one of the most striking facts about these horsemen is that they did not appear in a consecutive order. Instead, they acted in a confusing and vicious cycle. In some cases, famine could strike before pestilence. Thus, the crop failures of 1315–1317, in destroying animal fodder, contributed to the cattle pestilence of 1319–1320. The murrain, killing some 65 percent of cows, left humans deprived of vital protein sources. In this case, it was pestilence that came before famine. War, too, could strike either before or after famine. For instance, John Hawkwood prepared to attack Florence in the spring of 1375, after the city was attacked by famine. On the other hand, the widespread starvation in Normandy during the later phases of the Hundred Years’ War was a product of mercenaries’ raids; here, war preceded famine. Nor did the disasters operate in isolation from each other. In some cases at least, they seem to have acted conjointly, as a three-headed hydra. Thus, in 1316 England was devastated by sheep murrain, warfare, and disastrous harvests. In 1319–1320 the country was attacked by cattle pestilence and war. The year 1349 saw human mortality, crop failures, and warfare. Between 1374 and 1376 Catalonia was visited by both famine and war.

COPING WITH FOOD CRISES What were different strategies that starving populations employed to survive the severe food crises in late medieval Europe? Naturally, human responses to food crises varied from place to place and from community to community, depending on the magnitude of a disaster, on the one hand, and on the financial and social possibilities of each individual and community, on the other. Thus, the experience of the monks of Glastonbury Abbey, who controlled about fifty demesnes, was undoubtedly different from that of a peasant community of Billingham (Durham), which was

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devastated by crop failures, cattle plague, and warfare at the same time. Let us consider less-immune social echelons first. Deprived of grain, their main staple, desperate victims of famine had to turn to alternative and sometimes repugnant comestibles. It is obvious that townspeople were doing worse than their rustic counterparts. After all, on the countryside one could draw upon woodland produce, such as acorns, berries, nuts and fungi, which must have grown in abundance during the continual summer rainfall in 1315 and 1316. It should also be kept in mind that nuts and acorns have a relatively high caloric content. Grain storage and hoarding was also a commonplace practice among medieval rustics.69 The situation seems to have been worse in towns, which depended on a steady food supply from rural hinterlands. In urban Catalonia many people had to feed on pine nuts, chestnuts, and acorns during the disastrous years of 1374–1376.70 In northern Europe, people ate horses, dogs, cats, mice, pigeon dung, and other repulsive consumables.71 Warfare— chiefly sieges—could create similar conditions. One chronicler relates how the English garrisons guarding Sterling Castle were reduced to miserable diet conditions during the Scottish siege of 1303. These forty men were forced to eat horses, dogs, and mice, among other things.72 During the Russian famine of 1601–1603, which coincided with the infamous “Times of Trouble,” peasant masses were reported to have eaten horseflesh, dogs, cats, grass, hay, roots, and bark.73 Some contemporary chroniclers report that one of the results of the cattle plague was a widespread consumption of contagious carrions, a practice forbidden by all Abrahamic religions. The Chronicon de Lanercost stated that humans ate from dead cattle and, “by God’s ordinance, suffered no ill consequences.”74 The chronicler’s recollection is confirmed by several other sources. Some manorial accounts reveal that carcasses of diseased animals were sold for reduced prices.75 Around the same time, the London authorities issued a ban on sales of diseased flesh.76 In other words, it is plausible that there were instances of carrion consumption by humans, despite religious precepts. In a sense, this phenomenon can be regarded as an extreme human reaction to food shortage, akin to cannibalism, as practiced in the years of severe famines. Several narrative sources speak about instances of cannibalism in England, Ireland, the Baltic lands, Poland, and East Germany. Cannibalism

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was associated with both eating of corpses and the devouring of infants and children. This phenomenon was reported in both towns and the countryside.77 Cannibalism seems to have been mainly restricted to human groups and communities that were particularly under pressure. Thus, instances of human flesh consumption are reported in Ireland, which was devastated by both famine and war in 1315.78 According to one English chronicler, cannibalism flourished in local prisons among inmates.79 Interestingly, cannibalism is not mentioned in Spanish sources from the famine years of 1374–1376.80 During the Russian famine of 1601–1603, instances of cannibalism (including consumption of grave-dug corpses) were mentioned by contemporary chroniclers.81 Cannibalism, however, was not the only social deviance recorded by the sources. In addition, instances of prostitution are mentioned. Thus, in Catalonia and Valencia beautiful women gave themselves to anyone for a piece of bread.82 In some instances, the poor could seek help from more powerful elements of the society, who practiced extensive charitable activities during famine years. Alms, whether in coins or food, were distributed by both religious and lay lords. A soup kitchen was established in 1315 at the Cistercian Abbey of Aduard, near Groningen (in the present-day Netherlands), which offered vegetables cooked in a large pot for the starving poor.83 Poor relief was generously offered at the Great Hospital of Norwich around the famine years.84 Robert de Lincoln, a wealthy London citizen, ordered that each of 2,000 poor Londoners should receive one penny from his funds.85 Some manorial accounts from England indicate that lords distributed grain and coins among their tenants.86 The authorities of Norwich Cathedral Priory augmented the number of bread loaves to be distributed among prisoners incarcerated at Norwich Castle during the famine years.87 The Pia Almoina hospitals of Catalonia conducted large-scale money distribution among the local poor during the severe famine of 1374–1376.88 At the same time, however, it should be noted that some hospitals suffered from the depredations of the famine. In England alone, over 100 hospitals and other religious institutions placed themselves under royal protection in order to survive the disaster.89 What differentiates these charitable activities from early modern poor relief is the fact that they were organized and provided by the church, rather than the state. The first Poor Laws in England were codified between 1587 and 1598 as a state response to the food crises

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of 1587–1588 and the 1590s. Continental Europe remained well behind England, and a well-defined system of state welfare did not develop until the Industrial Revolution. Bolton Priory, situated on the relatively infertile soils of the Yorkshire Dales, was a monastic community of middling social and financial status. The disasters of the crop failures, cattle pestilence, and frequent Scottish raids reduced the brethren into poverty. In 1316 and 1317 the Bolton household could secure only 285 and 208 quarters of wheat per annum, respectively. This was in contrast with some 509 quarters acquired annually between 1311 and 1315. This reduction in grain supply had to do with the impoverished priory’s inability to take up the slack by increasing grain purchases.90 As a result, the Bolton brethren, along with many other communities and households across the country, were forced to consume less farinaceous products. The brethren increased their share of pork consumption, leaving very few live pigs in stock.91 They had to cut back their expenditure on wine. In 1316–1317 and 1317–1318 they spent only 29 shillings and 3 shillings, 4 pence a year, respectively, compared with the annual expenditure of 20 pounds, 12 shillings between 1301–1302 and 1315–1316.92 Another strategy employed by the Bolton community was grain acquisition by means of natural exchange. In 1317 the Bolton Priory authorities exchanged eighteen quarters of oats for six quarters of wheat.93 This was a fair trade-in, with the price ratio of oats to wheat approximately 3:1 during the famine years. What about better-off social strata? Clearly, people of higher standing did not suffer nearly as much as starving rustics and townsmen, or impoverished religious communities. In some cases, individuals and communities managed to secure a steady supply of grain to their houses. Norwich Cathedral Priory, one of many such examples, relied on two main channels of food supply: rural demesnes and local markets. Between 1314 and 1316 the authorities of Norwich Priory received 809 quarters of wheat, which actually exceeded 797 quarters acquired annually between 1310 and 1314. It should be noted, however, that the priory authorities had to augment the share of grain purchases, since their manors were unable to provision them with a sufficient wheat and malt supply. Thus, in 1316 the Priory purchased 300 quarters of wheat, compared with 189 quarters in 1314 and merely 21 quarters in 1311.94 In other words, the food crisis was hardly felt at Norwich Priory.

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The contrast in fate of the two monastic houses, so different in their net wealth and financial possibilities, indicates that food crises indeed discriminated between various social strata. While some better-off individuals and communities were able to ensure a steady supply of grain, notwithstanding crop failures, grain shortage and high prices, poorer elements were deprived of their access to food supplies. This echoes with the now-classical theory of food entitlement, propagated and developed by Amartya Sen.95 In essence, Sen contended that starvation is created not as much by food shortage per se, as by unequal access to the available food supplies. The wealthier elements recruit their financial potential to purchase surpluses originally intended for the poorer echelons. The case of the Norwich and Bolton communities reveals that some food crises, initially associated with environmental shocks such as weather anomalies and crop failures, were intensified by institutional factors.

CONCLUSIONS There is little doubt that food security and stability was an everyday issue in the late medieval and early modern periods. However, it has never been as acute as in the fourteenth century. This was a unique period of food crisis, lasting for several generations and ravaging European communities. As our sources indicate, the Great European Famine of 1314–1322 could have been perhaps the worst food crisis in the pre-Industrial West. This is not to say that there were no harsh subsistence crises preceding the fourteenth century. In 792–793 and then again in 805–806, the Carolingian Empire experienced some sort of subsistence crisis. Between 1032 and 1034 there seems to have been a harsh famine in France, which inflicted much suffering upon the local population. In 1094–1095, on the eve of the First Crusade, there was a disastrous drought in the Low Countries and France, which prompted some rustics to leave their houses and, perhaps unconscientiously, get involved into the nascent crusading movement.96 But these were isolated and relatively regional outbreaks of famine, not accompanied by devastating pestilences and warfare on a pan-continental level. Although they certainly created food crisis, the extent, duration and, consequently, impact of the latter was of much humbler proportions when compared to the fourteenth-century crisis.

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A combination of ecological and institutional factors brought about disruption of peaceful food production and supply in the late medieval period. The disruption had a profound impact on European society. It should be understood, however, that food crisis here does not necessarily mean famine—that is, “extreme and general scarcity of food, in a town, country.” Instead, food crisis is defined as the loss of individual and collective ability to secure access to food supplies by the majority of a given population. Following the catastrophic crop failures of 1315–1317, there certainly was general starvation in northern Europe. But it was not created solely by crop failure and food scarcity. Institutional factors, such as manorialism and warfare, played a considerable role by intensifying and finishing what the ecological factors began. It is hardly surprising, then, that it was rustics and poorer townspeople—the vast majority of the population—who seem to have suffered the most. Exposed to weather vagaries, failed crops, animal murrains, produce extraction, and arbitrary taxation, they had less ability to overcome the crises and maintain their households than their lords or better-off neighbors. As William Jordan has aptly closed his now-classical study of the Great Famine, “they are the poor who are with us always.”97

CHAPTER FOUR

Food and Politics eric r. dursteler

During the Renaissance, food was inseparably connected to politics. The provisioning of both city and countryside was a constant preoccupation for rulers. Related to this was the imperative to provide at least minimally for the needy and hungry in society. Failure to attend to provisioning and poor relief represented a great risk to the social order, and bread riots and other food-related unrest were a constant feature of this time period. In addition to the politics of food supply, food played a significant political role in the form of banquets, food gifts, and feasting. Because of food’s potent symbolic value, late medieval and early modern polities strived mightily, but ineffectually, to regulate and control its consumption.

PROVISIONING During the later Middle Ages and the Renaissance, the task of ensuring a regular and sufficient food supply for urban and rural subjects alike was among the most important roles of government. Indeed, over the course of this period, efforts to fulfill this fundamental role became increasingly centralized and rationalized. The impetus for this arose from both “a humane desire to feed their populations efficiently and cheaply; and the need to insure public order.” Particularly in cities, hunger frequently was the cause of

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riots, and as a result, “urban governments became more deeply and extensively involved in grain administration than in any other area of city life.”1 Though differing in particular details, variations on two essential provisioning policies were pursued throughout early modern Europe and the Mediterranean. The first and most common form of regulation, which was nearly universal, focused on consumer demand through price controls and subsidies in order to rein in price volatility. The second addressed the supply side through export bans and import bounties. Some liberal trade regimes did exist: most famously England in the second half of the seventeenth century, but also Sicily in the late fourteenth century.2 These were, however, quite unique; most polities were highly concerned with ensuring a reliable and affordable supply of food, particularly grain. This is evident in a comparison of the practices of several states. Because of its unique environmental situation, the waterlogged city of Venice had long been dependent on large grain imports from throughout the Mediterranean. Over time, Venice evolved an elaborate institutional system dedicated to providing sufficient grain to feed its burgeoning population, which in the Renaissance numbered 120,000. A flour warehouse was established at the Rialto in 1228, and included the offices of the first magistracy charged with ensuring Venice’s grain supply, the Ufficiali al frumento. This body was replaced in 1365 by the three Provveditori alle Biave, who administered the import, pricing, and distribution of grain throughout the city of Venice, as well as its growing empire. They also oversaw the city’s bakers. The Provveditori were housed in the Ducal Palace, and were required to inform the doge daily in writing of the city’s stocks of grain. If it was discovered that reserves had fallen below an eightto twelve-month supply, merchants were engaged to bring stores up to an acceptable level. Until the eighteenth century, Venice stored wheat in three main granaries: at St. Mark’s, the Rialto, and Torcello. In response to ongoing food shortages, a warehouse for more inexpensive millet was established at San Stae in 1540. These warehouses had storage vaults, surrounded by shops and magistrate’s offices on the upper stories, allowing the sale, distribution, and regulation of the grain trade to take place in one location.3 In addition to organizing and overseeing the importation and distribution of grain, Venice’s expansion to the Italian mainland from 1400 onward was partly influenced by the need to provide for the hungry

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city. Ultimately these policies proved effective, as by 1600 the city was effectively self-sufficient. In Florence a special magistracy, the Sei del Biado, was charged with the purchase, transport, and sale of grain at the Orsanmichele market from 1284 on. The Sei del Biado also protected consumers from price gouging and speculation. Subsequently, the Sei was replaced by two magistracies: the Abbondanza, charged with the production and supply of cereals, and the Grascia, which oversaw “the production and exchange of all other foodstuffs,” though significant overlap and confusion about duties was recurring. In the sixteenth century the Medici Grand Dukes became directly involved in the provisioning of their state. Florence’s food regulations were enforced by “functionaries, agents, rectors, notaries, police officials, spies and informers,” who searched peasant cottages for hidden grain, examined merchants’ account books and stores, and inspected carts and carriages at the borders.4 Control over bread production was also an important part of Florence’s program. Bread was always sold at a set price, but officials varied the weight of the loaves depending on grain prices. Bakers were at times forced to purchase directly from the Abbondanza depending on market fluctuations, which led to protests. Indeed, the Abbondanza was directly in competition with them, as it owned some bakeries itself and sold bread to the city’s poor.5 Florence’s provisioning policies extended to the city’s contado (surrounding countryside) as well. The metropolis imposed rural export bans. Within a twenty-mile radius, food could only be transported toward the city, and it was sold at fixed prices set by officials. Producers were also required to report quantities of wheat, other cereals, and olive oil. At times of shortage, Florence provided “loans to stimulate agricultural recovery,” and markets and fairs were developed in rural centers to attract food supplies from outside the state. After its establishment, the Abbondanza was also charged with ensuring sufficient food was available in the countryside, and that farmers had enough seed grain.6 In Rome responsibility for the city’s provisioning was initially divided somewhat unclearly between communal and papal officials. Following the return of the papacy from Avignon and the resolution of the schism, the papacy came gradually to dominate the city. By the sixteenth century, it was in complete control. One magistracy oversaw and taxed the movement

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of grain. Another, the Annona, was headed by a clerk from the Apostolic Chamber and was charged with provisioning the city. The Annona administered the purchase and storage of grain supplies; the regulation of prices, weights and measures; and both supplying the city’s millers and bakers, and controlling their bread’s quality and weight.7 The city’s granaries were located “in the port area of Ripa and Trastevere,” though the largest stores of grain were held privately by powerful Roman families.8 Papal regulation of the grain trade became so onerous that leading producers shifted to pastoralism, with the result that grain production around Rome in 1523 was half what it had been a century earlier.9 There was no single approach to the crucial issue of provisioning. Some cities and states followed the pattern of Rome, Florence, and Venice, and established magistracies to oversee provisioning—such as Ferrara’s Ufficio delle biave, or the three separate bodies tasked with feeding the small town of Como.10 Others placed the task directly in the hands of their most powerful officials: in Ragusa it was the duty of the city’s rectors, in Naples the viceroy.11 The situation in France differed somewhat from that in Italy, in part because of competition between urban and royal statutes and exigencies, and in part because France generally produced sufficient grain to feed itself, making transportation and distribution the chief issues. An average-sized town of 3,000 consumed 1,000 tons of grain a year, which required about 4,500 acres of land to produce. Most large cities relied on shipments from beyond their immediate hinterland, and while this task was primarily left to private merchants, at times authorities intervened to ensure sufficient supplies at an acceptable price. This is evident in the case of Lyon. Throughout the Middle Ages, Lyon relied on merchants to meet the city’s grain needs, which had to be transported from afar. Over time, this arrangement proved increasingly incapable of dealing with the growing city’s demand. In 1481, seemingly for the first time, the consuls of the city undertook to purchase grain directly, and four citizen commissioners were charged with the task. This was a temporary expedient, but similar provisional initiatives were taken over the next century at various times. When the city purchased grain, its bakers—while not directly administered by the Consulate—were required to buy a certain amount of municipal grain, though they often bitterly opposed this. This fluid situation of varying bureaucratic experiments

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continued until 1586, when, in response to extreme famine, the city’s consuls decided to cease relying on private trade to provision the city. They established a commission of citizens, called the Intendants d’Abondance, to purchase grain, wheat, rye, and lentils, which would be stored in a public granary. It took almost fifty years, however, for the so-called Chambre d’Abondance to become firmly established.12 Lyon’s experience is probably more representative of areas beyond the Alps, which, in contrast to the direct controls common in Italy, tended to rely more on elaborate market regulations and officials who facilitated trade between city and countryside and prevented monopolistic practices. One form that this took, in London and Paris, was the establishment of “special supervised markets,” whose objective was the prevention of speculation and hoarding.13 The stockpiling seen in Italy was also common elsewhere: granaries were maintained “both to secure the welfare of the poorer classes and to discourage riots.”14 In Germany, all communities were required to establish a public granary (kornspeicher), and Castilian ordinances required the same of every municipality, with major granaries located in Barcelona, Cordoba, and Valenica.15 Public granaries were not as common in France until the establishment of the Chambre d’Abondance led other cities to follow suit.16 The Ottoman Empire also evolved similar provisioning institutions; what set them apart was their scale and complexity. The Ottomans developed an elaborate and highly organized system to ensure a constant food supply for the sultans’ realms, particularly their massive capital, Istanbul. Food production was not the concern, as the empire usually produced enough for its needs. Rather, the primary issue was the control and distribution of these resources. The Ottomans were heavily involved in every stage of the process, from the cultivation of grain to its transportation, storage and final distribution. The grand vizier, the highest official in the empire, had “regulatory jurisdiction over food supply.” The state provided farmers with seed loans, tax rebates, and even amnesty in bad years. Officials also established and enforced commodity prices, and this was their most effective provisioning tool. In Istanbul, food prices were set by the chief kadi, who also supervised the inspector charged with patrolling the market and administering fines, as well as the official responsible for the city’s water supply. The public silos in Istanbul received more than 300 shiploads of barley

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annually, and a state-administered flour exchange provided for the needs of the city’s bakers, who were also required to keep a month’s surplus of flour on site.17 As these examples have suggested, in addition to overseeing the supply of food—especially bread—rulers were also concerned with controlling the export of limited food resources. Venice repeatedly forbade the exportation of any grain from outside the Adriatic.18 Though Milan often produced surplus grain and livestock, it tried “to restrict exports by banning all markets within 5 km of its frontiers.” Even public works projects, such as the extensive canal system the dukes constructed, were in large part intended to funnel grain production to the center.19 In Spanish Naples, the crown limited cereal exports and fixed food prices. Initially these tasks were executed by civic officials; but incidents of popular unrest and the growing rationalization of Spanish rule in southern Italy led to the establishment in 1562 of the office of the Grassiero, which was administered by a crown functionary.20 The Ottomans also attempted to control grain supplies by generally forbidding exports. The first such ban was imposed in 1555, though there continued to be a massive contraband trade in wheat and foodstuffs because of the high prices available in Italy.21

FOOD AND WARFARE An important corollary to provisioning policies was the task of feeding the military. The Renaissance was a time of significant expansion and innovation in the military realm; scholars now locate the beginnings of the early modern military revolution in fifteenth-century Italy. As armies and navies grew in size, their food requirements expanded as well. For example, in the mid-sixteenth century, the army of Henri II of France numbered 90,000– 100,000 among soldiers and camp followers, making this mobile city one of the largest in Europe. Provisioning was thus a fundamental concern. “Food was the fuel of armies,” and failure to provide for an army in the field could result in its dissolution or defeat. As Richelieu observed, “many more armies perished through lack of food and lack of order than through any enemy action.”22 Feeding an army in the field was one of the most challenging logistical problems that early modern governments faced. When Henry VIII

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invaded France in 1544, for example, his army included 48,000 men— two-thirds the population of London at the time—and 20,000 horses. The daily ration for most armies was a 1.5-pound loaf of bread; 1 pound of cheese, meat, or fish; and 6 pints of beer or 3 pints of wine. It took 16,000 pounds of flour to produce the daily bread ration alone, as well as a large cast of supporting actors. Henry’s army included more than 2,000 bakers, millers and other men connected with victualing, as well as portable mills, ovens, vessels for brewing ale, and large quantities of flour, malt, and animals on hoof. Large numbers of draught animals and carts were required to carry all of this, and these and military steeds required daily fodder as well.23 Throughout the late Middle Ages armies were generally fed by exploiting rights of purveyance. In the sixteenth century this system began to be replaced by private merchants and munitionnaires, who contracted to provide for all an army’s food needs. In turn, these “ad hoc civilian organizations” were gradually replaced, and provisioning became increasingly centralized and bureaucratized. Depending on the state, this happened sooner or later, and more or less fitfully.24 In the late sixteenth century, for example, the Spanish crown developed a highly effective system of magazines along the 700-mile Spanish Road that thousands of men used to travel from Milan to the Netherlands. The Ottoman Empire had a similar system of storehouses (menzil-hanes) along major roads to supply its soldiery. For more unpredictable warfare in the field, armies carried much of their food with them in wagons. Other armies tried to remain close to waterways, as water transport was less difficult than overland transport.25 Even with all these preparations, armies in the field struggled to have more than a few days’ worth of food on hand. Commanders tried to keep their forces fed and to avoid living off the land, as this proved disruptive to military effectiveness. The preferred policy was to bring sufficient food to armies, rather than scatter them in search of it. These systems were imperfect of course, and complaints about insufficient and poor quality food—“ill meate, worse wine” as one commander wrote from Ireland in 1642—were endemic. Additionally, the unpredictability of war could disrupt the most efficient provisioning system. Thus soldiers quite quickly resorted to living off the land, which produced great suffering among civilian

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populations. Mutinies were not uncommon, with one of the chief demands often being more and better food.26

FOOD AND POVERTY Next in importance to provisioning in the food policies of Renaissance states, and indeed closely related to it, was the imperative to provide for the poor and hungry in society. This impulse was rooted in both religious beliefs and political exigencies, and the period 1300–1650 saw a significant change in attitudes toward poverty, with a concomitant shift in governmental attempts to deal with it. During the Middle Ages, views of the poor were deeply influenced by popular saints such as Francis of Assisi and by the expansion of mendicant orders. Impoverished people were more often viewed positively as being “blessed by God,” and providing charity was a holy act that ensured the giver an eternal reward, and benefited society generally.27 The care and sustenance of the poor in this time was undertaken either by ecclesiastical institutions or concerned private individuals. Lay involvement in dealing with hunger and poverty had its beginnings in the fifteenth century, when a variety of new mechanisms were instituted. The public pawnbroker, monti di pietà, are best known, but at the same time these were being organized, monti frumentari were also being promoted. These institutions lent seed to farmers, which was repaid after the harvest, and distributed grain in rural areas during famine. The first was established in Foligno in 1488, and others appeared in northern and central Italy, and even as far south as Naples. Another innovation, primarily in northern Europe, was the so-called poor tables. Dating from the fourteenth century, but becoming more common in the fifteenth, these were the tables des pauvres of the Low Countries and northern France, and the plats dels pobres in Catalonia. They were lay institutions closely linked to local authorities, which collected and distributed food, clothing, and alms to the poor on the very local, parish level.28 Beginning in the late fifteenth century, voices throughout Christendom began calling for more direct royal and civic involvement in assisting the poor. In 1498 King Manuel of Portugal (1469–1521) ordered a reform of that kingdom’s relief institutions, and by the early sixteenth century, a

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significant shift was underway in which hunger and poverty came to be increasingly perceived as a public matter. For example, Juan Luis Vives, in his 1526 De Subventione Pauperum, maintained that civil—not ecclesiastical— authorities had the responsibility to care for the poor, because if the poor were abandoned, social and political order were at great risk. For Vives, poverty was not primarily a moral issue, but a political and social matter.29 This shift in societal attitudes was a product of changing demographic, economic, and cultural realities. After over a century of stagnation following the Black Death, during the sixteenth century Europe’s population expanded by 30 percent and even more in some areas. At the same time, food expenses rose markedly: for example, in Antwerp in the first half of the sixteenth century, the price of grain increased by over 150 percent, double the pace of wages. In France, agricultural production began to slow, just as population was beginning to grow. The price of wheat increased fivefold from 1500 to 1600, and fluctuated violently and unpredictably. For instance, in Lyon a week’s supply of bad bread normally cost a half day’s wage, but could grow to three to six times that amount in times of shortage.30 With these demographic shifts, the number of poor began to increase significantly. In times of protracted famine, over half of Italian urban inhabitants might come to depend on poor relief, and this number was inevitably exacerbated by the large numbers of immigrants from the countryside who fled to the city seeking relief.31 One observer noted in 1596 “that the crowds of poor in the streets were so great that one could not pass through.”32 The great rise in the numbers of temporary and perpetual poor, and particularly what were perceived as “able-bodied beggars,” led to a significant recasting of attitudes. Individuals and institutions began to distinguish between the deserving and undeserving poor, with the latter seen as dangerous and in need of policing, discipline, and reformation. The extant system of voluntary charity seemed no longer able to address the challenges of poverty and hunger, and the threats to public order became of significant concern. The result was that in the sixteenth century, ecclesiastical and political elites began to elaborate new policies and institutions to address the changed reality. This general shift was “marked by a centralization of efforts, the passage of hospitals to lay control, the establishment of special offices and magistracies to aid the poor, the repression of beggars and vagabonds, and the imposition of a tax on the community at large for poor relief.”33

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In Lyon growing bread costs and food shortages produced serious social disturbance and led the city’s rulers to establish a new institution, the Aumône-Générale, which was intended to shift poor relief in the city from ecclesiastical and private hands, and to rationalize and centralize traditional institutions into a single civic organization. Churches and monasteries that had previously distributed alms now paid these directly to the Aumône, and it appears that in general, these entities did not regret being relieved of this heavy burden. Individuals were forbidden to give handouts in public places, or even in front of their homes; they were to pay these directly to the Aumône as well. To identify the needy and hungry in the community, a house-to-house census was taken, and those who qualified were issued printed tickets to exchange for food and money. From 1534 to 1561, on average 5 percent of the population of Lyon received a weekly handout of bread and /or cash.34 In Antwerp a similar shift took place. During the Middle Ages, poor relief resided in the hands of clergy and private individuals, with the exception of the Kamer van de Huisarmen, established in 1458, which was administered by “officially appointed almoners.” In 1540, in response to changing conditions, the income of almost all the city’s charitable institutions was transferred to the Kamer, effectively centralizing Antwerp’s relief efforts. The result of this laicization was that more of the city’s growing numbers of poor were fed: from 1560 to 1569, for example, 3,450 people were daily provided about 2 pounds of rye bread.35 There was significant regional variation, however, in approaches to dealing with poverty and hunger. In 1555 Viceroy Juan de Vega established an “Office of Charity” in Palermo, which effectively wedded lay and ecclesiastical poor relief. In neighboring Naples, in contrast, poor relief continued to be provided by guilds, lay congregations, religious institutions and private individuals, and there was no real formal official involvement until the mid-seventeenth century.36 While it was previously thought that the reformation produced a distinct break in the ways Protestants and Catholics confronted these issues, recent scholarship has identified more similarities than differences.37 It is important not to overstate the changes of the early modern period. Old forms of poor relief were not entirely supplanted by new ones. Individual and ecclesiastical responses to poverty and hunger remained

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essential, and they too evolved and adapted to the changing times. What the sixteenth century saw was a willingness to devise new solutions to old problems, and an increased role of states in supervising, coordinating and rationalizing efforts in an attempt to expand the scope of poor relief and to confront changed economic and demographic exigencies.38

FOOD AND DISORDER While the humanitarian impulse to provide for the poor in society was one factor, the political and social implications of the failure to manage food supply issues effectively were clear to late medieval and early modern polities. Despite the growth of larger and more complex structures dedicated to ensuring a consistent supply of food, shortages and even famine continued to be frequent occurrences. Hunger preoccupied the collective imagination during the Renaissance, and with good reason: it was a persistent feature of all premodern societies. The memory of the “Great Hunger” of 1315– 1322 endured for centuries, refreshed by the episodes of significant famine that recurred regularly until at least 1800. During the last decades of the fifteenth century, one in every six harvests failed in the Mediterranean. Between 1375 and 1791, Florence experienced 111 years of famine, and only sixteen harvests that could be classed as very good. The toll of famine could be harsh: for example, recurring shortfalls between 1587 and 1595 contributed to Bologna’s population plummeting from 72,000 to 59,000. While scholars no longer ascribe to the formula “first famine then fever” there was clearly a relationship between the two, and famine and plague could devastate and destabilize any premodern state.39 The bread riot (often instigated by women) was often the spark that led to much larger disturbances, and examples are so numerous and widespread as to defy quantification. In one instance, in Tuscany in 1328–1329, famine proved profoundly disruptive. Siena, Perugia, and other towns reacted by expelling beggars, many of whom went to Florence, which had imported large quantities of Sicilian grain. “Because of popular uproar,” Florentine officials had to protect the grain supplies “with the executioner’s block and axe at the ready . . . and a good number were mutilated in punishment.” In Siena, officials ordered individuals and institutions with grain to sell at a reduced

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price, and forbade the exportation of grain from the city and countryside, with guards placed at the gates of the city to search departing individuals. Despite these measures, the famine persisted and popular desperation and unrest grew. Eventually the starving populace rushed the city’s grain storage facilities “with such an uproar that it seemed the earth was opening up.” City officials were driven back with stones and poles, leading to the mobilization of the “captain of war” and his men, several of whom were killed by the enraged mob that they failed to pacify. Eventually the crowd’s fury was dissipated by promises of food from several of the city’s hospitals, and officials were able to regain control. Ultimately, six of the uprising’s ringleaders were hung as an example.40 Even France, which was one of the most productive agricultural regions of the continent and often a net exporter of grain, experienced regular food riots. These became more common in the sixteenth century as wages began to lag behind prices. Violence broke out in Meaux in 1522 and Agen in 1528, leading to the overthrow of that city’s oligarchy. The biggest popular revolt, the Grande Rebeyne, occurred in Lyon in 1529, when approximately 2,000 women, teenage boys, and unskilled laborers rose in protest against high grain prices. Violence was directed at the homes of wealthy merchants suspected of grain speculation, municipal and ecclesiastical granaries were raided, and order was only restored several weeks later through a draconian response by city officials. Popular uprisings continued throughout the century: in 1586 the situation in France became so dire that the poor cut “half-ripe grain in the fields, then ate it on the spot . . . and threatened to eat [the owners] too, if they would not allow them to eat the grain.”41 Similar violence, particularly after 1500, was common in other parts of Europe. In Antwerp, from 1520 on, riots became increasingly common and spread from the destitute to laborers, women, and even master craftsmen.42 Famine was a recurring problem for Venice during the sixteenth century: during the famine of 1570, “for six days on end there was no bread in the bakers’ shops and no flour in the warehouses.” In response, Venice’s rulers released flour from its stores, but this only led the population to become “even more agitated, and they said many strange and dishonourable things about the government.”43 Violence was often directed against bakers, merchants and others suspected of speculation or hoarding, or against government officials and magistracies held responsible for failing to prevent the

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shortage. Violence was also occasionally directed against marginal groups, including the poor, foreigners, and Jews. A significant rise in food prices in fifteenth century Spain, for example, was partly to blame for outbreaks of anti-Jewish violence.44

BANQUETS AND FEASTS While provisioning and poor relief were the two most important points of intersection between food and politics in the Renaissance, food was also central to the symbolic expression and legitimation of power. Banquets and feasts, for instance, were an essential element of Renaissance political culture. Important religious holidays, notable military victories, the accession of a new ruler, and the reception of princes, magistrates and diplomats: all were occasions for elaborate celebrations in which food figured prominently. All of these served explicitly political ends. Indeed, banquets were elaborate acts of political theater, with script, stage, props, actors and audience. Descriptions of memorable events were often published as well. Through the “pomp and magnificence” of the meal—its setting, the number of courses, the diversity and complexity of the foods—a ruler, an official, or indeed a state, communicated a clear message of political propaganda. The intent was to display “wealth and power,” convey a sense of political “stability, order, and hierarchy,” legitimate power, and enhance reputation.45 Renaissance attitudes toward entertaining were strongly influenced by classical ideas on liberality and magnificence in the writings of Aristotle and Cicero, which were embraced by humanists and became regular fixtures in the age’s extensive advice literature. In his 1498 treatise De conviventia, for example, Giovanni Pontano emphasizes the political role of feasting, which must be executed “sumptuously, abundantly, elegantly and splendidly.” The host must attend to not only the food but also the spectacle of its presentation. If done correctly, luxurious and pompous feasts could win the favor of the masses, and affirm the status and power of the host.46 Examples of opulent official banquets abound. For instance, during Henri III’s visit to Italy in 1574, Italian potentates banqueted the French king in luxurious fashion. In Venice Henri was feted in the Great Council Chamber surrounded by paintings by some of the city’s most important

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artists. Three thousand people ate on gold and silver platters, and at other events hundreds of sugar confections (some life-size) by the artist Niccolò della Pigna, depicting animals and gods, were offered as gifts and also consumed.47 In Genoa, private individuals were often tasked with accommodating and entertaining visiting dignitaries, and food was always an essential element of the spectacle. Gifts of the city’s “renowned candied fruits and jellies (dolci di Genova)” were offered, and prodigious amounts were spent on banquets, such as the ninety-dish dinner given in 1548 in honor of the Spanish Infante Don Felipe.48 In the altered political landscape of sixteenth-century Italy, where much of the feasting literature originated, banquets such as these were an integral part of the attempts of marginalized city-states to assert their continued political relevance and to “broadcast a message of strength and stability,” even though they possessed reduced or minimal effectual power.49 In contrast to Italian political weakness, at the height of their power, the early modern Ottoman sultans employed an elaborate daily feasting scheme which, through its opulence and conspicuous consumption, underlined their power and prestige. A meal was a regular feature of the divan: fourteen tables of twenty settings each were laid out for officials, with a single table reserved for the sultan alone, though occasionally high-ranking individuals were invited to join him. The sultan was served by up to thirty senior pages, each charged with a specific duty, such as Master of the Napkin, Master Ewer-keeper, and so forth. In addition to table placement, the foods served underlined the hierarchies of rank and privilege: “dignitaries and officials banqueted on different food—for example, the learned class received a variety of roasted meats, as well as duck and goose.”50 Public culinary displays were also an important part of legitimating rulers and manifesting their power and largesse. At the 1582 circumcision of Murad III’s son, “all kinds of fruit, domes of pilaf as tall as minarets, tables turned into seas filled with varieties of fish,” and hundreds of animals sculpted with sugar and honey were laid out. In addition to the opulent formal feasts, Murad also provided a banquet for the poor, with the food spread out on the ground in front of his kiosk.51 Food was an important part of diplomacy as well. Writers such as Christopher Varsevicius directly linked an ambassador’s reputation to his table, and held that banquets loosened tongues and eased diplomatic

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negotiations. When “great men . . . grow warm at table there is even a desire for discussing the greatest things. For many voluntarily profess at table more than they would confess under torture.”52 The great Venetian diplomat, Marino Cavalli, reported that in his experience, next to his reputation, an ambassador’s ability to maintain an “abundant” table was his most important asset, and that “the best thing that an ambassador has in his house is a good chef.”53

FOOD REGULATION In addition to controlling production and provisioning, Renaissance polities also attempted to legislate food consumption through sumptuary laws. Though the first such statute dates to 1157, sumptuary laws began to appear broadly only in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. In 1234 King James of Aragon restricted meat eating among his subjects to two meals. Several decades later, in 1279 Philip III of France promulgated an ordinance that attempted to minimize food consumption, which was followed by additional legislation by Philip IV in 1294 that limited subjects to one dish and a side dish at ordinary meals. By 1400 the laws were widespread: Italian cities produced almost one hundred sumptuary laws in the fifteenth century, and double that number in each of the next two centuries. The motivation behind such legislation was complex: In the case of the French laws, it has been suggested that they were sought by nobles who wanted to preserve status and privileges which they saw as threatened by the expanding bourgeoisie. In Italy, in contrast, the opposite was true: laws were intended “less to keep down the upstart than to fetter the aristocrat.”54 A 1412 Sienese statute expresses another motivation behind such legislation: “It is necessary to make provisions to restrain the superfluous expenditure from our citizens’ purses, both rich and poor, for their own preservation and for the utility and honour of the commune.” Similar legislation from Bergamo was justified by “the bad nature of the times, [the city] being reduced to great poverty, and the luxury of the . . . food . . . which is of manifest ruin to the citizens and also provokes the Divine Majesty to anger against us.”55 Sumptuary laws, as this legislation suggests, were also intended to protect urban economies, to prevent the financial ruin of citizens, and to ward off divine wrath.

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Another important objective of sumptuary legislation was to attenuate the threat to public order that banquets presented. A Venetian law of 1336 (reiterated in 1339 and 1356) forbade men asking “ladies to supper between Michaelmas and Easter” because of the “foolish things” and the “follies” that were committed. A Perugian law was more draconian: banquets at night were forbidden as they “provide opportunities for malefaction,” and daytime festivities could include no more than twenty men. The law also dictated the “types and quantities of food that could be served with each course,” and directed hosts to send for the sumptuary official to verify any meal served to six or more people. A Pisan law similarly restricted banquets to twenty, and food “to two courses and two confections.”56 A Florentine law of 1330 tried to limit feasts to three courses, “to restrain riots and ambitions of the throat.” In the fifteenth century Venetian officials attempted to rein in the feasting societies known as compagnie delle calze with repeated legislation, which limited courses to “three excluding dessert,” and banned the consumption of “pheasants, peacocks, partridges, and doves.” Laws were directed not only at public consumption, but private meals as well. A 1563 French law limited private family meals to three courses, and specified acceptable foods in great detail.57 Legislation also tried to control gifts of food. In Lucca a law forbade the gift of sweetmeats to a woman during her confinement, while a fifteenthcentury Nuremberg ordinance limited meals following a christening to “one dish of unforbidden food,” accompanied by “small cakes, raw fruit, cheese and bread, and ordinary wine.” A Bolognese law forbade all gifts of food, raw or cooked, to the families of the deceased until eight days after the death. Wedding feasts were a particular target: a Genoese law of 1449 permitted only “soup and eggs” to be served so that nuptial banquets would not be drawn out unnecessarily. In Florence, chefs were required to notify officials of “types and quantities of food” that were to be served at any wedding feast. Similarly, in Nuremberg, only immediate family and out-of-town guests could participate in most nuptial festivities, and at wedding dances only fruit, confection and wine could be served.58 Enforcement of sumptuary legislation in thirteenth- and fourteenthcentury Italy was most often entrusted to the podestà. In some urban centers, including Bologna and Cremona, but most notably Florence and Venice, permanent magistracies specifically charged with supervising

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sumptuary laws were established. In Venice, initially the Avogadori di comun were charged with enforcement, and the Signori di notte collected all sumptuary fines. In 1334 a council of five savi was established, though it functioned only briefly. In 1476 another attempt was made, which lasted slightly longer, but it was not until 1514 that a stable body, the Magistrato alle pompe, was finally established. Punishment for the contravention of the laws was almost always a fine, though ecclesiastical punishments, such as excommunication, were often applied.59 Despite its association with Christian ethics and theology, sumptuary legislation was not limited to Christian lands. In the Venetian Ghetto, similar attempts to control consumption were initiated by the Small Assembly, charged with the self-governance of the Jewish community. Concerned by developments within the diverse and expanding Jewish community in Venice, the assembly issued laws governing food gifts and feasting, including the number of guests and the types and quantities of food that could be served.60 Similarly, in the Ottoman Empire, sultans implemented sumptuary laws to prevent the flight of capital and to preserve the social order.61 Governmental regulation of food supplies and foodways carried over into other areas of society as well. The reforming zeal of the sixteenth century gave rise to a sense that society needed to be disciplined and controlled more rationally and effectively. One area of widespread concern was the regulation of alcohol consumption and the prevention of drunkenness. Attempts to temper consumption occurred across religious lines, though they were more somewhat widespread in Protestant lands.62 In the Ottoman Empire, particularly from the reign of Süleyman I on, sultans regularly closed down Istanbul’s many Christian-run taverns, and from 1551 the empire’s growing number of coffeehouses were targeted both as “focal points of social unrest” and as sites of uncontrolled consumption.63 A final area in which governments attempted to intervene was related to food purity. Legislation on the adulteration of bread dates to at least the thirteenth century in England and the late fourteenth century in France. In Renaissance Venice a merchant was discovered selling flour mixed with ash and chalk in the midst of a famine, and the tainted product was burned on the Rialto. Ongoing complaints of similar problems led the Senate to pass a law preventing the adulteration of flour, so as “to avoid any unhappy consequences that might arise from this [abuse].”64 Concerns about

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“‘evil’ breads” were common throughout Italy and beyond: a chronicler in Ferrara in 1596 blamed “bad breads” for “many illnesses, of which numerous people even die.”65 Because of the potential for social unrest, punishments for adulteration were public and ritualized: in Germany bread adulterators were repeatedly immersed in water in a basket. In 1525 in Paris, a baker was processed throughout the city barefoot, “with small loaves hung from his neck, and holding a large wax candle,” begging forgiveness of “God, the king, and of justice.” Adulteration of wine and beer was also common, and punishment often included drinking large quantities of the tainted product.66 In the final analysis, however, it seems that sumptuary laws and other food regulations were fairly ineffectual. This is evidenced by the multiple restatements of the same laws by the same legislative body, often in very rapid succession, strongly suggesting that the laws were ignored. The experience of Archbishop Thomas Cranmer was likely quite common. In 1541 the high clergy of England agreed upon very detailed rules guiding the food consumption of the clergy. However, as Cranmer wrote, “this order was kept for two or three months, till, by the disusing of certain wilful persons, it came again to the old excess.”67 While Renaissance efforts to regulate food consumption, to provision states and armies, and to care for the hungry and poor often fell short, the era was marked by significant innovation on the part of polities in confronting these matters. Though famine remained a constant specter, the severity of these food crises was often mitigated. Governments were more prepared and willing to intervene by distributing food, manipulating prices, and regulating markets than they had been prior to 1300.68

CHAPTER FIVE

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The period 1300 –1600 encompasses centuries usually taught in Britain and the United States as divided between late medieval and early modern history. The point of transition can be anything from the Black Death of 1348–1349 to the end of the fifteenth century, with the first European voyages to America. It is confusing that many of the features associated with the Middle Ages flourished in northern Europe during the fifteenth century at the same time that Italy experienced the Quattrocento, or flowering of Renaissance art and humanistic culture. The elaborate late Gothic architecture of the King’s College chapel, Cambridge, the tormented crucifixion in the Grünewald altarpiece, or the courtly atmosphere of Malory’s Morte d’Arthur were brought into being simultaneous with such Renaissance landmarks as Botticelli’s Birth of Venus, the neoclassical style of Brunelleschi’s Florentine foundling hospital, and the rediscovery of Plato. Fortunately the apparent contrasts between medieval and Renaissance art and architecture are not similarly marked in gastronomy; or, more particularly, in the style of entertaining and dining outside the home. The Renaissance would produce a different kind of discourse about food, especially humanistic essays on ideal banquets and other forms of diversion in the classical manner, but the culinary taste of sixteenth-century Italy was not so far from that of fourteenth-century France. The great changes in

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cuisine would come later—well into the seventeenth century—and the ostentatious performance of court entertainment would persist until the end of the ancien régime in Europe. The era under consideration had no restaurants as we conceive of them. Dining out in the modern sense was limited to inns, which were travelers’ necessities rather than culinary destinations; or, at the other extreme, banquets and other elaborate meals in a residence or a public space. This chapter will therefore seem to focus disproportionately on grand entertainments— on banquets—but it should be kept in mind that for the wealthy, the distinction between private and public dining, between a quiet night at home and going out, was blurred from the contemporary perspective. The households of nobles, bishops, and other grand figures were large, not only in numbers of servants and dependents but also in how many people were routinely fed— even apart from great feasts for special occasions. The domestic accounts for the third Duke of Buckingham, for example, show that at his residence at Thornbury in 1507–1508 there were usually between fifty and eighty guests for meals.1 Even for those of somewhat less exalted status, entertainments were frequent and might require additional servants and outside services to supplement a moderate-sized permanent staff of ten or twenty. The author of The Menagier of Paris, a household advice and cookery book of the very late fourteenth century, offers twenty-five menus for dinners that include dozens of dishes and as many as six courses or services. The numbers to be served are usually not specified, but clearly the presence of guests at dinner parties was common enough to be included as part of the author’s advice to his young wife about how to run an upper-bourgeois household. There is a lot of detailed information about prices, where to buy food, and what items to contract out (pastries, wafers, sauces). A typical dinner that perhaps falls a little short of qualifying as a banquet, but that shows a distinguished taste in entertaining, is an event consisting of twenty-four dishes in three courses. The first consists of pea coulis, salted eels and herrings, leeks with almonds, joints of meat, yellow soup, saltwater fish, salemine (a fish dish), and oyster stew. There follows roast fish of various sorts accompanied by Savoy broth (spiced capon, bacon, and liver soup) and larded soup of “reversed eels.” For the third course the author of the Menagier offers roast bream, galantine, an unspecified stew, “pilgrim capons” (made

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with roasted lampreys or eels), aspic, blancmanger, poached plaice, cold marinated turbot, lampreys with hot sauce, cream darioles (crusted flans), glazed meats, and a rice dish.2 The medieval and Renaissance periods shared a love of ceremony and reaffirmation of social distinctions through displays of largesse and hospitality. Royal and princely courts elaborated complicated rules for dining as they did for hunting, worship, and other daily activities. Nobles, the urban bourgeoisie, trade and professional guilds, and the church shared this love of formal rules and measured ostentation. This was an era of magnificent chivalry, not so much in war as in tournaments and other controlled events. There was constant exhortation to crusade even if little progress was shown in actually re-taking the Holy Land. It was a period of equally magnificent gestures toward the poor, including frequent meals taken by great nobles with select indigents, but the actual condition of the mass of impoverished people was as wretched as ever. There was thus an emphasis on gesture, symbolism, and proper sentiments. A sublime ideal of life and a hierarchical conception of society dominated, encouraging artistic manifestations and public displays that tended to formalism, symbolism, and didacticism.3 The ponderous Gothic of fifteenth-century Burgundy was quite different from the playful Mannerism of sixteenthcentury Italy, but the two quintessential styles of northern and southern Europe shared a love of artifice and special effects, a tendency toward complex symbolism, a love of rules, and simultaneously of rule-breaking. Above all, the entire period from 1300 to 1600 delighted in surprise and in trompe l’oeil, creating amazing and memorable events and objects that didn’t always avoid excess and sheer vulgarity.

BANQUETING Banquets were opportunities for realizing late-medieval and Renaissance ideals of the sublime and of surprise, balancing physical gratification (a splendid meal) with spiritual meaning (intellectual pleasure through learned but witty conversation). A particular trait of the fourteenth through sixteenth centuries is the importance ascribed to banquets, their quasi-public settings, and the amount of lore and commentary they gave rise to—apart from questions of menus, recipes, or other matters having to do with food.

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Olivier de la Marche (c. 1426–1502), a poet and maître d’hôtel in the service of the dukes of Burgundy, wrote a treatise on the management of the household of Charles the Bold, the last of these dukes, at the request of King Edward IV of England. Not only does la Marche go into the minutest detail of the duties of the kitchen officers and the service of banquets, but he poses tricky problems such as who takes the chief cook’s place when he is absent (an election has to be held), or why the panetiers and cup-bearers rank ahead of carvers and cooks (because they handle bread and wine, the sacred elements of the Eucharist).4 The menus of great banquets of the later medieval period (fourteenth and fifteenth centuries) demonstrate the elaborate, playful and showy style of the period. The courses were arranged in familiar categories (beginning with soup and ending with small sweet and savory offerings), but with an overwhelming emphasis on meat or (if coinciding with a day of abstinence), fish in hardly less varied and magnificent style. A banquet offered by the Count of Foix in Paris for emissaries from the King of Hungary in 1458 can hardly be said to be typical— every banquet was different— but it exemplifies a common pattern. There were seven services beginning with spiced wine (white hippocras) served with canapés on toast. Capon and wild boar pies, accompanied by several kinds of soup, followed this modest beginning. Then all manner of roasted game (pheasants, partridges, rabbits, venison, peacock, etc.) accompanied by seven other unspecified dishes and more soups. The fourth service consisted of what are described as “armed birds,” again with various other dishes and soups. The former would have been cooked poultry and wild fowl in military poses with the accoutrements of knighthood. (The French royal chef Taillevent offers a recipe for “Helmeted Rooster,” in which the roasted bird is wearing a tiny metal helmet and holding a lance and pennant while set astride an orangeglazed suckling pig.) Starting to wind down the repast, the fifth course involved tarts, cream darioles, and fried oranges. We then return to spiced wine (this time red hippocras) with rolled crisp wafers, and finally spices in sugar representing various animals and birds, each holding a banner with the arms of the Kingdom of Hungary and of the other lords present.5 The Renaissance did not see any great movement toward simplification. The ceremony of the Italian princely courts might tend more to the classical than the heraldry and Christian symbolism favored by the dukes

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of Burgundy, but the overall aesthetic was the same. Extravagance, rules, and surprise characterize high-end dining throughout the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance. The latter produced several immense encyclopedias of food service and celebratory dining, such as the Banchetti, compositioni di vivande et apparecchio generale. This book was written by another maître d’hôtel, Cristoforo di Messisbugo (d. 1548), who served the Este in Ferrara. He describes 315 recipes, provides examples of feasts, and offers disquisitions on kitchen tools, personnel, and duties. The first sample meal offers eighteen courses with eight dishes each. The first course consists of the following: trout patties spiced hard-boiled eggs sturgeon roe, pike spleens, and other fish innards, fried with orange, cinnamon, and sugar boiled sturgeon with garlic sauce fried bream cornflower soup a flat crust (pizza-like) dish in the Catalan style fried river fish After nine courses and seven hours the meal appears to be over, but then the table is reset, redecorated, and nine more courses are served.6 The love of formalism is reflected in manuals for carving. The English Boke of Kervynge, printed by Wynkyn de Worde in 1508 and 1513, discusses the various forms of meal service for a great lord, with a particular emphasis on how various animals, fish and seafood should be cut up and presented. Included are the correct terms for deftly taking apart particular creatures. Thus one “splayes” a bream but “dysmembres” a heron; a cony is “unlaced,” but a sturgeon is “traunched.”7 Vincenzo Cervio published a longer and more detailed treatise on carving in 1581, describing the tools in more detail than other manuals, as well as the techniques. The Boke of Kervynge, a Spanish carving book called the Arte de cisoria, and Cervio’s disquisition share a concern for taxonomy and technical mastery of a craft that was executed in front of guests, and not just a secret of the kitchen. The Italian manual differs in its attention to

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carving style. Its essentially Mannerist nature is evident to the degree that style has become an end in itself. The movements and grace of the carver are foregrounded while the nature of the dishes is de-emphasized: “the stomach and the mouth are temporarily out of the picture; everything here happens between the head, the eyes and the hands.”8 Of course the performance could go wrong and bring shame upon the carver whose skill (or luck) failed. The hero of Jehan et Blonde, a fourteenth-century romance, is so smitten by the presence of his beloved lady who is at the banquet where he is carving that he cuts himself badly and has to be led away bleeding and humiliated.9 A banquet was defined by Ottaviano Rabasco in 1615 as an elaborate dinner usually held early in the day (around noon), but it could also take place in the evening or even (as with Messisbugo’s fête) quite late at night.10 Private dinners for friends and important political occasions—both intimate suppers and grand affairs—were included under the rubric of banquets. The first use of the word banquet in English is in Caxton’s version of the Golden Legend, printed in 1483. The term feast was used, as now, to mean both a holiday or celebration in honor of a saint and the actual festive meal. Confusingly, the sixteenth century in England saw the occasional use of banquet to describe the final course of a meal consisting of sweet delicacies and spices. This forms a chapter in the slow emergence of the modern dessert course, and the increasing distinction between savory and sweet dishes. A variety of sweetmeats constituted what was known as “banquetting stuffe,” including candied fruit and spices, dried fruit, preserves and marmalades, comfits, conserves, creams, jellies, and confectionary items resembling modern candies. Sugar was the common element that defined this kind of banquet.11 The models for what is more conventionally understood as a banquet— that is, a grand feast—were, as stated previously, the courts of the Duchy of Burgundy and the Italian princely states. Although nominally a vassal of the king of France and of the Holy Roman Emperor, the duke of Burgundy from the late fourteenth century to 1477 was the ruler of a region strategically and ambiguously placed between France and Germany. His agglomeration of territories extended well beyond modern Burgundy to include the Franche Comté, the Low Countries, Flanders, Artois, and Picardy.

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The Burgundian style of festivity emphasized the luxurious, the allegorical, and the magnificent. The celebrated Feast of the Pheasant in Lille (1454) was supposed to respond to the fall of Constantinople to the Turks and to launch yet another crusade. The duke’s secretary concluded his account of this over-the-top event by saying “this was the highest and most elaborate (pompeuse), the richest and most magnificent occasion that there has ever been.”12 Duke Phillip the Good and his knights, especially those of the Order of the Golden Fleece, swore by a magnificently presented pheasant that they would endure many privations until they fulfilled their vow to go on the planned (but never realized) crusade: to eat standing up, or to give up wine one day a week, or not to sleep in a bed on Saturdays.13 We know more about the tableaux, the elaborately symbolic entremets and other ceremonial aspects of the feast, than about the actual food consumed. Olivier de la Marche describes in loving detail the festivities surrounding the duke’s marriage to Margaret of York in July 1468. At one banquet, the high table was set out with six large ships and towers symbolizing the different towns of the realm. Plates of meat, fruit, and spices (probably spiced confections) were set in the midst of this display. At another meal, there were thirty trees made of wax. Amid these were set twenty cooked dishes with a tower and fountain, the latter flowing “abundantly” with rosewater. There was also a large sculpted whale guarded by two giants. The whale was large enough to carry in its belly twelve or thirteen “strangely dressed” men who emerged to dance and fight mock battles. Such is the taste of late medieval Burgundy, but we learn relatively little about the actual victuals.14 Religious holidays, victories in battle, ducal weddings, and the birth of ducal children were marked by lavish entertainments in which the public shared to some extent. The visits of dukes to the prosperous towns required the celebration of the ruler’s “joyful entry,” which involved pledges of submission and loyalty, symbolic welcome enacted outside the city, and an escort through the city gates. Within the walls, both solemn and antic festivities were celebrated, in which fountains of wine and lavish but relatively easily-prepared food were served to a large proportion of the populace.15 This sort of event was universal in late medieval and Renaissance Europe and often had a practical as well as symbolic meaning. Towns were

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dependent on royal favor for tax relief, grants, and other financial benefits. The English cities offered entertainments to visiting kings in the hope and expectation of grants, exemptions, and other fiscal gifts—not always successfully.16 Sometimes the carefully performed celebration broke down, and disorder and gatecrashing replaced the calibrated hierarchical arrangements. The scale and complexity of pulling off both a public fête and more soigné private meal created all sorts of logistical problems. At the coronation of the infant King Henry VI of England (which took place in Paris in 1431, when the English seemed to have bested France in the Hundred Years’ War), the Parisian populace forced their way into the hall where the feast was supposed to take place. They ate the food that had been already set out, stole salt cellars and other portable table-service items, and resisted all attempts to move them in favor of the invited members of Parliament, university faculty, merchant officials, and other urban dignitaries who very reluctantly shared the disorganized revels with their social inferiors.17 However, through the good offices of the well-known English poet John Lydgate, we have an idea of some of the dishes served at Henry’s coronation banquet amid the sculpted (and in some cases edible) allegorical subtleties: accompanying a representation of the royal Saints Edward (of England) and Louis (of France) were such banquet staples as wheat porridge (frumentie) with venison, boars’ heads, beef, mutton, baby swans, pike, stewed capons, and sun-shaped fritters with fleurs-de-lis. A second course offered aspic in colors with the motto Te Deum Laudamus, cranes, coneys, gilded chickens and pigs, partridges, peacocks, a large bream, and fritters in the shape of leopards’ heads with ostrich feathers. The subtlety depicted the deceased King Henry V, the Holy Roman Emperor Sigismund, and the new king kneeling before them. Finally, alongside Our Lady and her Child with kneeling Saints George and Saint Denis (patrons of England and France respectively) presenting the new king, there was roasted venison, many small and large game birds (curlews, larks, quails, egrets), carp, crab, cold baked meat colored and shaped like a red-and-white shield, and crisp fritters.18 The banquets of the Italian Renaissance differ from these northern, late medieval examples, but not as much as one might expect given the very distinct artistic styles of the two regions and periods. There are, to be sure, certain changes and differences of taste. Large game animals tended to cede

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their place in banquets to small birds, lighter-fleshed fowl such as capon and partridge, and to domestic veal. Food served on festive occasions was daintier, more manageable, more to be enjoyed in small portions. Oysters become popular at this time, for example. There is also a greater range of dishes offered, in part because the opprobrium previously reserved for such rustic things as salads, cured meats, or cheese was tempered in the Renaissance. Luxury vegetables such as asparagus and artichokes rubbed figurative shoulders with the humble turnip and cabbage. Spices remained important, both as flavorings and as objects of display and gift giving, but more emphasis was placed on sweetness and perfume and less on the sharp and sour infatuation of the Middle Ages.19 Renaissance ceremony and taste tended toward themes and variations, both as a thrifty use of the entire featured animal and as a demonstration of that most typical Renaissance quality, virtuosity: the ability to produce splendid and unexpected effects without apparent strain. In his 1584 book Della Scalco, Giovanni Battista Rossetti offers a series of Lenten dinners, each featuring a single fish gotten up in various ingenious fashions. Sturgeon is prepared in the following ways: as meatballs (three kinds), in slices with pistachio sauce, the head cooked in white sauce with pomegranate seeds, sturgeon pie, sturgeon with cherries and jujubes, tripe, belly, caviar, milt, sturgeon on a spit, fried sturgeon strips (tagliadelle), and many other preparations involving slicing, pounding, or in combination with other ingredients.20

OUTDOOR DINING AND THE PASTORAL There is a muted counter-narrative to all this splendor: what Huizinga referred to as the “idyllic vision of life,” in which writers for an aristocratic audience claimed on occasion to long for a humble but virtuous mode of existence, in imitation of the spontaneous and untroubled life of the shepherds.21 As opposed to the heavy labor of the peasants at the plow, which seldom called forth any sort of envy, since classical antiquity shepherds had been models of innocent outdoor pleasures. Hunting also produced a certain number of opportunities for eating al fresco. The normal routine of townspeople and nobles, however, did not include many such meals, except to the extent that the typical Renaissance urban palace had a balcony on its piano nobile fit for at least terrazzo dining.

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Theocritus in Greece and Horace in Rome were the best-known—but by no means unique—examples of poets who, in an evocative if stylized way, praised rural simplicity and its healthful satisfactions, contrasted with the stress and doubtful morality of urban wealth and ambition. To some extent, devotion to the simple life is merely the negative virtue of avoiding the perils of war or the intrigue of the court. In the words of John Dryden, in his libretto for Henry Purcell’s opera King Arthur (1691): How blest are shepherds, how happy their lasses, While drums and trumpets are sounding alarms! Over our lowly sheds all the storm passes, And when we die ’tis in each other’s arms, All the day on our herds and flocks employing, All the night on our flutes and in enjoying. Bright nymphs of Britain with graces attended, Let not your days without pleasure expire. Honour’s but empty, and when youth is ended, All men will praise you but none will desire. Let not youth fly away without contenting; Age will come time enough for your repenting.22 There are many more or less sincere forms of longing in this passage, but to the extent that we are to take such sentiments seriously, the flutes and “enjoying” would include a simpler kind of food eaten outdoors. Premodern picnicking was rarely depicted, but must have taken place in reality much more often than in art. The pastoral ideal became fashionable in the late Middle Ages and Renaissance as a response to the overritualized and overcivilized life of the courtier. The fourteenth-century French poem Le dit de Franc Gontier by Philippe de Vitry (1291–1361), bishop of Meaux, imagines a rustic idyll as the poet takes a meal near a noisy brook and a clear fountain with Gontier and his rustic lady Helayne. The meal consists of fresh cheese, milk, cream, curds, apples, nuts, fruit, garlic, onions, shallots, crusty bread, and coarse salt. All of these are at best simple and mostly truly lowly in the eyes of normal noble food culture, which found dairy items and onions especially despicable. After this feast Gontier goes off to fell a tree while the poet

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reflects on his happy life. There are no gold cups here, but no poison in them either; no lechery or covetousness entices him to court. “What are pillars of marble, shining pommels, walls decorated with paintings?” It is the courtier who is truly a serf while the free (franc) Gontier is “worth a sure gem set in gold.”23 Of course, as with better-known examples of playing at shepherds—such as Marie Antoinette’s circle at Versailles—bucolic joy could be adapted to the court as a form of masquerade and ceremony in its own right, much as rustic cuisine periodically is gentrified and elaborated for an affluent clientele. At the 1468 wedding of the Duke of Burgundy and Margaret of York that we described above, the sculpted tableaux that served as entremets included princesses of long ago—noble shepherdesses of their people— depicted in proper pastoral style.24 The French Renaissance poet Ronsard, under the influence of Horace and his celebration of rural simplicity, imagines a lot of idyllic outdoor drinking at least, if not as much eating (though there is a poem about salad). The Renaissance had a literary fondness for outdoor meals, but no real bent for rusticity.25 The extreme of sophistication in outdoor dining is presented in a monument of Renaissance humanism: the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, an erotic allegorical dream adventure published in 1499 and perhaps the most beautiful book ever printed, with its early humanist typeface and 174 lovely woodcut illustrations. The dreamer Poliphilo is entertained in a leafy courtyard by Queen Eleuterylida. This is no simple picnic. It is served on golden and ivory tables, with silken cloths, flowers, precious vases, and cutlery, which are changed with each course. For every diner there are three servants in attendance, who are so solicitous that no food is handled by the guests. Rather, it is conveyed to their mouths by the servants, who even dab at their lips with napkins. The Hypnerotomachia Poliphili gives more attention to decor and service than to the food, which is, for the most part delicate and perfumed poultry as was fashionable at real banquets. The meal begins with what is described as a “cordial confection” made with powdered unicorn’s horn, sandalwood, ground pearls in brandy set alight, manna, pine nuts, rose water, musk, and powdered gold pressed out into pieces with starch and sugar. The next course consists of fritters made from saffron-colored dough with rosewater and sugar, sprinkled with musk and more sugar. Capon, partridge,

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pheasant, and peacock are served with elaborate perfumed sauces. The seventh course, just as an example, is roasted peacock’s breast with a sour green sauce of pistachios, sugar, starch, musk, wild thyme, white oregano, and pepper. The dishes are of sapphire. The delight of nature, of dining outdoors, has been supplanted by the most refined and showy of artifice.26

INNS, TAVERNS, AND STREET FOOD If there were no restaurants in the modern sense of a place that serves meals over the course of the day and offers a menu with choices to diners, there were inns where food was set before guests or could be ordered by travelers or locals. Pilgrims, merchants, and others thronging the roads would have to settle for what they could get at inns whose poor conditions, high prices, and food of dubious quality fill the pages of European literature. Cervantes’ Don Quixote includes adventures at a series of inns characterized by awful food. At one inn patronized by women of easy virtue, the Knight of the Doleful Countenance is fed by some of these ladies while holding up his visor with both hands. He eats badly prepared and even more poorly cooked cod along with black and grimy bread. At another place the innkeeper grandly claims to have anything one might care to order. After a series of requests meet with a regretful explanation about why they are not, in fact, available just at the moment, Sancho asks in exasperation, “My God . . . why don’t you just get down to it and tell what you’ve really got, and stop all this scurrying around.” It turns out the innkeeper has cow’s feet (which may be calf’s hooves) cooked with chickpeas, onion, and bacon (“and they just sit there saying ‘Eat me! Eat me!’ ”).27 Two hundred years earlier, the poet Eustache Deschamps complained about staying at inns where the only food was leeks and cabbage made worse by copious amounts of pepper.28 Pilgrims were a special but numerous category of travelers. An impression of collective bonhomie is left by the most famous innkeeper in English literature, the organizer of the Canterbury pilgrimage described by Chaucer. More commonly, innkeepers did not join the throngs of the devout but profited off them. Efforts were made by ecclesiastical and town officials to crack down on fraud in, for example, the measurement and quality of wine.29

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Contemporary complaints about inns involve vermin even more frequently than inferior food. A fourteenth-century book gives sample dialogues in French for English people. In one a servant sent ahead by his master to find out about an inn asks if there are fleas or bugs. He receives the only partially reassuring news that in fact there are no insects and the inn is comfortable, except that there are quite a lot of rats and mice.30 Two fellows of Merton College recorded their expenses for a winter journey from Oxford to Durham and Newcastle in 1331. They traveled on horseback with four servants. Their beds were very cheap, less than what they had to spend on wine, beer, bread, meat, and pottage. Occasionally they record expenditures on spices, fish, pickles and sugar, indicating that they might have bought their own provisions and then had them prepared where they stayed.31 For urban dwellers whose movements were simply their daily routes around town, many temptations were offered on or just off the streets.32 The prepared food sold by cooks to passers-by, a robust kind of take-out, had a much better reputation (at least in literature) than the poor fare of inns. Stores had counters open to the street to offer their various edible and drinkable wares. Some ready-to-eat foods such as fruit or shellfish were commonly sold by peddlers. Between fixed stores and itinerant hawking were stalls that might be set up in or near markets or on busy thoroughfares. The Scottish poet William Dunbar, writing in the sixteenth century, reports that mussels, cockles and whelks were for sale beside the Market Cross and scales in Edinburgh along with curds and milk to take away. Savory (rather than sweet) pies were a popular form of ready-made food, sold in all kinds of settings and consumed hot by preference. Pies and other hot snacks were prepared by mobile ovens that could be wheeled from one place to another: fairs, markets, or any occasion that gathered a crowd. The ovens might be used to supply stands, an intermediary between the bakery where they were made and the location where they were sold. An illustration from a 1465 manuscript of Ulrich Richental’s chronicle of the ecumenical Council of Constance shows pies being delivered from such an oven pulled by two men and unloaded at an open stand. The unusual crowding of the normally small town of Constance —inflated by the ecclesiastical council that spent four years settling the Great Schism—provided an ideal opportunity for every sort of movable retail trade.

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More elaborate than stands were fixed cookshops selling ready-made sauces and confections that could be used in entertaining at home. They also provided meat, fish, and fowl prepared either for immediate consumption or to take away. In his groundbreaking study of the Mediterranean in the sixteenth century, Fernand Braudel cites the lament of Rabelais’s monk of Amiens about the paucity of street food in Florence to underscore the relative poverty of the South despite its beautiful gardens, flowers and busy towns. The monk is outraged at his companions’ foolish enchantment with the sights of Florence, and asks where the food is: “Now at Amiens . . . I could have shown you above fourteen streets of roasting cooks, most ancient, savory and aromatic.” He would much rather behold a good fat goose turning on a spit than gaze at the monuments.33 Northern Europe, with its richer pastures and greater meat consumption, presented a seemingly mouth-watering selection of commercial cookery. Urban taverns provided food, but it was supplementary to the profitable sale of drink. Then as now, they offered salty and spicy food to encourage thirst, snacks such as salted herring, or salt beef. Taverns also sold things prepared in cookshops, like pies. The immense majority of the European population, the peasantry, is the class whose extramural dining habits are hardest to see over the distance of time. At least we can obtain an interesting, if not particularly accurate idea of peasant habits from attitudes of the upper classes and aristocracy toward them. In northern Europe, especially in Germany and the Low Countries, peasant celebrations were a favorite theme of art and literature. Breughel is merely a late and particularly well-known example. In some cases, these illustrations of rustic weddings and other celebrations showed a brief holiday from toil in a favorable light, but usually they emphasize violence, vomiting, lecherous dancing, and other rural misbehavior.34 There is a lot of food, but it is either wasted (dogs running off with linked sausages) or crude. Carnival plays performed in cities such as Nuremberg reflected urban amusement, but also disdain for the antics of peasants, including their oafish gluttony. Artists such as Frans Verbeeck specialized in painting licentious and rather grossly unpleasant rustic weddings.35 There were many occasions for meals taken in common: harvest festivals, ceremonial gestures of hospitality given by a lord (often related to the harvest and to motivating both tenants and casual labor), life events

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(weddings, baptisms, funerals), and religious occasions (saints’ days, holidays, other liturgical high points). Guilds and urban religious societies had meals for associations of craftsmen. This was imitated in the countryside. In the official life of the peasant saint Isidore the Laborer (who would become, somewhat ironically, the patron of the vast city of Madrid) there is a miracle in which the saint arrives late at a confraternity banquet. To make matters worse, he has brought with him a number of poor people he picked up outside a church where he had been praying. His companions have set aside only Isidore’s portion, but the food grows mysteriously and proves sufficient to feed even additional poor people who flock to what has turned into a renewed and better banquet.36 With this miraculous Castilian village fête we have traversed a long path from the days-long banquets of the princely courts. Dining out in an era without restaurants involved both celebration and the discomforts of travel (which even the wealthy who traveled constantly could not escape). The social status and connoisseurship of modern restaurant culture were in the future; in most respects there was less discussion about food taken outside the household. Yet the constant representation of the Wedding at Cana and the Last Supper would keep convivial dining in the minds of Europeans of the Middle Ages and Renaissance.

CHAPTER SIX

Professional Cooking, Kitchens, and Service Work ken albal a

The professionalization of cooking in nineteenth-century Europe is a welltraversed subject. Cooking featured formal modes of training, a standard repertoire of techniques and recipes to be mastered, and, perhaps most importantly, celebrity status for those who excelled and published cookbooks—individuals such as Carême, Soyer, and Escoffier. However, in several respects these features were present centuries earlier, before the advent of cooking schools and restaurants as they developed under the aegis of classical French haute cuisine. Late medieval and Renaissance chefs were not only given positions of honor at court; several—such as Taillevent and Messisbugo—were ennobled with coats of arms. Though the popular image of cooking in literature and paintings was anything but exalted, in practice many cooks were able to make a name for themselves and even attain a measure of fame after the advent of printing—especially when portraits of the chefs themselves were included in their books. There were not yet rigid systems of apprenticeship in restaurants or cooking schools with standard curricula. Nonetheless, there were recognized means of attaining

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professional status as a cook not essentially different from those of later centuries. First, we must define exactly what is meant by a professional. A broad definition would have to include tavern keepers, purveyors of prepared food in what were called cookshops, caterers, and every variety of food service by which an individual might earn a full-time living in a public setting via paid wages, salary, or direct income through ownership of the establishment. Cooks within private households, both men and women, would thus be classed as professionals. This definition merely distinguishes incomeearning cooks from home cooks and dilettantes on the basis of formal employment. Economically, a woman cooking for her family makes a living, so to speak, despite the lack of contractual employment; but professional here means a vocation outside the home. A more narrow definition of the culinary professional would distinguish those individuals working within a system that recognizes certain established organizational and technical skill sets which can be proven by means of generally agreed-upon criteria, such as an examination or formal degree—in other words, a system of accreditation. Medieval and early modern guilds provided exactly this function, so that an unknown cook with status as a master in a cooking guild might proffer his services to a potential unknown patron. The patron would be assured of the cook’s talent, knowing that he had undergone a formal apprenticeship, worked his way through the kitchens, and successfully fed people to attain master status. Guilds of cooks were by no means universal, and some probably functioned more as private clubs where exhausted cooks could meet after work and exchange gossip. But insofar as guild membership was limited and a proper examination of an applicant’s skills was assessed before admission, cooking must be accounted among the well-established professions. There was a Guild of Cooks formed in Paris in 1268, and two separate guilds in fourteenth-century London. The cook was mentioned in Tomaso Garzoni’s The Universal Piazza of all the Professions of the World of 1585, and there is no doubt that the cook was a recognizable figure in the arts as well. Remarkably, after discussing the introduction of splendid cooking to ancient Rome by Apicius, the author moves right to the moderns, naming the superstars: Platina, Romoli, Messisbugo, and Scappi. Not only is this an honored profession, he insists,

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but other professions bow in homage. Poets, musicians, philosophers, physicians, and astrologers, among others, all contend with the nature of foods prepared by cooks. Nor is Garzoni himself ignorant of the gastronomy of his day. He names the finest products by place: mortadella from Cremona, cervelat from Milan, and cheese from Piacenza, as well as the many procedures used to transform food—roasting, boiling, frying, and so on. He rattles through the marvelous salads and antipasti, dozens of pasta shapes, soups, sauces, and pies. He knows the necessary serving vessels and staff required for a banquet: stewards, carvers, pantlers, wine stewards, waiters, hand-washers, and cup-bearers. It is clear from this text that not only the cook but many other food professions are well-defined and regulated by the aforementioned guilds.1 In some places different types of cooking and provisioning fell under the authority of different guilds. Thus the bakers would be regulated, not only by the state which controlled bread weight and prices, but by the guild as well. This limited the number of operations, effectively controlling the supply of labor and keeping wages high. Caterers often fell under a separate guild from cooks. In Paris the traiteurs’ guild could supply cooked food or arrange a banquet. Members were essentially free agents, without their own establishments where people could sit and eat. Tavern keepers belonged to a different guild, because their main profession was dispensing drinks; but they sold food and lodging as well. There were also cookshops, essentially take-away establishments where one could buy ready-made meals to bring home. Butchers had their own guild, as did apothecaries. One often went to the apothecaries’ guild to buy spices and alcoholic nostrums. Sometimes pastry chefs would be distinguished from cooks as well, though Bartolomeo Scappi belonged to a confraternity of cooks and pastry chefs within one organization.2 Normally vendors of raw materials would also belong to their own guild: the grocers, milkmen, brewers, and fishmongers. This separation of specialized guilds meant that someone organizing a wedding might have to contract with separate vendors for the wine, cold food, roasts, and pastries. And naturally stepping on the toes of those whose functions overlapped might be cause for legal action. Guilds served several key functions. They upheld standards of performance for members. They strictly limited the number of members to prevent competition. They defined the terms of apprentices and journeymen, or

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those who were no longer apprentices but not yet masters. Some kitchen laborers naturally never became masters, and might move several times in the course of a career. But generally, a cook could not simply stroll into town and open business; this is long before a free-labor market. Most guilds also regulated the prices paid for services rendered, maintaining a just wage, but also preventing entrepreneurial cooks from underselling competitors. Guilds also charged fees and often paid out pensions to injured members or widows of members. The fees would also be used to maintain the guildhall, where a wide range of activities could take place, including banquets and celebrations. In many respects guilds functioned like fraternal organizations today.3 Such professional accredited cooks formed the minority, and served only a fragment of the population. Much like the profession of medicine, there existed a vast and unregulated array of individuals, mostly women, who offered their services privately. Any respectable household, whether rural or urban, would hire a woman to run the kitchen as a permanent livein servant. Her skills are of course completely unrecorded in cookbooks; her daily activities would performed entirely by memory. The only real glimpse we get of such women is in contemporary paintings. Pieter Aertsen (c. 1508–1575) gives us a vivid depiction of a woman’s tasks in the kitchen, in two similar paintings. One is in Brussels, the other in Genoa; the former is of a quite homely cook, the other rather fetching. In any case the cook is seen putting chickens and meat on a turnspit before roasting them. The compositions are life-size, bordering on monumental, and one gets a real sense of the strength of the woman and her inherent dignity. She is clean, in control, and very obviously a professional. In another painting by Joachim Beuckelaer (1530–1573), titled “Christ in the House of Martha and Mary” (1565), we are given a close-up view of the female head cook. She is putting meat on a spit. The painting also shows a younger woman plucking a bird and a kitchen boy by the fire wearing an apron, most likely the person who will turn the spit. They are calmly going about their tasks and the kitchen is orderly and neat. Another painting by the same artist, in a series of the four elements—this one depicting fire—shows a similar scene, with two women in the foreground doing prep work and two others by the hearth in the background cooking. A man takes a swig from a bottle. The artist has quite likely captured for us

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the entire kitchen staff in the midst of their duties of preparing a meal in a wealthy bourgeois household. The Italian Vincenzo Campi (1536–1591) also depicted a kitchen scene in a painting, which is now in the Brera in Milan. It is rather more raucous, with eleven people crammed into a small space. An elderly woman on the floor is tasting a sauce she has just pounded in a mortar. A younger woman is gutting a chicken, evidently amused by the scuffle between a cat and a dog to whom she has tossed some guts. Another woman, looking directly at the viewer, is grating a big hunk of cheese into a shallow dish. There are also two women at the pastry board; one making dough, the other putting a rolled out sheet of dough on a pie. Both are very much in control, carrying out their tasks effortlessly while deep in conversation. Another woman decorates a pasty, and yet another attends the fire. The men seem a little less in control as they do the heavy work—skewering chickens, butchering a slung calf. Lastly, a boy sitting on a copper strainer blows up a bladder, presumably freshly removed from the calf. We are also shown an array of pewter dishes, and in another room in the background someone is setting the table. Despite the tight space it is an orderly, and presumably very real, working kitchen of the sixteenth century.

THE COOK IN LITERATURE Another way to judge the culinary profession is through literary depictions. Perhaps the best-known description of a cook in medieval literature comes from Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. We are told in the Prologue that cook Roger Hodge (apparently based on a real person Chaucer knew) was present, specifically to boil the pilgrims’ chickens and mary bones (marrow); a dish we know was popular from extant cookbooks, as were poudre marchant (spices) and galangal. We are told Hodge could “roste, sethe, broille, and frie, make mortreux, and wel bake a pye.”4 The poor cook suffered from a sore on his shin, perhaps from a kitchen accident, but nonetheless made a great “blankmanger”—that signature medieval dish. Despite this obvious familiarity with the latest culinary fashion, Chaucer has a good rant against gluttony in the Pardoner’s Tale. This too shows direct familiarity with what goes on in a kitchen. “These cokes how they stamp, and streyn, and grynde / And torne substaunce into accident.”5 All

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these were typical procedures. He subtly refers to transubstantiation, the doctrine that since 1215 decreed that the substance of bread transforms to the flesh of Christ in the Eucharist, though it still appears as bread. The accusation is that cooks perform a parodic opposite: turning substantial flesh into mere show or outward form, but not something nourishing. Further along, Chaucer says “Of spicery and levys, barke and roote / Schal ben his sause maad to his delyt”—again, a sign of the author’s decent understanding of medieval cuisine. In Boccaccio there is a gruesome scene featuring a cook, in which a young woman is given her lover’s heart to eat by her enraged husband.6 The poor chef is told that it’s a boar’s heart, and is ordered to make the most delectable dish he can from it. He chops it finely, mixes it with savory spices — exactly as any medieval chef would do —and it is presented on a silver plate. Naturally the woman eats it all, and enjoys it very much. Only when she finds out what it is does she fling herself out a window to her death below. Not a happy ending, but at least she had a good meal first. There are scant references to cooks in Shakespeare: in Romeo and Juliet we are told “tis an ill cook that cannot lick his own fingers,”7 and there is a William Cook in Henry IV, part II who is to provide a couple of shortlegged hens, a joint of mutton, and pretty kickshaws.8 The latter are dainties, a corruption of the French word quelquechoses. In The Taming of the Shrew Petruchio flies into a rage when the mutton is served burnt, which will only stimulate his choler, and the “rascal cook” is berated, along with the servants—“heedless joltheads and unmannered slaves.”9 Of course this is only an act, a way to keep Kate from eating meat and thereby taming her. Titus Andronicus plays a cook as he prepares a cannibalistic banquet. Otherwise, the playwright says very little about the profession. For the most part, cooks in literature do not come off in a good light. They are ill-tempered, dirty and smelly, often drunk. There is no doubt such louts existed, then as today, but we should not expect authors using the stock figure of cook for comedic effect to give us anything like an accurate depiction.10 Dietary authors also have a great deal to say about cookery in general and cooks themselves. Some authors praise the ingenuity of cooks. Thomas Cogan, for example, mentions that even unsavory ingredients like stockfish can be made palatable. Thinking of a pie he once had, he says “a good

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Cooke can make you good meat of a whetstone” and “a good cook is a good iewell.”11 But for the most part cooks are seen as panderers: goading people into eating dishes that will jeopardize their health, inciting them to gluttony, and squandering wealth unnecessarily on extravagant dainties brought in from all corners of the world.

KITCHEN STAFF Although the number of servants delineated by specific jobs would vary widely from household to household, the same basic structure of the kitchen and service staff is mentioned in so many texts that we should consider it a standard organization by the fifteenth and certainly sixteenth century. These professions would have been part of a larger, essentially feudal, household staff in any noble or royal retinue. Thus we find the general manager of the entire operation called the majordomo, or maître d’ as the head of the service staff is still called. In medieval times this would have been the individual, usually noble, entrusted with keeping the entire budget, hiring and firing staff, and supervising every single aspect of household maintenance—not only in the kitchen but for maids, garden staff, and even guards. Eventually this position was distinguished from a position we would call the steward. In royal households there could also be many “mastres d’hostel.” Charles V had thirteen when Taillevent worked for him, plus a kitchen staff of forty-eight.12 The head steward, or scalco in Italian, was specifically charged with anything involving food: designing the menu, overseeing the purchases, and instructing the cooks, various provisioners, and entire service staff. He would also pay them all wages—and, in many cases, in kind. A certain proportion of leftovers as well as kitchen byproducts were given to staff members by right. Sometimes these were raw materials, such as ashes and fat used to make soap, but they could also be specific amounts of food to take home to their families. Most importantly, the head steward had the right to serve the lord of the household personally. He would see to it that the choicest morsels were presented to the lord, taking careful consideration of the lord’s health. Most contemporary guides to kitchen management emphasize the importance of basic nutritional knowledge as well as intimate familiarity with your patron’s own preferences and humoral disposition.

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Recourse to a physician after a meal that had upset the lord’s digestion would almost certainly be blamed on the steward, the first line of defense between the lord and the kitchen. Most cookbooks of the era describe the ideal attributes of the head steward, as does a substantial scalco literature which flourishes at the end of the period covered here. He must of course be gracious, not too tall or too short, too young or too old, scrupulously clean, and well-mannered. Such books suggest that this was a valuable position at court, highly desired by aspiring nobles, and a profession which one would take for life. The scalco would also have been in charge of a troupe of lesser scalchi, normally one per table. The scalchi might not be on permanent call, but would be expected to serve during banquets and special events. Books on manners also point out that among the accomplishments of the Renaissance man, he must be prepared at any time to serve or carve for a table, as this was an honor and not in any way a demeaning job —or something to do until your acting career took off. Beneath the steward was the cook. There is really no equivalent term for our modern word chef, as he was decidedly not head of the entire food service operation. That would only come in the era of restaurants. The cook was a full-time professional. While he was head of cooking operations, he was not in charge of purchases, maintaining the larder or wine cellar, or even, as has been mentioned, the menu. His job, plain and simple, was to cook. He would almost certainly have had a staff beneath him— several in big households—which might include specialists in pasta and dairy products, sauciers, roasters, and bottle washers. Bourgeois homes would most commonly have a single cook—perhaps with an assistant, as we often see two people in contemporary kitchen scenes. The grandest of operations would often have two separate head cooks, working different days of the week. This seems to have been standard practice at the Vatican, which regularly fed hundreds of people. Kitchens of this scale were essentially food factories, regularly feeding a permanent staff of functionaries two major meals a day (dinner and supper), plus extraneous private meals for the king and his familiars. This is exactly the impression one gets from operations like the one at Hampton Court Palace: dozens of rooms for receiving ingredients, storage, processing, plating, and ultimately serving. By the time the larger mid-day meal

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was over and cleared up, preparations for the evening meal would probably have begun in earnest—in part by recycling leftovers into other dishes. In many households there was also a credenziero, or parallel chef specifically charged with setting out cold dishes. His title comes originally from the word credenza—meaning trust or faith. He was the person who would taste the food for poison before it was presented to the master. This was certainly a real concern in many places, judging from the fashion for poisonous drugs like henbane and belladonna, the number of people who died under suspicious circumstances, and the regular practice of bringing in physicians to perform autopsies. By the sixteenth century, the tasting seems to have become entirely ceremonial. But the credenziero’s job changed as well. He would be responsible not only for all the appetizers laid out before a banquet began—the salami, cheese, salads, pastries, anything cold— but also any cold courses that took place mid-meal, as well as the dessert courses. His ingredients did not need to be cooked, merely cut up and plated in an elegant fashion; although pastries would require at least an oven. He would also be responsible for sugar sculptures and any other grand presentation pieces that opened the banquet. Thus the basic tasks of food preparation were divided between the cook and credenza, or “cold course” official. An entirely different type of individual served as the trinciante, or carver. The position was described in numerous books on the topic. The most famous of these is Vincenzo Cervio’s Il Trinciante, published in 1593.13 But there were earlier books as well, such as the Arte Cisoria by Aragonese courtier Enrique de Villena, written in 1423 though not published until 1766. It describes the carver as someone of elevated status, meticulously clean, who waits on the king with precise ritualized movements. He offers a napkin, in this case tastes the food, and most importantly carves everything that comes to the table, down to a single peach. Most importantly, Villena describes the training to be a carver and the salary that must be paid lest he resort to other means of making money. In other words, the position is entirely professional.14 Like the scalchi, there might be several carvers—one for each table—waiting on the needs of the diners and never leaving their posts until the end of the meal. It seems odd and disconcerting to us today, but a full retinue of servants would be standing by at all times waiting, literally, on the need of those eating.

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Behind the scenes there was a number of other important officials. One person would be appointed the official buyer, or spenditore, whose duty it was to do all the shopping whenever necessary. Maintaining a permanent stock of dry and perishable goods was naturally essential to the whole operation. Most advice from professional guidebooks regarding this person is first that he does not cheat on the accounts and second that he prevent pilfering of ingredients. His direct counterpart would have been the bottigliere, or wine steward. The bottigliere was in charge of buying and storing wine, correcting its faults if necessary, and preventing the servants from drinking it all. Cooks especially had a reputation for tippling. There exists a text written by one Sante Lancerio, bottigliere to Pope Paul III (and who probably, incidentally, knew Scappi). It is a letter to the camerlingo—essentially a clerical majordomo — describing the various types and qualities of wine that can be bought in Rome. There is Malvagìa and golden Moscatello, light delicate Trebbiano and several types of Greco. Wines come from all over Italy, from France and Spain, and in winter a deep red Montepulciano. Without lingering on the oenological details, the wine steward was certainly a man of wide experience and discernment, and likewise a professional.15 The wine steward would also have been responsible for getting the wines from the cellar to the diners. This was not quite as simple as it sounds. Wine was generally sold in barrels rather than bottles. Thus it would be poured into various vessels, bottles, or pitchers and then placed into large coolers, as drinking iced wine was in great fashion by the sixteenth century—and bitterly complained about by physicians. From these it would be poured into individual cups, usually watered down, and then consumed, after which the cup would be removed and cleaned. This entire operation was the job of cup-bearing pages, usually younger sons of cadet branches of the family sent to be raised in the houses of their more illustrious relatives. The exact arrangement of all these tasks probably never precisely matched the prescriptive literature, but the literature nonetheless gives us a good impression of the personnel required to serve in grand houses. For other houses a single chef probably sufficed; and of course the majority of households had no servants. The matron of the house did all the cooking. Her husband might have done the shopping for wine, and perhaps even the food if venturing out of the house into a crowded city was seen as the man’s job. But if household

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guidebooks are any indication, it was the housewife’s duty to manage all resources, servants if they existed, and often the budget. The great humanist and architect Leon Battista Alberti (1404–1472) wrote I Libri della Famiglia with the express intention of clarifying such duties in a relatively ordinary house. Women are seen as partners, albeit subordinate, and not trusted with secrets. Nonetheless, some of his advice is revealing: his emphasis on frugality, supplying the larder (including grain, wine, fowl, and fish) from your own estates in the country rather than buying at the market. Normally, citydwellers would either hire farmers to work their land or use a kind of sharecropping system, the mezzadria, whereby half the produce would go to the owner. The farm was also a refuge for the owner, a place to plant trees by hand and enjoy the countryside.16 We do not get a good glimpse inside the kitchen, however.

KITCHEN WORK AND THE KITCHEN ITSELF In order to get a sense of the experience of a cook’s daily activities, it is important to understand the tools at his or her disposal, the arrangement of the physical space, and the various ways ingredients would have been transformed from their raw state. Regardless of the wealth or size of the household, the technology is essentially the same, with perhaps the exception of some expensive gizmos like mechanical turnspits. Here we must rely partly on the descriptions in cookbooks, engraved frontispieces showing cooks at work, and paintings, with the caveat that these are often intended to deliver a moral lesson. As in literary sources, the cook is often an object of ridicule, if not disgust. The simplest of cooking methods is a large bronze cauldron with three legs set over a fire, used especially in large households. An example survives in Lacock Abbey, cast in Mechelen (Flanders) in 1500. Recipes for whole simmered joints and soups for many people would require something of this size. Cast iron was not yet common in Europe for cooking vessels. Blast furnaces were needed, and most iron went into the manufacture of cannons until the eighteenth century. Kitchen tools might be made of wrought iron, but these were quite expensive. Bronze was more typical, but it could not be used as a storage vessel, because it is an alloy of copper and tin and the copper could cause verdigris poisoning. When copper alone

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was used, the lining had to be coated with tin. These tools were used only in the wealthiest of households. In any case, cooks were dealing with very heavy, hot vessels over an open flame. The atmosphere was, judging by all contemporary images, hot, smoky, and generally crowded. The fire could be made outdoors in fine weather, or right in the middle of the kitchen. A hole in the roof would allow smoke to escape. Fine examples of such kitchens survive in Fontevrault in the Loire Valley and at Glastonbury Abbey. Fireplaces, if they existed at all (they became more prevalent in ordinary households by the late fifteenth century) would have been used for small bronze or earthenware pots, such as the tripod pipkin. One would rake coals out of the fire into a little mound on the hearth floor and place the vessel on top for gentle simmering. Cookbooks usually advise sauces, or small dishes like a boiled chicken, be cooked this way. With practice a cook would have a great deal of control over the temperature, merely by shifting pots around. Sometimes one sees hooks hanging from within fireplaces with a ratcheting mechanism to raise and lower pots. Trammels were a kind of crane arm that could be swung into and our of the fireplace. But these are less common than they would be in later centuries, when wrought-iron fireplace equipment became more affordable. Most importantly, the fireplace was the place to roast meat and fowl. A turnspit would have been set in front of a hearth fire. As the food is turned, usually by hand, a crust slowly forms and any juices can be captured in a drip pan. In most households a single spit with supporting stanchions would suffice. For palaces and monasteries several turnspits could be kept going at once. They would be arranged on a diagonal support, so that the uppermost spits were deepest into the hearth and suitably close to the fire. There are also frequent illustrations of outdoor turnspits, some ingeniously arranged on the legs of a raised gridiron, with grilling going on above, and roasting beside the open fire. In some surviving kitchens, and in fact depicted in Scappi’s illustrations, is a hob or range of burning spots.17 This would be a waist-high wall with insets for hot coals, onto which one would place medium-sized pots to simmer gently. Moving them required a set of calipers, which would hook into the handles of the pot from either side, allowing it to be lifted upwards. This meant one did not have to kneel down into the hearth. Some hearths seem to have had grates in each depression to allow the ashes to drop down

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into a space below. But so often these spaces are depicted filled with equipment, firewood, or a sleeping cat that many most likely they were just a flat surface on which to place coals, the ashes of which would have to be swept away after use. A long-handled pan could also be used on the hearth or in the fireplace. The most common cooking surface, often depicted in German cookbook frontispieces (the Kuchenmeisterey, Marx Rumpolt, Anna Wecker, and a Hans Burgkmair woodcut of a cook), was not a wall but a knee-high stone or brick platform maybe six-by-six feet wide.18 Sometimes it is depicted with a hood for capturing smoke. Normally a fire would be made directly on its flat surface. The cook could walk around it, gaining access to any number of pots at once, a grill, and even a small spit, which in the illustration from Rumpolt seems to be driven by a belt mechanism, and probably a heat-driven turbine above the picture frame. There’s a complete illustration of such a spit in Scappi. The chef does not have to bend down at all, as the pots are at waist level. Usually an adjacent workspace is also shown, where foods are being cut up, or a spice box sits open for seasoning. The space is practical and well-designed—more so than a hearth, which is only accessible from the front. No better record of the kitchen equipment used exists than the illustrations in Scappi. The most important tool of the these centuries is the mortar, used to pound foods into smooth pastes. These were not the tiny wooden or ceramic mortars used today for pesto (which is actually a descendant of medieval sauces). They were capacious, cast bronze or stone —able to hold several pounds of almonds, meat, or spices. The task of pounding, as well as sieving, was normally left to an assistant, and could take hours. The sieve was usually a hoop of wood strung with horsehair, called today a tamis. The illustrations in Scappi also show a huge array of pots, ranging from cauldrons with feet to lidded vessels called conserva, which look like a Portuguese cataplana. There are small stew pots, pie tins, strainers, pans with concave depressions like a munk pan. There are dozens of knives for tarts, cutting pastry, shucking oysters, dismembering joints, even a mezzaluna. There are pastry cutting wheels, nutmeg and sugar graters, and an ingenious ridged rolling pin for cutting noodles. None of this would be out of place in the finest cookware shop today. There is even a portable

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drum-shaped grill that one would not be surprised to find in someone’s backyard. Most importantly, there are also depictions of working kitchens in full action: one in which pasta is being made, another with the knife grinder and dish washer, and another in which butter and dairy products are being made. The man at the turnspit even waves to us. This, of course, was the finest equipment in the wealthiest palace in Europe —the Vatican. But even a modest kitchen would contain several pots, spits, a grill, spoons, skimmers, and ladles. Certain specialized cooking spaces would have needed different equipment. Ovens are probably the most complex. A grand kitchen would have several ovens to supply the household, but most people —especially in cities—bought their bread from a professional baker. The village oven might have been communal or run as a business by one family. In either case, the oven was either set into the wall beside a hearth or was a freestanding beehive shape made of brick. The baker would have dough rising in a trough, which was normally started with a portion of dough from the previous batch. Using brewer’s yeast was less common. He would heat the oven with wood. When the oven was hot enough, he would rake out the ashes, mop the floor to create steam, slide in the formed loaves on a long-handled peel, and close the oven door to retain the heat. Large households would also often have their own dairy, replete with cauldrons for heating and separating milk into curds and whey with rennet, storage space for aging cheese, churns for making butter, and so forth. A northern European brew house would have huge cauldrons for cooking the sprouted grain, lead-lined troughs for fermentation, and various drains and sluices for collecting the beer. In southern Europe a wine vat, press, and barrels were of course more common, along with a millstone for pressing olives. In many places, a mill would have been a feature of the village, powered by wind, water, or simple animal power. Mills would be run as commercial operations or to supply a large estate or palace. Another consideration was the serving equipment and cutlery, which would be under the supervision of the steward or butler rather than the cook. At a certain level these utensils dictate the kinds of dishes that the cook can prepare, and will certainly influence the serving sizes or portions that can be presented. Unlike the food itself, many of these vessels have survived and offer a more immediate sense of what must have taken place

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during a meal. Ordinary households would have wooden plates, bowls, and cups, which are of course durable and relatively unbreakable. The only real advantages of ceramic are that it can be decorated, and it is made of a practically inexhaustible material— clay. The majority of plates, serving dishes, cooking vessels, and pitchers were made of earthenware. Earthenware was eminently affordable and practical. Although it was low-fired and thus easily chipped, it could be decorated with a limited number of colors—mostly brown and green. Tall pitchers with a bulge at the waist and a pinched foot around the bottom edge were typical, especially in the Middle Ages. This shape was partly determined by structural considerations, as flat-bottomed vessels with angular bases tended to explode in the kiln. Majolica was a significant advance in ceramics, originating in the east but imitated in Spain and later in Italy in places like Deruta. Majolica is also earthenware, but the clay is dipped in a white slip when still wet. This can then be overpainted with bright and distinct tin glazes that are durable after firing. Serving pieces especially were enormous, and sometimes works of art in and of themselves (one wonders if they were ever actually used to serve food). Platters, basins, urns, and other large presentation pieces were considered invaluable possessions. Alongside these might also be rare imported Chinese porcelain and its European imitators: soft paste porcelain, or Delftware, which is merely a cobalt blue glaze on a grey earthenware body. Europeans would not learn the use of kaolin to make real high fired porcelain until the eighteenth century; that knowledge completely changed table settings. In the late Middle Ages, kiln technology did advance significantly, so that the first European stonewares could be produced. These predominate in the Rhine area and are usually salt-glazed. One can tell by the orange peel-like glaze, or by simply tasting the pot. These would often be gray or brown tankards, covered with pewter lids —or perhaps the ubiquitous jugs with a bearded man’s face on the side, which later came to be called Bellarmines. Glass was equally important on medieval and early modern tables. The most familiar form was the roemer: a green glass beaker decorated with gobs of glass, which supposedly kept people with greasy fingers from dropping them. Far more valuable was Venetian glass: ultra-thin, stemmed wineglasses, normally much more shallow than we are used to drinking

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from today. Eventually these came to be highly decorated and colored. Interestingly, it was still the custom to offer a drink and then remove the glass and wash it immediately for someone else to use, so a full set was not necessarily required. In the wealthiest of households metal serving dishes predominated, though pewter (tin alloyed with copper, lead, or antimony in various combinations) could be found in middling houses from the sixteenth century onward. This was the everyday table service when bread trenchers gave way to plates. Metal could also be formed into bowls, tankards, goblets — virtually anything. It was sturdy and if used and cleaned constantly kept fairly shiny. Silver eventually became the standard to show off wealth. Kings used gold, which, although soft, at least never loses its luster. Vessels, especially cups, could also be made of rarer materials such as a nautilus shell, coconut, rare stone like jasper, or even alabaster. Some artists became renowned at fashioning such extravagances. Benvenuto Cellini, for example, describes making these in his autobiography; in particular a saltcellar which is a perfect expression of Mannerist style, only one step away from being jewelry.19 Lastly there was cutlery. Throughout the Middle Ages it was common for people to bring their own knives to the table and use them to scoop or cut food. The actual eating would have been done with the fingers or with a spoon. Spoons, curiously, were formed differently than today: a teardrop shape with a very thin straight cylindrical handle extending from the edge of the bowl. In other words, not curved, and not very easy to use. Forks are another matter altogether. There were serving forks, large two-pronged forks for carving, and small forks for piercing preserved fruits. But the multipronged fork used as a regular eating utensil did not come into widespread use until the sixteenth century. Even by the end of the century most northern Europeans still considered them a refined affectation. Forks could be fantastically ornate: studded with gems, enameled and crusted with gold filigree. All these items were a way to flaunt one’s wealth as much as a practical means of serving and consuming food. Tables were rarely permanently placed in a single-use room we would call a dining room. People would normally set up tables on trestles wherever it pleased them: in the great hall, in smaller quarters when dining privately, on terraces, or even in the garden. People did of course own

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tables, sometimes of magnificently inlaid wood or marble, but these were generally for display and not for dining. A dining table would be covered in several layers of cloth. Between courses the table cloths would be removed one by one; hence the English name for the final course, or remove. Diners would also be draped with napkins— or diapers, as they were called—slung over their shoulders, ready for wiping fingers. Napkins are rarely shown in depictions of people dining, mostly because people wanted to show off their fine clothes.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Family and Domesticity alison a. smith

During most of the 300-year period embraced by this volume, moralists, physicians, and other writers paid a great deal of attention to the project of promoting stable, successful families that would produce healthy children, maintain their family patrimony, and contribute to the growth and stability of society. This concern was prompted by the fact that the period was marked by repeated, often catastrophic bouts of plague and epidemic disease, harvest failure, and warfare —and hence the likelihood that any family, whether wealthy or poor, would suffer the sudden loss of one or more of its members. The economic uncertainty of the period also put families at risk, and many of the surviving treatises on family management focus obsessively on the need to preserve and to manage family property. Observers were acutely aware that demographic uncertainties could be extremely disruptive to individual families as well as to the larger society, and a wide range of strategies were developed to minimize their effect. We therefore can know much more about how families lived, or at least how they lived according to the theoretical models developed by male moralists, than we can for earlier historical periods. This period was also a time of increased social mobility—both upward and downward—and the accumulation of great wealth by merchants, who used their commercial success to acquire status and prestige. Certainly

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one of the most immediate and compelling expressions of such status was the food that one’s family members ate, the dining accessories they used, and the increasingly refined table manners they learned in order to distinguish themselves from people of lesser social position. By the sixteenth century the rapid rise of printing technology fed this deep anxiety about manners, rank, and prestige, and fueled a rise in self-help books for the upwardly mobile. The fact that many of these volumes focus on food and dining behavior confirms that in this period, as in others, the dining table played a central role in the negotiation and affirmation of identity, status, gender, and social relationships. Before discussing the highly sophisticated dining patterns developed during this period at the higher reaches of Renaissance society, however, this chapter will begin with what we know about the preparation and enjoyment of food by peasants and by the many workers who swelled the ranks of city populations during these centuries of rapid urbanization. Even though detailed written descriptions of the rhythms and habits of daily life among peasant working-class families have not survived—and indeed were rarely considered important enough to describe in a written document—historians can draw on a range of surviving sources that will help us peer into these homes and to reconstruct the food cultures they shared. These families needed to husband their few resources carefully, and were vulnerable to poor harvests and other disruptions in the food supply. They participated in a market economy, which could exacerbate their vulnerability to fluctuating food supplies as well as create opportunities to take advantage of abundance and windfall profits. Although many families were condemned to living on the edge of subsistence, many others could look forward to occasional feasting, regular access to meat and fish, and plentiful wine and beer. The demographic catastrophe of the Black Death resulted in more than a century of higher wages and better nutrition for both peasants and the urban working class. Wages improved because the labor shortage created by population loss led workers to demand better compensation for their work. The population struggled to recover as successive waves of plague and other epidemic diseases returned regularly, but one benefit for the survivors was a far more balanced diet. Animals thrived after the plague, in part because they were needed to supplement human labor, and also because

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more land was available for grazing and animal husbandry. Animal protein, therefore, was far more plentiful than it had been toward the end of the Middle Ages, and made up a larger portion of the diet of even the poorest folk. This nutritional bonanza began to diminish as the population grew again in the sixteenth century, however, and peasants especially suffered from local famines, depredations by migrating armies, and other imbalances in the food supply as the early modern period wore on. The most significant engine of change in the eating behavior and expectations of families at every income level in this period was the penetration of the marketplace into their daily choices of foods and into the ways that they managed their food supply. Larger towns and cities offered an increasing range of foodstuffs for sale to those with ready money. These included spices, sugar, dried fruits, wine, olive oil, and other luxury foods and drink. Spurred by the opportunities for moneymaking offered by an increasingly varied and integrated market for foodstuffs, local and regional food producers eagerly sold their wares and used the cash they received in the marketplace to buy a wider range of food and drink for their own families. Aside from the exchange of goods and the growth of the luxury market for food and drink, this expansive early modern market promoted the introduction of new foods, new tastes, and new ways of thinking about food preparation and enjoyment, especially among urban populations. Given the increasing volume of long-distance trade as well as the rising prosperity of towns and cities, upwardly mobile families could rely on an ever-greater variety of food and drink available for purchase. This period of general prosperity, urbanization, and rapid upward and downward social mobility led to increasing anxiety about markers of social status, and hence the codification of rules of behavior for membership in the educated, book-buying elite. Many of these how-to books focused on the management of family meals, and, perhaps most importantly, newly elaborate rules and expectations about table manners and the proper ways to prepare and serve meals in elite households. This process of codifying table manners and meal preparation began in the precociously wealthy urban centers of northern and central Italy, but by the later fifteenth and sixteenth centuries the expectations were spreading throughout Europe. The homes of both peasants and lower-income town dwellers usually were the sites of both production and consumption, and they were

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organized to accommodate the daily labor needed to support the survival of the family. Much of the manufacturing in this period—from textiles to decorative objects—was done in family run workshops staffed by family members, apprentices, and journeymen. Food preparation and storage itself required a great deal of labor, especially among peasant families who did not have ready access to the wide range of food and drink available in urban markets. Surviving inventories tell us that such a dwelling might consist of only two rooms, one for sleeping and for keeping the family’s valuable possessions, and the other for working, preparing, and eating food. Especially in the countryside, peasants would frequently share their homes with livestock in order to take advantage of the heat that large animals produced during the colder months. For example, the cows and pigs might be housed in one part of a room that was divided from the main living area by a partial wall so that the heat—as well as the odors—rising from the animals could be shared by all. Heat and light were otherwise provided by the hearth, which during this period migrated from the center of the main room in the house to a fireplace or (in northern Europe) an enclosed tile stove in a side wall. The introduction of fireplaces had the advantage of reducing the amount of smoke in the room, but also caused much of the heat to escape up the chimney.1 In any case, most cooking for the family was done in a pot suspended on a chain over the hearth fire. A metal skillet might also be used. Meat could be cooked on a spit, and some foods were cooked directly in the embers. Even the simplest, most meager inventories of a family’s belongings usually list a cooking pot, the chain used to suspend it, and a basin for water and other needs. Few peasant dwellings were equipped with ovens, and most bread in cities and towns was baked by professional bakers and purchased by individual families. A variety of other prepared foods, both hot and cold, could be purchased from hawkers on city streets. The acquisition, preparation, and storage of the household’s food was extremely labor-intensive at every level of the social scale. Poorer families without much storage space and very little money to spend obtained what they needed to survive by exchanging goods and services for food, either through informal associations of women or the more highly organized marketplace dominated by men.2 Their access to a steady, reliable supply of food was precarious, determined as it was by the health of the local

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economy, steady employment opportunities, and the success of the year’s harvest. Wealthier families could protect themselves from the vagaries of the harvest and local economic downturns by acquiring larger quantities of flour, wine, oil, salted and dried meats, and other foodstuffs, and storing them in barrels, boxes, and other containers in their home. By the end of this period, the number of chests and wardrobes listed in inventories—as well as more prosaic containers to store food, kitchen equipment, tableware, and tablecloths—had multiplied many times over, responding to the powerful increase in the demand for decorative objects that was a hallmark of this period. The fact that the acquisition of food was so closely connected to the marketplace, even in small villages, meant that people increasingly preferred food containers that were standardized to correspond to local measurements of weight and volume. One key feature of the early modern marketplace for food was the rapidly increasing variety available from far-flung parts of the world, made possible by the rapid rise in the volume and distribution of long-distance trade and the expectation of novelty that such trade engendered. In England, for example, dried currants from the eastern Mediterranean became nearly ubiquitous in the kitchens and recipes of the well-to-do.3 Pepper, once a valuable spice that only the wealthiest families could afford, became far less expensive and available in much greater quantities. More exotic spices such as cinnamon, cloves, and nutmeg were more expensive than pepper, but still available to urban elite families for special occasions.4 The sudden and dramatic increase in the amount of sugar available in the markets also had a significant impact on family cooking. Rare and hard to find during the Middle Ages, sugar was quickly put to use in preserving fruits and candying nuts and seeds. Sugared treats soon became the preferred high-status gift exchanged among elite families and displayed at their parties. Venetian sumptuary legislation in the sixteenth century repeatedly tried to regulate the spiraling excesses associated with the expense of these increasingly extravagant sweets. Most middle-class housewives ventured out onto the public streets and engaged directly with the local markets for food and other items, both as sellers and as buyers. Women at the higher ends of urban society, however, were discouraged from exposing themselves to the hurly-burly of the marketplace, where they would put themselves and their family’s honor at

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risk. Therefore, it appears that their merchant husbands were frequently the ones to navigate the city’s food markets, and at the very least the men were expected to know where to obtain the highest quality meat and other foodstuffs. The evidence in several treatises, as well as letters and account books, points to the pride that merchants and professional men took in their familiarity with food acquisition and storage in this period.5 Certainly the master of the household had many incentives to pay close attention to the food in his house, as it was an important source of both public prestige and private satisfaction. Whether wealthy or poor, the housewife was in charge of supervising the storage and deployment of food and drink once it arrived in her home. If a housewife had no servants, her day would be filled with coping with a range of unpredictable demands, responding to the needs of animals, children, and visitors, as well as the hard labor of hauling firewood and water and tending to her garden. As Bridget Henisch has pointed out, she was always negotiating “the frighteningly narrow gap between sufficiency and destitution,” dealing with the unpredictability and variety of available provisions, and relying on her skill and imagination to vary the tastes and ingredients of the meager meals she prepared.6 Peasants and the urban poor ate food that was boiled in a pot over the hearth, because it was the best way to conserve fuel and preserve nutrients. Stews and porridge could be infinitely varied according to available ingredients, and more than one dish—sausages, eggs, and a pudding in a bag, for example—could be cooked in the boiling liquid at the same time. Ale would usually be made at home as well, using similar equipment and techniques: boiling grain in a large pot, straining the mash, and letting it ferment for several days. The job of even the poorest housewife, both in theory and in practice, was to ensure that the members of her family were nourished and the food distributed in such a way that the practical and emotional bonds holding the family together were preserved and strengthened. Slightly further up the social scale, a housewife could expect to employ a few servants to help her in this highly labor-intensive project. The rapid increase in the number of people employed in the domestic service sector is an important feature of early modern economic development, and even quite humble households might list one or two servants on their census form. At the higher end of the society, more of the servants were male, and

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indeed in the kitchens of the very wealthy, both the cook and his assistants tended to be men or boys. One reason for this shift in gender balance is the increasing use of servants for the display of status by elite families, particularly in tasks related to large-scale entertaining. Although treatises on domestic management emphasize that both husband and wife must handle their servants with firmness and tact, it is hard to reconstruct much about day-to-day master-servant relations except to note that servants were intimately involved with every aspect of their employers’ lives, occasionally sleeping in the same rooms and certainly sharing in the preparation and consumption of the household’s food and drink. The expansion in the number and ubiquity of household servants in the early modern period was driven by the same rise in conspicuous consumption that accompanied the Renaissance in the arts and other forms of cultural expression: upwardly mobile families built larger, more elegant houses and gradually filled them up with ever more luxurious furniture and textiles, as they tried to outdo each other with the latest and most impressive painting, sculpture, collections of curiosities, fashionable clothing, and fine dining in elegant surroundings. The demand for worldly goods of all kinds increased exponentially, and was met by artisans who were careful to promote their own skill and ingenuity when trying to attract new customers.7 This new importance of skill, novelty, and magnificence was fully expressed in the kitchens and dining rooms of wealthy families, who found themselves needing many more servants to help them entertain their friends with ever more sophisticated menus, as well as to take care of their things and maintain ever-higher standards of domestic cleanliness. These expectations for elaborate dishes using the ever-increasing variety of ingredients available in the marketplace led to a situation in which the actual preparation of food became far more labor-intensive and required ever more complex skills and understanding. This was the result of the filtering down of courtly conventions and expectations into middle-class households, and, through the servant class, into families of even lesser status. Households of even modest means might employ a few servants, and much of their labor must have been devoted to tasks related to food preparation (including salting; pickling; smoking; drying meats, fish, vegetables, and fruit; and preparing medicines). As the available ingredients and the styles of cooking became more varied in urban centers, the demands on the

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housewife and her staff engaged in obtaining and preparing food would have been formidable. Given the spiraling expectations imposed on the domestic sector, employing household labor would have been an essential, and indeed thrifty, strategy. Much of the servants’ remuneration would have consisted of the meals that they helped to prepare. Servants were not expected to eat with family members in larger, wealthier households, but in smaller homes with just a few rooms it would have been impossible to avoid constant, relatively intimate interaction with servants, both in food preparation and in food consumption. A housewife of some means who was in charge of several servants needed to keep control over the increasingly complex range of information about supplying ingredients, preparing dishes, and presenting the meal, so that she and her family could demonstrate their social and economic status to the neighborhood suppliers of food as well as to their wider network of social acquaintances. She became a highly sophisticated manager, in charge of the acquisition and distribution of goods and services by the staff while at the same time ensuring that everyone in the household—and most especially the members of her family— could rely on the household community for support, identity formation, and emotional sustenance. By the sixteenth century, architectural treatises were recommending that the larger houses of the wealthy urban elite be designed in such a way that the smoke and odors of food preparation and other sweaty, strenuous labor be removed as much as possible from the spaces lived in by the family and used for entertaining. Guido Guerzoni reminds us that these palaces “were in fact frenetic and teeming organisms” that “provided a stage for many appearances and starring roles, both human and animal.”8 The labor and tools developed to maintain these “organisms” became increasingly specialized, just as new kinds of kitchen equipment proliferated in the service of culinary innovation. Inventories and images of kitchens in these grandiose homes include a staggering array of basins, pots, pans, trivets, graters, mortars, skewers, colanders, skimmers, pastry tools, baking dishes, and the like. Even though grueling labor was needed in the kitchen— carrying water and firewood; stoking hot fires; cleaning heavy pots and pans; grinding nuts, seeds and spices in large mortars, for example—confectionary, pastry, pasta-making and other activities tended to be assigned to skilled specialists. Another increasingly specialized sector of labor indirectly related to food preparation

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and dining rituals was driven by the constant need for laundered, snowywhite tablecloths, napkins, and other table linens. These formed a small part of the extensive and valuable textiles used in these houses as decorative wall and furniture coverings, the so-called soft furnishings.9 Notwithstanding the increasingly elaborate practices associated with preparing meals, as well as the growth in size and elegance of elite houses, families did not usually eat in a specifically designated dining room. From the beginning of this period houses were built around two principal types of rooms, the central hall and one or more chambers; smaller rooms in a wealthy home might include storage spaces and rooms for the servants as well as a kitchen designed for food preparation and food storage, and containing the equipment needed for cooking and serving food and cleaning up. This room, as well as the hall and the principal chamber, would contain some form of a hearth, both for warmth and cooking. Although larger gatherings would normally have occurred in the central hall of the house, there was no fixed location for eating a meal. The furniture required for dining—trestle tables and benches, chairs, or stools—was easily portable, and families expected to choose the location for their meals according to the number of people to be served, the time of year, and probably also the time of day. Smaller family groups could have eaten together in a chamber, and in warmer months a table and seating could have been set up on a porch or in a garden. Sometimes a simple meal could be prepared in the bedchamber’s fireplace and enjoyed on a small table set up nearby, especially if a family member were bed-ridden. During this period sources that mention the timing of meals usually name two each day: dinner, the more substantial meal eaten around noon, and supper (derived from the word “soup”), a lighter, less formal meal usually eaten around sunset. Little mention is ever made of breakfast, or a small meal just after waking up. There may have been some variation in this pattern throughout Europe, and during this period members of the elite began to eat at later hours, perhaps to distinguish their behavior from that of the lower classes. As one can see in images of the Last Supper, as well as other domestic scenes in manuscript illustrations, the equipment on a dinner table at the beginning of this period was relatively simple. Diners would expect to share a trencher of stale bread as a plate, although they might be provided

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a cup or goblet of their own to drink from. They might find a knife and spoon on the table, depending on what was being served, as well as a pitcher of wine or beer, an ornamental container of salt, and small loaves of bread placed directly on the white tablecloth. Platters of food would be shared with one’s neighbor, just as was the trencher itself. Ceremonial hand-washing would precede the meal, and one would use one’s fingers for moving food from the plate to one’s mouth. Napkins or the tablecloth itself were used to wipe off one’s fingers. Even though the menu may have been quite elaborate and luxurious, the people sitting together at table expected to share utensils, drinking cups, and napery, as well as morsels of food that one might cut up for another. This experience of physical intimacy at the table began to change in fifteenth-century Italy, as upwardly mobile urban elites focused their attention on a new understanding of refined behavior. Changes in table etiquette were a key feature of what Norbert Elias and others have called the “civilizing process” that began with the spread of humanist education and the imitation of classical antiquity among the elite, and led to a new association of nobility and virtue with elegant manners and sophisticated speech.10 This “civilizing process” led to a radically different understanding of bodily functions, and a consensus that members of the elite should make an effort to hide the baser aspects of physical life—burping, farting, picking one’s teeth—and to avoid any physical behavior that might disgust someone else. These new ideas quickly led to the need to codify rules about proper behavior at table and in other social situations, and with the advent of the printing press, manuals explaining these new rules to boys and girls growing up in elite families became both popular and highly influential. Children have always learned table manners at home, and during this period in Renaissance Europe this kind of education became a particularly urgent and important project for ambitious, upwardly mobile families. Although the cities of north-central Italy were the crucibles in which this new understanding of refinement was forged, the paradigm was quickly exported to northern Europe. Considerable social mobility in towns and cities led to a codification of the expectations about dining behavior as well as the organization of the meals themselves. Thus it is possible to describe the general outlines of this domestic model that exercised such a compelling influence over a range of income levels. It would become highly elaborate at

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the upper end of the scale and remain largely aspirational at the lower end. The publication of manuals of household management and recipe collections certainly catered to a growing literate public that belonged to a crosssection of the middle class. One of the most distinguished and influential promoters of this idea of refined table manners was the Dutch humanist Desiderius Erasmus (1466–1538) who published in 1530 his De Civilitate Morum Puerilium, dedicated to the young prince Henry of Burgundy. The small manual was quickly translated into several vernacular languages and found a wide European audience for the rest of the century. According to this new understanding of behavior at table, diners were separated from one another and no longer asked to share plates, glasses, or napkins as they had in earlier centuries. It became customary to supply each person at table with a knife and spoon, ceramic plates and bowls, a cup or glass to drink from, and a succession of clean napkins. Personal cleanliness as well as clean plates, glasses, and table linens became one of the key indicators of status and refinement, both for members of the elite and for those who aspired to higher social levels. These changes to dining practices not only ushered in our modern understanding of table manners, but also triggered the development of an entirely new category of decorative objects: luxurious tableware to support the newly complicated and symbolically meaningful activities related to dining together. Just as there was a rapid increase in the variety of cooking implements, each designed for an increasingly specialized kitchen task, so did the range of objects that diners found on their table proliferate. Princes and lords had always adorned their tables with valuable basins, platters, salts, ewers, and other ceremonial objects made of silver, brass, pewter, and other precious metals. As merchants became wealthier in this period, some were able to acquire precious metal dining accessories of their own, but there was a far greater market for plates, bowls, pitchers, and other tableware made of inexpensive glazed earthenware. By the middle of the fifteenth century, certain areas of Italy began to specialize in producing highly decorative, tin-glazed pottery, also known as majolica, and demand for these objects increased rapidly at all levels of society.11 Princes ordered hundreds of plates decorated with their coats of arms and sophisticated classical motifs. The inventories of humble artisans often listed at least some pieces of majolica, and images of domestic scenes

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always include a few examples.12 Decorative tin-glazed pottery was also produced north of the Alps and in Spain in response to similar market demands.13 One of the most interesting features of this new category of domestic furnishings is the extent to which the artisans who produced them responded creatively to the rapidly changing dining practices by inventing new kinds of plates, pitchers, and vessels of all kinds.14 The new, expansive market for tableware had a similar impact on the manufacture of glassware during the fifteenth century. Venetian glassmakers based on the nearby island of Murano had already begun to refine their techniques, and cornered the market for fine glassware by the end of the Middle Ages by jealously protecting their industrial secrets. Adopting techniques learned from their Arab and Byzantine trading partners, Venetian glassmakers in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries began to make transparent glassware, which they used for glasses and wine decanters, as well as glassware decorated with enamel designs and shot through with gold leaf. Although they tried fiercely to protect the secrets of the manufacturing processes they had developed, glass manufacturing centers soon developed in other European cities in response to the enormous demand created by the new dining paradigm.15 Transparent glasses and decanters are ubiquitous on the dining tables depicted in images of the Last Supper and other festive meals painted during the sixteenth century, testifying to their widespread adoption at various levels of society. This new world of civility, manners, and self-control, in which diners were expected to maintain a polite distance from one another and held to ever greater standards of personal cleanliness, provided fertile ground for experimenting with a completely new eating utensil: the fork. The early history of the fork as a tool for eating is obscure. It probably originated in Byzantium, but sets of forks begin to appear in inventories of domestic goods by the fifteenth century in Italy. The same families who followed the latest culinary and dining fashions were eager to acquire this new accessory, but it is not at all clear how they were first used at table. The earliest forks had two prongs and were not designed for regular use as an implement to bring food from plate to mouth. They were probably used for spearing candied fruits and other sweetmeats in order to lift them out of the sticky syrup and into the mouth without soiling one’s fingers. Forks were initially principally identified with women, as was eating sweets. Several

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early surviving examples were paired with matching knives and kept in a special carrying case.16 It took a long time for the fork to migrate north of the Alps, and its use continued to alarm moralists who feared that eating with the new tool would somehow weaken or corrupt. It was not until the seventeenth century that the use of forks became widespread and accepted among European upper-class families. Having discussed the remarkable changes in the material culture that supported the family meal, as well as the impact of the marketplace on the variety of foodstuffs available for cooks and the growth of domestic service to support the increasingly elaborate recipes and techniques used to prepare a meal, it is now time to consider the experience of sitting down to eat. Allen Grieco’s reading of contemporary advice literature notes that there was a general understanding of the difference between a more public, formal, elaborate meal and private meals that were modest, even “parsimonious.”17 Much of this literature adopted a moral tone, warning its middle-class audience against excessive spending on luxury and excessive indulgence in the pleasures of the flesh, while still maintaining a decorous table that would bring the family honor. One somewhat neurotic record of a person’s actual daily meals was kept by the renowned Florentine painter, Jacopo Pontormo. He ate simple meals of omelets and salad or broth several times a week, often when he was by himself, along with quite a lot of bread, and usually had some meat when he was having dinner with friends.18 He worried about his appetite, suffered from indigestion, and occasionally fasted or purged himself. Nonetheless, he had certainly absorbed the chorus of contemporary messages about the importance of moderation and frugality when managing one’s appetite. For festive meals with invited guests, middle-class families abandoned all frugality and made every effort to imitate the elaborate meals of their courtly and aristocratic superiors, including a multiplication of dishes for each course. The normal “grammar” of the meal would have included four courses, beginning with a sweet and savory assortment of appetizers, moving to a course of boiled meats or fish, to a course of roasted meats or fish, and finishing with fruit, cheese and sweetmeats. It was generally understood that one should eat fish on fast days and not on days when meat was allowed; the Venetian Senate repeatedly passed sumptuary laws that prohibited serving both fish and meat in the same meal. Italians throughout this

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period were far more interested in eating a range of vegetables and salads than northern Europeans, but the taste for both soon spread beyond Italy.19 Salads and a wide range of cold foods were served by a specially designated butler from the credenza, or stepped sideboard, during interludes between the main courses of a meal.20 This created the possibility for an even greater display of variety and luxury for the invited guests. The credenza originated in late medieval courts as a place to display the prince’s valuable plate, and wealthy urban families increasingly adopted the practice during the early modern period. The credenza was tended by a butler whose tasks were differentiated from those of the cook and his assistants in the kitchen.21 Weddings were probably the occasion that prompted the most elaborate feasts and the most public display of luxury staged by families at all levels of society. A wedding represented the economic as well as the affective union of two families, and the community expected to be invited to participate in the festivities. It was this public nature of a wedding that invited the scrutiny of local authorities, and there are countless examples of sumptuary laws that attempted to control excessive spending and display. Indeed, the festivities could last for several days and include hundreds of guests. Funerals also attracted the scrutiny of municipal authorities, for similar reasons. Efforts to regulate weddings and funerals stemmed from the general disapproval of excessive spending on food and luxurious display. These private family celebrations could easily become more public displays of political alliances and reinforce factional divisions. Given the importance of entertaining as a vehicle for displaying one’s refinement as well as one’s wealth, Renaissance Italians experimented with new forms of sociability that were less constraining than the formal rules of a princely banquet. Much of this sociability revolved around the consumption of sweets and sweet wines, and came to be called a collazione. Given the increasing availability of sugar to families of somewhat lesser means during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, sweets became one of the most powerful symbols of the new model of refinement. Confectionery could be infinitely varied, limited only by the imagination of the cook; and its proliferation during this period responded to the same impulse that drove the development of new styles of majolica, glassware, and other domestic luxuries. This new festive model was enthusiastically adopted by women, particularly for the celebration of the birth of a child. These parties, to which

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only women were invited and which usually occurred in the bedchamber of the new mother, attracted the attention of municipal authorities. They were yet another occasion for the display of valuable furnishings as well as excessive expenditure on elaborate sugared desserts.22 Evidence that people at much poorer levels of society could occasionally indulge in many features of elite dining behavior by renting or borrowing luxury items and servants can be found in a bawdy tale that Matteo Bandello included in his collection of short stories published in the midsixteenth century. A man with less money than ambition persuades his alcoholic wife to lay off the bottle for a few days in order to help him prepare a special meal to honor a visiting friend who had done several favors for him. He purchases a few bottles of fine wine; good melons, which were in season in July; and a plump sausage. He hires a woman to help his wife in the kitchen, which is set up in the room where they usually sleep because the other room in their home is where they set the table for the meal. The husband even hires an inexpensive and not very skilled musician to play and sing during the meal, in emulation of wealthier families. Of course the wife begins to drink again just as she is supposed to be finishing the cooking, and passes out on their bed. In an effort to rescue what is left of the dinner party he had planned, the husband quickly locks his wife in a flour cabinet before she can create more trouble and relies on the maid he has hired to do the cooking. This story gives us a rare glimpse into the makeshift strategies available to men and women who carved out an existence in an urban setting that promoted the conspicuous display of domestic goods, and familiarity with elite rituals of hospitality.23 North of the Alps, especially among families living in areas affected by the Protestant Reformation, there was a renewed emphasis on the sacramental meaning of the family meal.24 In his study of the decoration of ceramic tableware produced in mid-sixteenth-century Germany, Andrew Morrall argues that the choice of anti-Catholic, polemical images carried special meaning to the family members gathered around the table. They prompted reflection on the moral dimension of the meal, their efforts to maintain a well-regulated household, and the collective piety of the family. Potters who were looking for ways to promote the sale of their decorative wares to middle-class families in search of respectability chose didactic scenes from the Old Testament, inspired by the circulation of prints and Protestant

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pamphlets. Their customers were searching for new ways of thinking about the “quasi-sacramental commensality” now attributed to the family meal.25 At the core of this early modern paradigm of dining civility eventually adopted by families in both Protestant and Catholic areas of Europe was the idea of conviviality, promoted by Renaissance humanists and derived from classical Greek and Roman models. According to this time-honored model, in the company of like-minded friends the dinner table became a privileged space for conversation, wit, and entertainment. Dining with family and friends was the most effective way to affirm one’s social status and identity, and the dinner table was an essential arena for expressing and reinforcing those social ties. During the sixteenth century, the model of polite, witty, and learned conversation developed in Castiglione’s hugely influential Book of the Courtier (first published in 1528) spread from courtly settings to the dinner tables of urban elite families.26 Fifty years after Castiglione’s dialogue, Stefano Guazzo published an equally influential dialogue called Civil Conversation (1574), in which he argued that nobility and civility were easier to achieve in an urban setting rather than at court.27 The culminating expression of his exploration of this ideal of civility is a lengthy report of the conversation at an aristocratic dinner party for twelve. The fact that Guazzo chose such a meal—located in the domestic setting of an urban elite family—as the most effective way to illustrate the ideological principles of civility affirms the centrality of the meal in the social organization of elite behavior in early modern Europe. During this early modern period, the domestic setting for family meals became an extremely fertile ground for the transformation of dining practices. Not only did the food prepared for the meal become far more elaborate and luxurious, but the system of dining itself changed. There was a proliferation of highly decorated plates, bowls and other tableware, glasses and decanters, knives, spoons, and even forks. An infinite variety of sugared treats occupied an ever more important niche in the social systems of the wealthy. Most importantly, the emerging elite consensus about refined manners, self-control, and the regulation of bodily functions was developed at the family dinner table. Recognizing the increasing importance of manners for telegraphing status in a world of rapid social mobility, parents had to make sure that their children internalized the rules for elite behavior so that they could have access to commercial and professional success.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Body and Soul joan fitzpatrick

In a treatise titled The Anatomy of Belial (1602), Robert Burton compares proper order to a body: God hath distinguished diverse members in one body: one from another, & set one aboue another, & placed them all in wonderfull maner. The head as a tower, the eies in the same as watchmen . . . the toung as a porter to cal for that which is needfull, & to examine that which is doubtful, the eares as spies to harken & to listen, the hands as servitours & souldiers, the feet as messengers and porters to carry and recarry, the teeth as grinders of natures provision, the pallate as taster, the stomach as a cook-roome, wherin all things are prepared againe for the benefit of nature, & the whole body so to be preserued for the benefit of the soule.1 Similar to Burton’s conception of the body, and how it relates to the soul, is Edmund Spenser’s description of the House of Alma from his epic poem The Faerie Queene (1590). Lady Alma, who represents the soul, leads her guests through her “house,” the body: And through the Hall there walked to and fro A iolly yeoman, Marshall of the same,

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Whose name was Appetite; he did bestow Both guestes and meate, when euer in they came, And knew them how to order without blame, As him the Steward bad. They both attone Did dewty to their Lady, as became; Who passing by, forth led her guestes anone Into the kitchin rowme, ne spard for nicenesse none.2 Both texts suggest the care that ought to be taken with the preparation, mastication, and digestion of food, and in both texts hierarchy is emphasized: in Burton the body is “preserued for the benefit of the soule” and in Spenser due deference is shown to Lady Alma. The notion that what you put into your mouth for sustenance had spiritual and psychological significance was generally accepted in the early modern period. Although not all writings about food emphasized the moral dimension of feeding, in many writings there was a distinct sense that what one ate and drank, how much one ate and drank, and the manner in which one ate and drank were indicative of moral standing. In dietary literature, socalled regimens of health (or, health manuals), writers offered advice on what to consume and why. These popular prose texts (most were reprinted many times in the period) played an important part in the cultural life of the early moderns. Crucially, they demonstrate how theories of food and drink, and choices about eating and drinking, encoded moral self-worth as well as physical health. In the dietaries, food and drink are not mere necessities, fuel for the body, but function as indices of one’s position in relation to ideas about spiritual well-being; careful consumption might correct moral as well as physical shortcomings. The relationship between bodily and spiritual health that was the focus of dietary literature was also evident in religious texts such as the Homily Against Gluttony and Drunkenness; while literary and dramatic texts, though less clearly didactic, also engaged with current ideas regarding the relationship between bodily health and moral integrity.

DIET: SICKNESS AND SIN Galenic theory argued that disease was a consequence of humoral disruption. Nicholas Culpepper’s translation of, and commentary upon, Galen’s

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Art of Physick outlined the specific characteristics of each complexion, characteristics broadly typical of those outlined in the dietaries. Sanguine persons are described as “merry cheerful Creatures . . . given much to the games of Venus” who “need not be very scrupulous in the quality of their Diet, provided they exceed not in quantity, because the Digestive Vertue is so strong,” and are particularly warned against excessive consumption of alcohol.3 The choleric man is described as “naturally quick-witted,” “quarrelsome,” and “much given to jesting, mocking, and lying.” He is advised to avoid fasting: “let such eat meates hard of Digestion, as Beef, Pork, &c. and leave Danties for weaker Stomachs.”4 Moderate consumption of small (weak) beer “cools the fiery heat of his Nature” but such a person should avoid wine and strong beer “for they inflame the liver and breed burning and hectick feavers, Choller and hot Dropsies, and bring a man to his Grave in the prime of his Age.” The melancholy are considered “naturally Covetous, Self-lovers, Cowards,” they are “unsociable,” “envious” and “retain Anger long.” They are also advised to avoid excessive food and drink, especially “meats hard of digestion” and “strong liquor.” The phlegmatic person is “dull, heavy and slothful”; they tend to be fat because, although their appetite is weak, so is their digestion, a consequence of their slothfulness. They are advised “to use a very slender diet” so that their body might be cleansed of gross humors.5 In each instance there is also a focus on exercise: the sanguine and choleric types are advised to avoid “violent exercise,” but it is recommended for those who are melancholy and phlegmatic. Also outlined in Galen is what is termed the “commixture” of the humors. Eight are listed: chollerick-melancholy, melancholy-chollerick, melancholy-sanguine, sanguine-melancholy, sanguine-flegmatick, flegmaticksanguine, flegmatick-chollerick, and chollerick-flegmatick.6 So, the consumption of specific food and drink was deemed capable of modifying one’s type. The ability to avoid certain foods was crucial, and the ability to avoid excess, if inclined toward it, was also of utmost importance to health. In all cases, physiological health as well as bodily health is at stake. The consequences of a bad diet will lead to sin as well as physical harm: gluttony or fasting will result in lust, wrath, envy, or sloth. In traditional representations of the seven deadly sins, lust especially was deemed a natural consequence of gluttony. In Spenser’s Faerie Queene, the seven deadly sins parade through the court of Lucifera, the demonic queen who

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resides in the House of Pride and who herself embodies pride. The first sin to appear is Idlenesse, of whom we are told: His life he led in lawlesse riotise; By which he grew to grieuous malady; For in his lustlesse limbs through euill guise A shaking feuer raignd continually7 After Idlenesse comes Gluttony: Deformed creature, on a filthie swyne, His belly was vp-blowne with luxury, And eke with fatnesse swollen were his eyne, And like a Crane his necke was long and fyne, With which he swallowd vp excessiue feast, For want whereof poore people oft did pyne; And all the way, most like a brutish beast, He spued vp his gorge, that all did him deteast.8 Sloth and gluttony were considered related sins: as Thomas Elyot points out, sloth was one of the signs of repletion, which resulted from overeating.9 Gluttony is followed by Lechery, “Who rough, and blacke, and filthy did appeare, / Vnseemely man to please faire Ladies eye”; it seems that, for Spenser at least, women were especially prone to lust.10 According to Gregory the Great, the sixth-century saint and Pope, the sin of gluttony might be committed in various ways: not merely by eating too much, but by eating too soon, too expensively, too eagerly, and too daintily.11 Gluttony resulted in negative effects upon physical health. The sin of gluttony, which harmed the soul, was regularly condemned from the pulpit in the early modern period. In the Epistle to the Romans Saint Paul warns: “For they that are such serve not our Lord Jesus Christ, but their own belly; and by good words and fair speeches deceive the hearts of the simple.”12 Similarly Proverbs advises “Be not among winebibbers; among riotous eaters of flesh: / For the drunkard and the glutton shall come to poverty: and drowsiness shall clothe a man with rags.”13 Ecclesiastes states “Blessed art thou, O land, when thy king is the son of nobles, and thy

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princes eat in due season, for strength, and not for drunkenness!”14 The message was that one should guard against any inclination to overindulgence. In the Elizabethan Homily Against Gluttony and Drunkenness the consequences of gluttony are clearly outlined: Had not the ryche glutton ben so greedely geuen to the pamperyng of his belly, he woulde neuer haue ben so vnmercyfull to the poore Lazarus, neyther had he felt the tormentes of the vnquenchable fyre. What was the cause that GOD so horriblye punyshed Sodome and Gomorra? was it not theyr proude banquettyng and continuall idlenesse, which caused them to bee so lewde of lyfe, and so vnmercyfull towards the poore? What shall we now thynke of the horrible excesse, whereby so manye haue peryshed, and ben brought to destruction?15 There is a focus on the physical effects of gluttony: “Oft commeth sodayne death by banquettyng, sometyme the membres are dissolued, and so the whole body is brought into a miserable state,”16 but also on the harm it does to the soul of the Christian man. It “brynges men to whoredome and lewdenesse of harte, with daungers vnspeakable.”17 The dietaries similarly warn against the physical effects of gluttony and its impact upon the Christian soul. In their discussion of the major food groups, they offer advice on the impact a specific food is likely to have upon a specific temperament. Discussion tends to be informed by a distinct moral code: control over one’s diet indicates the health–– or otherwise––of the soul. In William Bullein’s dietary The Gouernment of Health, the reader is presented with a dialogue between the blissfully ignorant John-the-gourmand and Humphrey-the-moderate who warns John against “all lustie reuellers, and continual banket makers.” Giving as an example the Roman Emperor Varius Heliogabalus, “which was dayly fedde with many hundred fishes and foules, and was accompanied with manie brothels, baudes, harlots and gluttons,” Humphrey tells John, “and thus it doeth appeare by your abhorring vertue, that of right you might haue claimed a great office in Haeliogabalus court, if you had beene in those daies.”18 Excess food indicates abuse of the body. Sexual excess, evident in the bawds and harlots who frequent the court, indicates that Varius’s diet leads to lust, which harms the body and the soul. A sense

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of moral harm is also suggested by Andrew Boorde’s assertion in his dietary that any man of leisure who eats more than two meals a day, or any laborer more than three, “lyueth a beestly lyfe.”19 This suggests that the man who overeats becomes like the beast, who does not possess a soul. Similarly, Henry Wingfield introduces his dietary by lamenting that “by suche reuell, gourmandise, and daily surfetyng, many cruellye are putte to deathe, oftentimes in floryshynge youth, in the most pleasaunt tyme of their lyfe”20; the phrase “putte to deathe” implying divine intervention and punishment. Overeating was condemned, but so too excessive abstinence was considered harmful. Advent and Lent were traditionally times for fasting; all Fridays and Saturdays were also fast days, but fasting was less restrictive than during Lent, since on Fridays outside Lent only animal flesh was forbidden. The Homily of Good Workes: And Fyrst of Fastyng outlines the “three endes, whereunto if our fast bee directed, it is then a worke profitable to us, and accepted of GOD.” The first end is “to chastise the flesh, that it be not too wanton, but tamed and brought in subiection to the spirit”; the second “that the spirit may be more earnest and feruent to prayer”; and the third that our fast bee a testimonie and witnesse with us before GOD, of our humble submission to his high maiesty, when we confesse and acknowledge our sinnes unto him, and are inwardly touched with sorrowfulnesse of heart, bewayling the same in the affliction of our bodies.21 The purpose of depriving the body of sustenance was to bring physical desire under the spirit’s control, to allow the soul its correct dominion over the body; but it was essential that fasting be done only in moderation. Christ, whose disciples did not fast, admonished the Pharisees “because they put a religion in theyr doynges and ascribed holynes to the outwarde worke wrought, not regardyng to what ende fastyng is ordeyned.”22 The Homily Against Gluttony and Drunkenness refers to the prophet Isaiah, who warned that fasting as well as banqueting “maketh men forgetfull of theyr duetie towardes God, when they geue them selues to all kyndes of pleasure, not consideryng nor regardyng

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the workes of the Lorde, who hath created meates and drinkes, as Saint Paule sayeth, to be receaued thankfully of them that beleue & know the trueth.”23 The seemingly masochistic pleasure to be had in depriving the body of sustenance must, it seems, be avoided as much as the pleasure to be had by gorging on food and drink or savoring its taste. For Protestant authorities fasting was distinctly Catholic, suggesting as it did the fasting that had commonly taken place in Catholic monasteries before their dissolution and its continued practice by the Catholic laity. Moderation in all things was a recurring focus, although it must be noted that this was an unnecessary admonition for the many who experienced prolonged periods of hunger and fear of famine during the early modern period.

SPECIFIC FOODS: BENEFITS AND DANGERS Eating too much or too little of any food put physical health in danger and endangered the soul; but some foods were deemed more dangerous for body and soul than others. The dietaries tend to share a distinct suspicion of fruit and vegetables, repeatedly warning that such foods should be consumed with caution, especially when raw. On the other hand, the consumption of animal flesh was broadly encouraged, although certain humoral types were advised to avoid the flesh of specific animals. In the early modern period it was generally believed that God had ordained animal flesh as fit for human consumption only after the flood.24 The dietary author Thomas Moffett claims that the main reason for man later consuming animal flesh, rather than fruit and vegetables alone, was a change in man’s physical makeup as well as the food typically consumed: before the flood men were of stronger constitution, and vegetable fruits grew void of superfluous moisture: so by the flood these were endued with weaker nourishment and men made more subject to violent diseases and infirmities. Whereupon it was requisite or rather necessary, such meat to be appointed for human nourishment, as was in substance and essence most like our own, and might with less loss and labour of natural heat be converted and transubstantiated into our flesh.25

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The notion that fruit was full of water, and could cause a harmful imbalance in the body if consumed in excess or at the wrong time, comes up repeatedly in the dietaries. William Vaughan gives a detailed explanation of this view of fruit: All fruit for the most part are taken more for wantonnesse then for any nutritiue or necessary good, which they bring unto vs. To verifie this, let vs but examine with the eye of reason what profit they cause, when they are eaten after meales. Surely we must needs confesse, that such eating, which the French call desert, is vnnaturall, being contrary to Physicke or Dyet: for commonly fruits are of a moist facultie, and therefore fitter to be taken afore meals (but corrected with Suger or comfits) then after meales: and then also but very sparingly, least their effects appear to our bodily repentance, which in women grow to be the greene sicknesse, in men the morphew, or els some flatuous windy humor.26 Thomas Cogan observes that “al herbs and fruits generally are noyfull to man and doe engender ill humors, and be oft-times the cause of putrified Fevers, if they be much and continually eaten.”27 He notes that apples, the fruit “most used amongst us in England,” should not be consumed raw; and yet “unruly people through wanton appetite will not refrain [from] them, and chiefly in youth when (as it were) by a naturall affection they greedily covet them.”28 Cogan also warns against the consumption of parsnips and carrots, which “provoke Carnall lust.”29 In a seventeenth-century treatise on education, the philosopher John Locke argues that fruit should not be given to children because it is unwholesome.30 That fruit was denounced by the dietaries does not mean that it was not regularly consumed: the poor would have eaten fruit growing wild on bushes and in hedgerows, and fruit was regularly served in banquets.31 But the over-consumption of fruit was thought to indicate a moral lack. In Ben Jonson’s comedy Bartholomew Fair, the idiotic Coke, who will buy anything presented to him at the Fair, is said to be especially fond of fruit: If a leg or an arm on him did not grow on, he would lose it i’ th press. Pray heaven I bring him off with one stone! And then he is such a ravener after fruit! You will not believe what a coil I had, t’other day,

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to compound a business between a Cather’ne-pear-woman and him, about snatching! ’Tis intolerable, gentlemen!32 As Erica Fudge noted, the eating of animal flesh “held a more powerful position in theological terms than any attempt to regain the vegetarian innocence of Eden,” since such a diet signified human dominion over animals. A vegetarian diet “would take away a point of humiliation for humans that was vital to their understanding of their place in [a] universe” where the eating of animal flesh “represents both death (human mortality) and power (human dominion).”33 As mentioned above, William Vaughan considered fruit to be a cause of flatulence, an ailment commonly attributed also to other foods consumed by the poor, such as beans and chestnuts. As Ken Albala pointed out, “Medical opinion was united in condemning beans as gross, difficult to digest and flatulence-promoting. Only laborers were thought to have stomachs strong enough to digest them.”34 Thomas Elyot notes the following of beans: They make winde, howsoeuer they bee ordered: the substance which they do make is spungie, and not firme, albeit they be abstersiue, or cleansing the bodie, they tarie long ere they bee digested, and make grosse iuyce in the bodie: but if onyons bee sodden with them, they be lesse noyfull.35 William Bullein and Thomas Cogan also thought them hard to digest.36 Beans were also thought to provoke lust, a sin commonly associated with flatulence. Andrew Boorde considers beans to be less worthy of praise than peas because “althought [sic] the skynnes or huskes be ablated or caste away, yet they be stronge meate, and dothe prouoke venerious actes.”37 Albala claimed that the notion of beans as aphrodisiacal probably stems from the belief that they were highly nutritious: “According to theory any food which is nutritious, after having replaced the blood, flesh and spirits, is then converted into sperm, both the male and female variety,” and this “signals the urge to procreate.”38 In Ben Jonson’s Volpone, Androgino, pretending to embody the soul of Pythagoras, is questioned by Nano about the “forbid meats” he has consumed; one of which, when he has taken the shape of “A good dull mule,” is beans.39 As Gordon Campbell noted, the

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eating of beans was “forbidden by Pythagoreans because flatulence was thought to allow the breath of life to escape from the body.”40 This connection with “the breath of life” also explains the common association between flatulence and lust: the male orgasm was considered an “evacuation,” a term used by Richard Burton, and it signified loss.41 Indeed, it was common for the moment of sexual climax to be termed a “death.”42 William Bullein claims that chestnuts “healpe the coughe, if they be eaten rawe,” but warns that “althoughe they greatelye nourryshe the boedy, yet they be hurtful for the splene and filleth the bellyful of winde.”43 So too Phillip Barrough notes that chestnuts “doe ingender a flatuous vapour,”44 and Henry Butts warns that when eaten raw chestnuts are “hard of digestion” and that chestnuts “Being flatulent incite Venus.”45 Certain foods were considered capable of cooling lust; amongst them was cucumber, which both Thomas Elyot and Thomas Cogan claim “abate[s] carnall lust.”46 John Gerard observes that lettuce cooleth the heate of the stomacke” and also that “The seed taken in drinke . . . hindreth generation of seed and venereous imaginations.”47 Although the consumption of animal flesh was commonly considered healthy, meat was considered likely to provoke melancholy and, as we have seen, the melancholy type was thought especially prone to the sins of envy and wrath. Since melancholy was considered cold and dry, foods also classified as such should be avoided by the melancholic. Thomas Elyot advises against the daily consumption of a range of foods––among them old beef, mutton, hare, boar, and venison––by those likely to suffer “dolour or heuynesse [heaviness] of mynd.”48 William Bullein notes that although “cholericke men may as lightly digest beefe, bacon, veneson, &c. With as much speede and litle hurt as the fleugmatike man may eate, rabit chicken, and partridge, &c.,” the melancholic man “through the coldnesse of the stomacke hath not that strength in the stomacke as hee hath promtpnes in wil: to eat things warm and moyst be good for him.”49 So too Thomas Cogan notes that “Venison, whether it be of red deer or fallow, maketh ill iuice, engendereth melancholy, and is hard of digestion, as Galen witnesseth. Wherefore it is no wholesome meat for students.”50 In a treatise on melancholy Timothy Bright advises against “porke, except it be yong, and a litle corned with salt, beefe, ramme mutton, goate, bores flesh, & veneson.”51 Similarly Robert Burton, citing Galen’s admonition against beef that was followed by subsequent authorities, also warns against the consumption of venison and hare.52

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Fish was generally considered inferior to animal flesh, specifically red meat, because it was believed to be less nutritious: Thomas Moffett considers “all fish (compared with flesh) . . . cold and moist, of little nourishment, engendring watrish and thinn blood,”53 and William Bullein, citing Galen, claims “the nourishments of flesh is better than the nourishments of fish.”54 But there was also a moral dimension to the consumption of fish. The fish was an early Christian symbol. The connection between fish-eating and Christ, especially via the biblical story of Christ’s miraculous multiplying of loaves and fishes,55 was used by some Catholics to suggest that eating fish was superior to eating animal flesh. In the monasteries, meat was only eaten occasionally: the Benedictine rule stated “let the use of fleshmeat be granted to the sick who are very weak, for the restoration of their strength; but, as soon as they are better, let all abstain from fleshmeat as usual.”56 Discussing the relative merits of flesh and fish, Moffett criticizes those “filthy Friars” who think fish superior to meat because Christ fed upon it, arguing that Christ himself adhered to the laws of Moses and forbade the Israelites to eat fish with neither scales nor fins.57 In a prose tract promoting the eating of fish as a means of supporting the fishing industry, Edward Jeninges indicates that many Protestants balked at laws advocating abstinence from the eating of meat, which they found reminiscent of those “made and used in the time of Papistrie, and by ancient authoritie of the Pope, who we should not in anything imitate, but rather in all thinges by contrarie.”58 But, argues Jeninges, the policy is, nevertheless, a sound one: many good lawes and ordinances in the time of papistrie was by them made and ordained, but the same is not therfore to be contemned or neglected, for that their deuise in many things for the benefite of a common welth cannot be amended.59 The policy of promoting fish over meat for economic reasons was also endorsed by The Homily of Good Workes: And Fyrst of Fastyng: If the Prince requested our obedience to for beare one day from flesh more then we doe, and to bee contented with one meale in the same day, should not our owne commodity thereby perswade vs to subiection?”60

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Since the subject was duty-bound to obey the monarch, the eating of fish became a moral obligation.

POSSESSED WITH THE SPIRIT OF THE BUTTERY It was not merely what was eaten or how much, but the circumstances in which food was consumed that threatened the integrity of body and soul. As Hazel Forsyth pointed out, documentary and archaeological evidence suggests that “very few Londoners had an oven or kitchen and even those with access to a hearth mostly lacked the elaborate equipment needed for roasting and basting.” These Londoners would buy their food from alehouses or from cookshops, the latter being establishments that were open day and night to cook and sell food.61 They would also buy their food from the many street vendors selling pies, nuts, oranges and other foods.62 Alehouses, which provided cheap and basic food such as bread and cheese, were considered especially dubious establishments.63 In his study of the early modern alehouse, Peter Clark identified it as a new and increasingly dangerous force in popular society . . . they were run by the poor for the poor, victualling and harbouring the destitute and vagrant, breeding crime, disorder, and drunkenness, fostering promiscuity and other breaches of orthodox morality; and . . . they served as the stronghold of popular opposition to the established religious and political order.64 Phillip Stubbes complained about public drunkenness amongst the English, noting that: Euery countrey, citie, towne, villaged & other, hath abundance of alehouses, tauernss & Innes, which are so fraughted with mault-wormes night & day, that you would wunder to se them. You shal haue them there sitting at the wine, and good ale all the day long, yea all the night too, peraduenture a whole week togither, so long as any money is left, swilling, gulling & carowsing from one to an other, til neuer a one can speak a redy woord. Then when with the spirit of the buttery they are thus possessed, a world it is to consider their gestures &

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demeanors, how they stut and stammer, stagger & reele too & fro, like madmen, some vomiting spewing & disgorging their filthie stomacks, other some (Honor sit auribus) pissing vnder the boord as they sit, & which is most horrible, some fall to swering, cursing . . . interlacing their speeches with curious tearms of blasphemie to the great dishonour of God and offence of the godly eares present.65 For Stubbes, the logical consequence of abusing the body with alcohol is blasphemy, which abuses God and the soul. According to Clark, the alehouse was “an under-world populated by gulls and vagabonds, robbers and whores, a world which though parasitical is also a mirror image of the moral sham, the trickery and hypocrisy of respectable society.”66 It was a world often depicted in early modern drama, and which Charlotte McBride related specifically to Shakespeare’s plays: the Boar’s Head tavern in Henry IV Part 2 and the brothel that functions as an alehouse in Measure for Measure.67 The reputation of English cooks that worked in alehouses and other establishments selling food in the early modern period was somewhat mixed. Andrew Boorde claims that “A good coke is halfe a physycyon.”68 Thomas Cogan praises cooks’ ability to transform ordinary ingredients into something special, noting that “a good Cooke can make you good meat of a whetstone. . . . Therefore a good Cooke is a good jewell and to bee much made of.”69 While good cooks were praised, those who prepared and sold food for public consumption were often considered of dubious reputation: morally ambiguous figures who indulged in risky culinary practices. In the days before refrigeration and a reliable and well-trained medical profession, food poisoning from professional cooks who cut corners was a real hazard. The reputation of the cook as a scoundrel went as far back as Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, where the cook, Roger of Ware, is accused by Harry Bailey, the innkeeper, of shoddy practices; namely of draining the gravy from pasties and selling food that has been heated up and allowed to go cold.70

CANNIBALISM AND INVERSION: COOKING AND EATING FLESH IN EARLY MODERN DRAMA In early modern culture the cook was considered an ambivalent character; in Shakespeare the reputation of the cook is generally negative. In Titus

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Andronicus and Timon of Athens the cook exacts revenge: Titus, having killed Chiron and Demetrius and announced his intention to bake them in a pie, states “I’ll play the cook / And see them ready against their mother comes.”71 Timon prepares to present his false friends with a meal of steaming water and stones, announcing “My cook and I’ll provide.”72 Both Titus and Timon apparently demean themselves by taking on the role of cook, but their serving of others is a means by which to assert power. In Romeo and Juliet, Capulet’s serving-man assures him that he will hire only the best cooks to prepare Juliet’s wedding feast. He has a test for them: “Marry, sir, ’tis an ill cook that cannot lick his own fingers, therefore he that cannot lick his fingers goes not with me.”73 In The Taming of the Shrew, Grumio and Petruchio complain about the cook’s absence: the former asks “Where’s the cook? Is supper ready,”74 and is echoed by his master “Where is the rascal cook?”75 In Henry IV Part II, Sir John Oldcastle (or Falstaff), taking no responsibility for his indulgences, claims that the fault lies with cooks and whores: “If the cook help to make the gluttony, you help to make the diseases, Doll.”76 Of course the audience, familiar with Sir John’s prodigious appetite for sack and capons, knows differently; but the suggestion that cooks were harmful was clearly a familiar one for Shakespeare, and none of his plays portray cooks in a favorable light. Titus Andronicus prepares a cannibalistic banquet for Tamora after chopping off his own hand, and is assisted in his culinary endeavors by his daughter, the more severely disabled Lavinia, who has had both hands chopped off and her tongue cut out. Moments before, Titus, urged on by Aaron, wields his knife upon himself, referring to his own hands as a foodstuff: “Such withered herbs as these / Are meet for plucking up.”77 Katherine A. Rowe recognized the allusion to Psalm 137 (“If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, may my hand wither and my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth”) but acknowledged that this only “perhaps partly explains . . . Titus’s peculiar description of his hands.”78 It is not the hand Titus chops off that is destined for the pot, but Tamora’s sons, Chiron and Demetrius. Yet Aaron perceives a culinary dimension to the severed hand that is his joke at the expense of the Andronici: “O, how this villainy / Doth fat me with the very thoughts of it!”79 At the end of 3.1, Titus instructs Lavinia: “Bear thou my hand, sweet wench, between thine arms,”80 an emendation first used by Edward Capell in his eighteenth-century edition of Shakespeare’s works81

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and intermittently adopted by editors ever since. The only substantive text, the quarto of 1594, has “Beare thou my hand sweet wench betweene thy teeth”82 and the Folio (derived from Q) has the same reading83; the emendation arises from a conjecture about “armes” in Q’s previous line. The unemended reading is very much in keeping with the notion of the body, or bits of it, as edible. These hints at cannibalism prefigure the feast with which Titus gets his revenge, and here we can glance back to Chaucer’s cook. Tamora consumes human flesh, and Chaucer hints that so too do the customers of Roger of Ware; although in Chaucer the consumption is less horrific than revolting. It seems that those who consume Roger’s blancmange also consume bits of Roger, either the pus or the flaky skin that comes from his sore: the body of the cook forms one of the ingredients going into his blancmange. In the early modern period human flesh was consumed in the form of mummia, or mummy: the remains of an embalmed corpse used as medicine. Louise Noble described this practice as part of “a well-established therapeutic model, which subscribes to the pharmacological superiority of the human body, both living and dead, and valorizes medicinal cannibalism––the ingestion of medicinally-prepared human flesh, as well as blood, fat, bone, and bodily excretions for therapeutic purposes.” She found this process comparable with Titus’s treatment of his victims.84 As Wendy Wall pointed out, there was a distinct link between butchery and medicine in the period, and housewifery generally involved “a world of interchangeable, absorbable, and consumable body parts, extracted from live and dead beings.”85 In Shakespeare’s The Merry Wives of Windsor, Falstaff proclaims that, had he drowned in the Thames into which he has been thrown, he would have been transformed into “a mountain of mummy!”86 Human flesh was also consumed in the celebration of the Eucharist, at least for Catholics who believed in transubstantiation. Michael Schoenfeldt noted that for George Herbert consumption of the Eucharist was the ultimate nutritive act,87 but Keith Thomas highlighted how the sacrament was generally considered by non-Catholics to be “a spurious piece of legerdemain . . . the pretence of a power plainly magical, of changing the elements in such a sort as all the magicians of Pharaoh could never do.”88 For nonCatholics, the communion wafer was merely a piece of food; indeed it was sometimes referred to by mocking Protestants as a “cake idol.”89 Moreover,

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as Carlos Jáuregui indicated, there was a disturbing proximity between the realism of Eucharistic theophagy (eating of god) and ritualized cannibalism in the New World, and “while Catholic universalism defined itself in Europe by defending the realism of Eucharistic theophagy . . . in America it nonetheless raged against what it perceived as a similar order of materiality in the communion of Amerindian religions.”90 Titus Andronicus presents an interesting inversion of the Catholic process: in Catholic doctrine a food, the wafer, becomes a body, whereas in Shakespeare’s play a body––two bodies, actually––becomes food. What Shakespeare might be suggesting is unclear, but the transformation that Titus effects (body into food) taps into deep-seated fears of a consumption that is out of control, a feeding that is anathema to the oft-urged moderation. The balance of Titus’s mind is affected by Aaron’s brutality and the rape and mutilation of Lavinia. The early moderns would likely read the body as a physical manifestation of mental anguish. Since for them the body and mind were not distinct, a body that was perceived as lacking in some way indicated an emotional and spiritual lack, whereby men became less than human. Francis Bacon notes the following in his essay on deformity: Deformed persons are commonly even with Nature; for as Nature hath done ill by them; so doe they by nature: Being for the most part (as the Scripture saith) void of natural affection; And so they have their Revenge of Natures, Certainly there is a consent between the Body & the Mind; And where nature erreth in the One, she ventureth in the other.91 Although it seems that Bacon specifically refers to those born with some kind of deformity, he includes eunuchs (that is, those made bodily imperfect after birth) among those he considers deformed. He also notes the positive influence of deformity: they will, if they be of Spirit, seek to free themselves from Scorn; Which must be either by Vertue, or Malice: And therefore let it not be Marvelled, if sometimes they prove Excellent Persons.92 Titus becomes monstrous when, seeking to free himself from scorn (as Bacon put it), he becomes implicated in cannibalism, but is redeemed at

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the play’s end in a eulogy delivered by Marcus: “Now judge what cause had Titus to revenge / These wrongs unspeakable, past patience, / Or more than any living man could bear.”93 He is furthermore allowed an honorable burial in the Andronici family monument.94 It is Aaron and Tamora who are now judged beastly and their bodies treated as though not human: Tamora’s body will be abandoned for birds of prey to feed upon95 and a more horrible fate awaits Aaron: Set him breast-deep in earth and famish him. There let him stand, and rave, and cry for food. If anyone relieves or pities him, For the offence he dies. This is our doom. Some stay to see him fastened in the earth.96 The punishment by starvation of Aaron’s appetite for lust and murder constitutes an inversion of Tamora’s cannibalistic feast and the pernicious consumption of her body by birds of prey after her death.97 In his appeal for Roman unity, Marcus identifies the imperfect body that must be healed: “O, let me teach you how to knit again / This scattered corn into one mutual sheaf, / These broken limbs again into one body.”98 The reference to corn in the context of the body echoes Titus’s reference to his hands as herbs and the cannibalistic feast whereby the bodies of Chiron and Demetrius have provided food for Tamora. Where Titus plays the cook, Ursula in Jonson’s Bartholomew Fair cooks for a living. Ursula is guilty of shady practices: adulterating tobacco with the herb coltsfoot, selling as much froth as beer, and taking the customer’s drink away before they are finished so she might sell it back to them.99 Not all cooks that feature in Jonson’s plays are nefarious characters. For example, the master cook who appears in the masque Neptune’s Triumph for the Return of Albion, a figure re-worked as Lick-finger in Jonson’s The Staple of News, argues that the cook is equal to the poet since “Either’s art is the wisdom of the mind.”100 Lick-finger claims the master cook is “the man o’men / For a professor. He designs, he draws, / He paints, he carves, he builds, he fortifies.”101 Ursula is not an intellectual but a visceral figure. Her nickname stems from the fact that she prepares and sells pork, but also indicates that her obesity makes her almost less than human: a pig woman. Constant

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references are made to her large size, and in this she recalls Shakespeare’s Sir John Oldcastle. Like Sir John, Ursula is teased for being fat: Quarlous: Knockem: Winwife: Quarlous:

Body o’ the Fair! what’s this? Mother o’ the bawds? No, she’s the mother o’ the pigs, sir, mother of the pigs! Mother o’ the Furies, I think, by her firebrand. Nay, she is too fat to be a Fury, sure some walking sow of tallow! Winwife: An inspir’d vessel of Kitchen stuff! She drinkes this while. Quarlous: She’ll make excellent gear for the coach-makers, here in Smithfield, to anoint wheeles and axle-trees with. Ursula: Aye, aye, gamesters, mock a plain plump soft wench o’ the suburbs, do, because she’s juicy and wholesome: you must ha’ your thin pinch’d ware, pent up i’the compasse of a dogcollar (or ‘twill not do), that looks like a long lac’d conger, set upright, and a green feather, like fennel, i’ the jowl on’t.102

When we first meet Ursula, she complains about the discomfort she endures: “Fie upon’t: who would wear out their youth and prime thus, in roasting of pigs, that had any cooler vocation? Hell’s a kind of cold cellar to’t, a very fine vault, o’my conscience!”103 The heat of the booth in which she prepares the pork, which here provokes the traditional association between kitchens and hell, makes Ursula sweat: I am all fire, and fat Nightingale; I shall e’en melt away to the first woman, a rib, again, I am afraid. I do water the ground in knots as I go, like a great garden-pot; you may follow me by the S’s I make. The hot weather also makes Ursula sweat, as Knockem observes: “Troth I do make conscience of vexing thee now i’ the dog-days, this hot weather, for fear of found’ring thee i’ the body; and melting down a pillar of the Fair.”104 Gail Kern Paster traced the significance of related female bodily evacuations in Bartholomew Fair, specifically the urinating that occurs in Ursula’s booth. As Paster pointed out, women were thought to produce more urine than men because their bodies were considered more liquid105; leaking was “the normal punitive condition for women.” Ursula is the

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“melting mother,” the representation archetype” of the leaking female.106 The focus on Ursula’s huge, sweaty body is undoubtedly meant to be funny, but also suggests her gluttony: for an early modern audience her gross body signals the sinful state of her soul, although this moralistic interpretation sits uneasily alongside Ursula’s self-defense and description of women of fashion, which would provoke audience sympathy. The fact that Ursula sweats profusely also suggests that part of her body is going into the food she prepares, dripping onto the meat that she bastes and then serves.107 It is a kind of cannibalism that the woman termed “mother of the pigs” serves up part of herself in the pork her customers will consume. Ursula reinforces this sense that she is fit for consumption when, in the quotation above, she refers to herself as “juicy and wholesome,” as though she were indeed the animal flesh she sells. At one point in the play Ursula enters with a scalding-pan and falls: Curse of hell, that euer I saw these fiends, oh! I ha’ scalded my leg, my leg, my leg, my leg. I have lost a limb in the service! Run for some cream and salad oil, quickly!108 The sense that Ursula is herself consumed is here reinforced, since she calls for “cream and salad oil” to put upon the wound, suggesting that it might be eaten. Jonson also flirts with cannibalism in Neptune’s Triumph for the Return of Albion, when the master-cook arranges an antimasque by having certain persons represent specific foods. For example, bacon is “Hogrel the butcher and the sow his wife,”109 who present a dance in “coming out of the pot.”110 Later in the masque the cook presents the poet with “a dish of pickled sailors, fine salt sea-boys, shall relish like anchovies or caviar.”111 Ursula, the “pig woman,” similarly blurs the boundary between animal and human, between the beasts God deemed fit for food after the flood, and the beings created in God’s image. Crucially, she blurs the boundary between the animal, which does not possess a soul, and the human, who does. Here too, as in Titus Andronicus, we get an interesting inversion of the Catholic process of transubstantiation, in that a body becomes food rather than food being transformed into a body. Again, this appears to suggest consumption that is out of control and immoderate in the extreme.

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Ursula bastes herself into the pork she sells, and Titus serves human flesh, both of which blur the boundary between animal and human and suggest the cannibalistic. Human flesh ought not to be eaten; but there were important exceptions in the consumption of mummy and, for Catholics, the body of Christ. Without wishing to draw any forced comparisons between two very different plays, written just over twenty years apart, both Titus Andronicus and Bartholomew Fair present us with cooks who provide human flesh for consumption: in the former case the flesh of others, and in the latter their own. In both cases the cook is physically and morally imperfect, and we are presented with an inversion of the usual process that occurs in the Catholic sacrament of transubstantiation. Both playwrights are apparently engaging with the contradictions and complexities surrounding the consumption of flesh in the period, and the distinction between man and beast, between body and soul. For the early moderns, an imperfect soul was likely to manifest itself in an imperfect body and, likewise, an imperfect body indicated a soul that was not pure. By obeying specific rules about what to eat, and practicing moderation in the consumption of all foods, it was considered possible to control a tendency toward physical and spiritual impairment, which suggested that those who suffered from such an impairment were considered not to have practiced sufficient control over their sinful urges. The body ought to be preserved for the benefit of the soul; and early modern authorities, as evidenced in the dietaries and sermons, were keen to emphasize that the choices made about what to eat and drink indicated moral status as well as physical health. A bad diet, eating the wrong foods, and eating too much or too little would inevitably lead to disease and sin.

CHAPTER NINE

Food in Painting gillian riley

Images of food in paintings can provide evidence of what people ate or what they thought about food at a particular time. Food appears as a detail in religious or mythological works and genre scenes, and as the subject of still life paintings. But these have to be taken with a grain of salt, for where symbolism lurks, reality can be skewed, and this fruitful resource needs careful interpretation. The majority of works discussed here derive from Italian painters, though examples abound from elsewhere. Bible stories are full of food: from events like the Last Supper to the meal at Emmaus, the wedding at Cana, and the feast in the house of Levi. Incidental details in versions of the Annunciation, the return of the Prodigal Son, the poor man and Lazarus, the pause on the Flight from Egypt, the birth of the Virgin, and the many depictions of the Virgin and Child are full of truffles for the snuffling pig of a food historian. These truffles, however, have to be rescued by the pig’s owner and subjected to rigorous scrutiny. Is a perfect apple in the hand of Eve an accurate indication of fruit cultivation at the time of the painting, or an idealized version of a common fruit? Are the blemishes and worm holes in Caravaggio’s basket of fruit on the table in his “Supper at Emmaus” a realistic rendering of fruit from his local market, or an indication of the potential for corruption and decay in the human soul, as his contemporaries in the Low Countries implied? Is the

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size of the plates in medieval paintings of the Last Supper an indication of the incidence of consumption and obesity in the centuries concerned? How can we interpret the visual clues we find in paintings, to augment the information we find in printed texts and archival material? In addition to food, we find table settings, soft furnishings, kitchen equipment, food preparation, agricultural practices, hunting, fishing, gluttony, abstinence, and intimations of pleasure and opulence, dissipation and remorse. All should be examined with skepticism and considerable background knowledge. Murals and wall decorations often provide details of daily life and sometimes of actual events. In the castle at Malpaga, near Bergamo, the state visit of Christian IV of Denmark is depicted by Marcello Fogolino. Here we see the host, Bartolomeo Colleoni, at a long table spread with an Oriental carpet, with a white linen cloth over that. Guests sit, waited on by liveried servants, and the combination of formality and casual table manners are all there to be observed. The host’s precise work with a small sharp knife on a chicken leg is deft and neat. More table manners can be observed in the Ghirlandaio frescoes in the Tornabuoni chapel in Santa Maria Novella in Florence, executed in the 1480s. The fashionable Florentine ladies at the left-hand table of this detailed rendering of Herod’s Feast are in no way fazed by the appearance of the head of St John the Baptist on a plate, engrossed as they are in the consumption of comfits and sweetmeats. The scatter of crumbs and sugar on the tablecloth is not ill-mannered, but simply the debris of polite eating––soon to be removed when the cloth is changed and perfumed water and napkins are offered for the necessary ablutions. The wall painting by Ambrogio Lorenzetti belongs to a very different category. In the town hall in Siena, the painting depicts good and bad government, showing how agriculture and commerce flourish in a well-run, godly city in the fourteenth century. Historians of animal husbandry have noted the pig being driven to market (the famous cinta senese with the white stripe like a sash round its belly) as well as the crops in the welltilled fields. More evidence for early agriculture can be seen in a different series, panels of scenes from the life of St. John. One shows him walking away from the comfortable life of his rich family, up through the well-tilled fields and plots of the Tuscan landscape to the rugged wilderness of the Apennines.

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The fish, bread, and wine in versions of the Last Supper have their symbolic meanings, but what of rabbit, chicken, and crayfish? In Sano di Pietro’s Sienese version of St. Peter healing Petronella, the details may not be symbolic: the trestle table with its white linen cloth embroidered in black at both ends, the terracotta-colored tiled floor, green walls, a napkin hanging on a pole in the background, and the flasks of wine and glass tumblers. All might be reliable clues to aspects of daily life. A fifteenth-century mural of the Marriage at Cana in the cathedral at Barcelona shows similar details of tableware and food, and the charming sight of small apples and oranges acting as stoppers to flasks of wine and water. Apples and oranges also perform this function in a manuscript illustration, where apples act as stoppers to flasks of barley water. These spontaneous glimpses into daily life appear alongside the calculated use of symbols. A page in one of the Tacuina Sanitatis has green hangings in the background, a black-and-white tiled floor, and the familiar white tablecloth with black patterns at either end. The very long sinuous napkin used by one of the pages to envelop a covered dish borne ceremoniously from the kitchen has a similar decoration. The ritual here is around the presentation of a pheasant, and whatever the symbolism of a princely bird, the little details of the occasion are fascinating and instructive. Illustrated manuscript versions of this medieval Arabic health handbook, the Tacuinum Sanitatis, were made in northern Italy in the midfifteenth century. Foodstuffs and ingredients were described. Their medical properties were discussed in terms of the humoral theories and related to the everyday conduct, as well as what people should eat to ward off disease and stay healthy. And everyday life is what we see: scenes from shops and markets, taverns and domestic kitchens, sick rooms, and the countryside. Some of these images have become iconic: the woman in a blue dress making pasta, the tagliatelle of Bologna, and the straw-hatted peasants cutting the asparagus harvest.1 The text is standard received wisdom, but the illustrations are a gold mine for the food historian. One image of the sale of fresh and cured animal fat is exactly contemporary with Maestro Martino’s repeated instructions in his Libro de Arte Coquinaria, written in the 1460s. He begins many of his recipes with diced cured pig’s fat, or bacon––but not lard as some translators willfully imagine lardo to mean.2 In the Tacuinum a man wields a large cleaver as he cuts solid fat into strips and then dices it.

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These cubes would be fried with chopped onions at the start of many a recipe. It is very helpful to have visual confirmation of the meaning of a recipe. In another image, a client walks away with a whole side of bacon over his shoulder, an indication of the nutritional and gastronomic value of fat. The bacon is salted and perhaps smoked; a splendidly tasty resource to keep a family fed and warm through the winter months. Making various kinds of cheese is shown in several illustrations. One shows freshly made ricotta (protein solids from twice-heated whey, and a byproduct of cheese making), drained as soon as it has coagulated and eaten on the spot. Here we see a large black-and-white dog who begs his share from the shepherd, eating this snack from a wooden bowl. In the background we can see all the details of its preparation, a woman tending the pot over the fire, the strainers and pierced molds for the coagulated whey, the ricotta, and the general sense of everyone gathering round to enjoy this light and tasty treat. The pleasures and pitfalls of examining material culture in art can be seen by looking closely at several devotional paintings. Crivelli’s “Annunciation with Saint Emidius” was painted in 1486 to quite a complicated brief. The city of Ascoli Piceno in the Italian Marche had been granted limited civic independence in 1482, and the city fathers commissioned a painting from Carlo Crivelli to celebrate this. The town was part of what were then the Papal States, and news of this political breakthrough had come by carrier pigeon from Rome––faster than a messenger on horseback could make it over the rugged Apennines. But a divine messenger was at work, too: the holy dove announcing its message to the Virgin, whom we see at prayer in her modern town house. She is surrounded by the comforts of prosperous urban life, including wooden containers of quince paste and bottles of fruit cordial on the shelf above her bed. In the painting there are other things to eat. In addition to the holy dove and the carrier pigeon we see a flock of domestic birds in and out of their dovecote in the top left hand corner, while a peacock perches on the cornice of the building. The peacock is a symbol of majesty and of the immortality of Christ, but it was also the star turn of many a Renaissance banquet: skinned, roasted, and stitched back into its plumage. It might even be supported by a clockwork mechanism––as we see in the illustrated account of the marriage of Constantio Sforza and Camilla of Aragon––and made to strut over the banquet table. A mixture of symbolism and reality pervades Crivelli’s politically motivated devotional painting.

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But what are we to make of the perfectly portrayed apple and cucumber so prominent in the foreground? They are not part of the diet of a pregnant young woman in a prosperous modern city, but would be seen at once by Crivelli’s contemporaries as potent symbols: the apple of Mary’s fecundity, and the cucumber her son’s purity. Fruit in religious works often has a symbolic meaning that has to be examined before we can draw conclusions about diet. In Girolamo dai Libri’s “Virgin and Child with Saint Anne,” the two women are seated beneath a lemon tree, bearing both fruit and flowers. These symbolize the purity and fecundity of the Virgin, and at the same time are reminders of the belief that lemon juice could ease the pains of childbirth. Ancient beliefs linking citrus fruit to fertility and childbearing seem to be present in Paolo Morando’s “Virgin and Child with Saint John the Baptist and an Angel,” where the angel holds a lemon in the ritual gesture of the Jewish etrog, a fertility symbol used in the rituals of the Feast of the Tabernacles. This and many more images of citrus fruit were quoted by S. Tolkowsky in his Hesperides, a history of the culture and use of Citrus Fruits, using fine art as reference material to flesh out his research.3 Citrus fruits appear in the works of other painters of the period. Mantegna learnt from his master Squarcione to display swags of oranges, lemons and other fruit. The idea was derived from the ancient world, but in this case displayed local products, the early agribusiness of the Veneto and Lake Garda. Here the crusty Andrea Mantegna had in his youth disported with bibulous companions in search of classical inscriptions on a lambent autumn day in 1464, frolicking in the lemon groves on the shores of the lake. In his art we thus get confirmation of developments in agriculture that historians have documented from other sources. A century later, citrus fruit appear as decoration and ingredients in Bartolomeo Scappi’s Opera of 1570, one of the most comprehensive cookery books of the period. Thinly sliced and seasoned with salt and sugar, lemons and bitter oranges make a refreshing salad or relish. Slices of bitter orange or lemon with their edges crimped were arranged around the rim of a serving dish, or used to decorate a roast or a boiled fowl. Visual references for these and other details are not easily found in the banquet scenes by Scappi’s great contemporary Veronese, who painted huge versions of bible stories for palaces and churches. His Last Supper, Feast in the House of Levy, and Marriage at Cana all have details of

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the presentation and serving of food and wine, giving some idea of how Scappi’s menus were handled in real life. Scappi’s magisterial listings of the items in his section of banquet menus gives no idea of the pomp and ceremonies involved in bringing them to table, nor of the intense kitchen activities in getting these elaborate ready to serve in the correct sequence.4 Veronese allows us to experience the noise, bustle, and theatricality of similar banquets in the opulent palaces of the Venetian nobility. He even shows the majordomo in charge of ceremonies looming watchfully over the toing and fro-ing of dishes as they are called for by pages or guests. We get some idea of how the mind-boggling quantities of food would have been distributed according to preference and rank––and probably favoritism. We see stecchi profumati (perfumed toothpicks) in use, and a two-pronged fork held by a pensive diner, who pauses in a conversation, having deftly speared some fruit in syrup. Fingers, spoons, and knives would have been used to get food from plate to mouth, as we can see in the body language of the guests. Forks were a tool of the posh, and for use during the dessert course to deal with sticky morsels that fingers could not handle. Food in Veronese is blurred. There is very little detail of the contents of the pile-up of dishes seen in a foreshortened perspective in “The Marriage at Cana.” The plates and bowls were placed overlapping each other in generous profusion, to be dipped into at will, but the contents are not clear. A lesser painter, Bassano, or rather various members of that family, delivers the goods for us in “Cleopatra’s Feast.” This is a modern-dress version of the historical event in which Cleopatra dissolved a priceless pearl in vinegar before quaffing it, to the discomfiture of a shattered Anthony. This action is relegated to a table in the background. The preparation of the food, and its arrival from kitchen and pantry, are all displayed in the foreground, complete with elaborate tarts bristling with sugared comfits sticking up like candles (which they are not). We read of these comfits in works on confectionery: made by tossing fennel or coriander seeds, pine nuts, little slivers of cinnamon, or cloves in sugar syrup in a shallow metal dish. The dish, or balancing pan, is suspended over a low heat and allowed to cool and dry. The whole process is repeated up to twenty times to cover them with many thin coatings of sugar. To see these expensive sweet things in use is really instructive. Their function was medicinal as well as gastronomic; aids to digestion, they provided a healthy end to a lavish meal.

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But even with Cleopatra’s table away in the middle distance we can see clearly the way dishes were piled on it, skillfully balanced and overlapping in a display of profusion and opulence. Here the contents are visible: a goose or large bird, small ones, slices of roast meat. A couple of small paintings by Giovanni Quinsa with absolutely no aesthetic merit are nonetheless a delight to the eye of the food historian: here, thanks to a rather plodding and literal-minded style, we can make out the detail of fowls larded with thick strips of hard pork fat, making a regular pattern similar to the upright comfits. There is a raised pie and several open tarts, possibly an eggy, cheesy concoction, one perhaps filled with ricotta, a boiled goose, a dish of small birds from the spit, various plates of sliced meats, some chunky salami, various morsels of fried brains or sweetbreads, with halved lemons as garnish, what might be little pizzette or slices of boned and stuffed calf’s head, sliced and decorated with herbs. The erratic perspective allows us to see into every dish, and also note the way they are arranged. Some overlap, as in “The Fruit Seller” by Vincenzo Campi. Campi was working in northern Italy in the 1580s. His kitchen and market scenes are full of detail, and appear to be a celebration of the good things in contemporary Italian life. The comely young fruit seller presides over an arrangement of produce from every season of the year––this is hardly a typical fruit stall, and indeed there are no customers. Symbolic elements need not diminish the importance of these precise images of fruit and vegetables, from early asparagus and fava beans to the mulberries and quinces of autumn. It is pleasant to note that beans and peas could be bought shelled, as they still can in Italian markets today. There are several kinds of pear, early and late-crop figs, hazelnuts, mulberries falling apart with their juice staining the white bowl, cherries, strawberries, autumnal pumpkins, and a winter cabbage. A kitchen scene by Campi in the Brera gallery in Milan is a refreshing antidote to the ordered, disciplined kitchens of Scappi. The professional staff go quietly about their allotted tasks without panic or haste. Campi shows all the rough-and-tumble of a prosperous domestic kitchen, with nearly a dozen people competing for space and priority. A robust young woman shreds a lump of Parmesan cheese on a massive grater. On a table behind her pasta is being rolled and cut. An elderly woman is pounding something––perhaps spices––in a huge stone mortar. A younger woman is

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plucking and gutting a fowl, while an adolescent boy struggles to thrust a spit into the soft interior of a fowl, acutely embarrassed at the crude symbolism of his task. The noise level must have been high, with the clatter of dishes, the thump of the pestle, and the screeching of cat and dog competing for the chicken’s offal. Beyond the frantic kitchen there is a calm space in which the table is laid for guests. Beyond it, along the wall, the credenza holds plates and space for the cold dishes waiting in the kitchen, among which is a complex pastry construction and a dish of comfits. Earlier representations of banquets come in mythological scenes or stories from contemporary literature. Botticelli’s version of Boccaccio’s terrible tale of Nastasio degli Onesti was commissioned to celebrate the wedding of Giannozzo Pucci with the reluctant Lucrezia Bini. It spells out in horrible detail a story whose moral is that women, however highborn and wealthy, have to submit to parental choice when it comes to marriage. The sight of a naked young woman being savaged by hounds and a bear emphasizes this unpleasant truth. We can shudder and turn to the details of the banquet, which seems to have reached the final course. Fruit and comfits, biscuits and cookies, are tossed onto the floor as shattered guests overturn the table. The last of Botticelli’s four panels shows the actual Pucci wedding feast, where two long tables face each other under a cool, airy loggia. Pages arrive to present gold dishes of comfits and cookies of various kinds to add to the profusion of dried and fresh fruit scattered over the linen tablecloth. The elaborate, twisted napkins wound round both the pages and their offerings seem to us a ritual that adds unnecessary complications to the service. While the Italians provide the most vivid depictions of food, there are examples elsewhere as well. A later wedding picture by Joris Hoefnagel shows all the rituals of a 1570s wedding fête in Bermondsey, then a pleasant rural suburb of London. We get a view of the open kitchen, where a massive spit bears the roasts for the feast, and a glimpse of the banquet table laid in an adjoining room, with a fine white cloth decked with flowers. A procession from the church includes four massive wedding cakes carried in slings round the necks of stalwart servants. Ivan Day has investigated the details of this painting and recreated the cake from a recipe in The Queens Closet Open’d of 1655. It is quite different from our present day wedding cakes, rich with dried fruit and marzipan. This cake is a dense buttery crumb cake, redolent with musk and ambergris, whose feral aphrodisiac aromas

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must have enhanced the potent symbolism of fertility and renewal associated with the ceremony. A gilded branch of rosemary decked with red and white ribbons––emblems of blood and milk, childbirth and fecundity–– is part of the procession. Much more symbolism can be found in other areas, where innocent vegetation can have many meanings. Plant historians find a wealth of information in the frescoes painted in 1517 by Giovanni da Udine, in the villa now known as the Farnesina. They were commissioned by the rich banker Agostino Chigi. His house provided an oasis of rural calm and luxury in Trastevere across the Tiber, below the Gianicolo hill, close to the Vatican yet within reach of the center of Rome and Chigi’s business and political contacts. A loggia connected the opulently furnished house with the gardens and countryside beyond. The house’s decorative scheme linked the two worlds (house and garden) in the celebration of fertility and abundance represented in the story of Cupid and Psyche, and in Chigi’s happy and fecund relationship with the beautiful Francesca Ordeaschi. The story of the nymph and her adventures is depicted in the pendentives of the vaulted space, which is open to the gardens on the north side. The cornices surrounding the frescoes are decorative festoons of foliage, flowers, fruit, and vegetables. Maybe too much can be made of the intentionally erotic couplings of suggestively shaped vegetables. Vasari noted the veramente stupendissimi naturalism of the plants, admiring the phallic gourd, with two eggplants resembling testicles suggestively close to a fig bursting open with ripeness.5 Plant historians and botanists can enjoy a wealth of equally stimulating images of vegetables and fruit, all of which were known to the artist. Chigi was a keen collector of plants, with a well-stocked viridarium. Some of his plants had only recently arrived from the New World. We read of his lavish banquets, when priceless gold and silver plate were nonchalantly tossed from the outdoor tables into the river, only to be retrieved later from the hidden nets placed to receive them.6 To us, Giovanni da Udine’s faithfully delineated vegetables are equally precious. Altogether more than 150 items are represented, many of them edible. Once disentangled from the web of myth, symbolism, and exuberant hedonism, they are a unique resource for accurate images of fruit and vegetables grown at that time. Early market scenes from the Low Countries by Aertsen and Beuckelaer have also been studied in-depth for their symbolism––perhaps to the neglect

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of the straightforward rendering of the commodities on sale: fish, fruit, vegetables, meat, and fowl.7 The pretext for many of these scenes was usually a Bible story, so religious symbolism was not out of place and needs to be taken into account. The improbable presence of hothouse grapes in many a Dutch market was possibly due to their symbolic role—they represented both the fecundity of a married lady and the chastity of a modest young market woman, who is often painted holding a bunch of grapes in a ceremonial gesture. Shapes of fruit and vegetables suggesting lasciviousness could be linked to proverbs and offered up as moral instruction, as well as used in prurient images. Leaving aside the shape, we see that carrots came in various colors: yellow, deep red, and white. Agricultural historians have much to discover in such market scenes. The varieties of cabbage have been studied by plant historians in the Netherlands, who concluded that the diversity of edible plant species was greater then than in our world of agribusiness and international markets.8 We have discussed how images of fruit can be loaded with meaning. The apple was perceived as both good and bad: the fruit of the tree of knowledge and the cause of man’s downfall. Apples were a symbol of fruitfulness and an image of corruption, while the worm within revealed the insidious presence of moral turpitude and original sin. In a market scene by Joachim Wytevael, a crabbed old market woman offering an apple to a small girl is rebuked by the child’s mother for giving her a blemished fruit. There is plenty of scope here for moralizing over the three ages of woman, the corruption of innocence, and the choice between good and evil. Regardless of all this, the painting is an accurate representation of a typical fruit and vegetable stall. The sacrificial side of a butcher’s shop is present in various paintings. There are several versions of Aerstsen’s “Butcher’s Shop” in existence, and studies of the painting’s background reveal a complicated web of local politics, municipal corruption, real estate deals, and environmental issues. We do get a good look at the kinds of meat on sale, the different cuts, the varieties of sausage and offal available, and some interesting open tarts (custard? black pudding?) not affected by the complicated backstory. Annibale Carracci’s “Butcher’s Shop” might be similarly loaded, but it is also a good visual resource. His “Bean Eater,” however, is a more puzzling painting. A man with uncouth table manners and a coarse expression

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(possibly a self-portrait) is devouring a bowl of black-eyed peas and clutching a hunk of bread. His clothing, apart from the tattered straw hat, is not uncouth: he wears a fine clean shirt, and the table at which he sits has a clean white cloth. He drinks his wine from a majolica jug out of a nice glass, and the meal is decent basic fare. The pungency of the scallions mitigates the blandness of the beans, and a vegetable tart accompanies the meal. Can he be a peasant in town (for the open window seems to reveal an urban setting) to sell his wares, eating with perhaps some embarrassment at an inn? But why paint his portrait, and for whom? What would a client be doing with this on his wall? Many other works of art have details of glass and ceramics. Historians can link the evidence for technical developments in these fields with the potential for innovation in food presentation––and perhaps in recipes.9 The white glazed versions of majolica (tin-glazed earthenware), with a minimum of decoration––just a colored stripe round a rim––might have provided a plain light background to food. This would have made it possible at last to appreciate the brilliance of multicolored jellies, of purées and sauces, of plain roasts decked with blue borage flowers and green herbs, or of biancomangiare enlivened with fresh pomegranate seeds. The more expensive istoriata majolica was appropriate for cultured gatherings where the company could discuss the mythological scenes represented, thus combining erudition with gluttony. While Chigi showed off his gold and silver plate, others enjoyed this more modern ostentatiousness. Earlier, though, it is recorded that Isabella d’Este’s daughter made her demanding mother a present of a majolica service “suitable for use in the villa.” Majolica was seen as rustic gear in fifteenth-century Mantua, where the ornate credenza in the Gonzaga’s Palazzo Te indicates the family’s preference for an ostentatious display of gold and silver plate. Nevertheless, a supply of inexpensive containers probably revolutionized the scope of both banquets and everyday eating. Many of the dishes and bowls described in the Piccolpasso manuscript of 1557 (a detailed description of pottery-making) can be seen in paintings, from childbirth scenes to market stalls and kitchen interiors. Giovanna Garzoni’s studies of fruit and vegetables show them in chipped and cracked white bowls, well-used and unpretentious. The huge range of dishes in Scappi’s banquet menus was possible, now that a generous supply of receptacles was available at little cost.

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The examples cited in this chapter show how study of food in the arts can contribute to the history of gastronomy––neither as pretty illustrations (the icing on the dry cake of academic writing), nor as the froth on the cappuccino of dark textual studies, but as a discipline in its own right. It is also possible that food historians have a contribution to make in unraveling the meaning and purpose of some works of art. Today, as food history comes of age, the potential for mutual enlightenment is exhilarating.

CHAPTER TEN

World Developments fabio parasecoli

While Europe was entering the period of cultural and political transformations that eventually led to the explorations and the following formation of global empires, many areas of the Eurasian landmass were affected by the disintegration of the Mongol empire. On the one hand, in China—where the nomadic influence had been more limited in terms of duration and cultural penetration, and the sociocultural aspects of food production and consumption among the subjugated population had not been affected too deeply—the end of the Mongol domination marked the reaffirmation of traditional foodways, often with strong ideological and nationalistic tones. On the other hand, where the Mongol presence had been more intense and extended, like in India and Persia, the establishment of regional kingdoms controlled by rulers of nomadic descent initiated a long process of culinary hybridization in the upper strata of the local societies. Despite the demise of the Mongol Empire, which had temporarily made land trade in Eurasia safer, ingredients, dishes, and techniques kept traveling both inland and by sea. India and China, connected to the Muslim world and to the coast of East Africa through the extensive network of trade routes crisscrossing the Indian Ocean, could count on active diasporic communities dedicated to the commerce of spices and other luxury goods. Interestingly, in many

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South East Asia seaports, women engaged in this kind of trade often enjoyed high levels of autonomy.1

THE EASTERN MEDITERRANEAN Western Europe participated in these exchanges only marginally: mostly through the Mediterranean, where the spice commerce was controlled first by the Egyptian Mamluks and then by the Ottomans, who from their bases in today’s Turkey conquered Constantinople in 1453 and expanded toward the Balkans. The Ottomans, a population of Turkish descent from Central Asia, had penetrated the Byzantine Empire in the fourteenth century, developing a culinary culture that, while based on Islamic principles, borrowed elements from traditions ranging from Asia to Europe. The sultan’s cooks took advantage of products from a territory that by the end of the sixteenth century stretched from the borders of Persia to Hungary, and from Algeria to Yemen, where the Turks adopted coffee drinking.2 The kitchen in the sultan’s residence, which produced huge amounts of food daily, was divided in four sections: one for the sovereign, one for his closest relatives, one for his harem, and the rest for the other functionaries. There was also a kitchen dedicated exclusively to sweets and desserts. While at the beginning of the dynasty the sultan ate with his followers, from the end of the fifteenth century he became secluded and invisible. However, when he did not participate in public meals any longer, food was still provided to all the palace dwellers and visitors. The logistics of assuring food to the whole empire, a political priority and a source of legitimacy for the Ottomans, required requisitions and transportation of goods through state-controlled supply networks from the different provinces of the empire. Furthermore, officials were in charge of ensuring stocks (especially grains), of provisioning the city markets (in particular the capital Istanbul), of fixing and controlling the prices for most staples, and of fighting illegal food imports and exports. Pilgrims on their way to Mecca had their caravans protected and their supplies ensured once in the holy sites. Through religious endowments, imperial elites stimulated the establishment of soup kitchens to feed the poor (usually providing bread and soup with rice or bulgur), thus following the Islamic precept of charity (see volume 2, chapter 10). The first recorded soup kitchen was founded in

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1336, and by the mid-sixteenth century there were more than eighty in the empire, with twenty in Istanbul alone.3 The military always made sure that the troops—the first professional and permanent army in Europe—were well fed, especially during campaigns of expansion, although the regulations protecting the peasants and their harvest in the lands crossed by the army were very strict. The Janissaries, members of the most exclusive corps, named their officers using titles inspired by camp kitchens, such as “Soup Maker” and “Cook”; the corps itself was known as ocak (hearth) and the cauldron in which their food was cooked was considered as a symbol of solidarity and loyalty to the sultan. These customs probably echoed the cultural relevance of food sharing, fundamental for central Asian Turks and appearing in Sufi traditions and institutions, as the poems by the famous Mevlana Celaleddin Rumi testify.4 The Ottoman Empire, together with some states in the Italian peninsula, became the main destination for the Jews who began to leave Spain and then Portugal due to religious persecution at the end of the fourteenth century. Even when some of them converted, their distaste for pork meat, the use of olive oil, and the practice of long-cooking stews (such as adafina) to avoid food preparation on Sabbath were all used to accuse them of cryptoJudaism. Many preferred to escape to large cities like Aleppo, Jerusalem, Alexandria, Morocco, Istanbul, and especially Salonika, which for a period hosted the largest Jewish community in the Ottoman territory. Their cuisine, later known as Sephardic, became very diverse and rich in spice and flavors under the influence of the hosting culinary cultures.5 Following the expansion of the Ottomans into the Mediterranean, the networks of trade and spice commerce changed drastically. This was partly due to the internal political changes experienced by two of the major players involved, China and India, and partly as a consequence of the penetration of Western powers first in the Indian Ocean and later in the Atlantic, whose new trade routes expanded to eventually replace the Mediterranean ones in volume and relevance.

CHINA In 1368 the Ming, an ethnically Han dynasty, managed to push the Mongols out of China. Following the end of the foreign occupation, and aided by

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the wide diffusion of the agricultural innovations from the Tang and Song eras, the population of the Chinese empire experienced unprecedented growth. Despite the multiplication of small lots that resulted from the land redistribution following the Mongol demise, over time transformations in the political system and in the court led to the formation of a landed aristocracy that owned increasingly large estates and that provided the core of Chinese bureaucracy through the system of the imperial exams. Most culinary innovations and refinements originated in the residences of these landlords and officials, in the homes of rich merchants, and in the kitchens of the restaurants and inns that since the Song Dynasty had become common in large urban centers (see volume 2, chapter 10). The culinary style of the court was not particularly creative in comparison—although the sheer size of meals increased enormously, with a corresponding growth of staff and cooks, which could reach a few thousand.6 During the Ming Dynasty, rice became the most important grain. Wheat use became more common in the south, with flour mainly employed to make noodles. The proverb about the seven daily necessities (firewood, rice, oil, salt, soy sauce, vinegar, and tea), probably coined during the Song Dynasty, acquired its full meaning during the Ming. The foodstuffs that compose the present-day Chinese diet were already in place, if possible with even less use of meat and pulses.7 The diet of ordinary people was quite monotonous, and often disrupted by frequent famines whose effects the government tried to limit by managing grain storage and levying extraordinary taxes to finance emergency food relief operations.8 In this period, the use of dried whole leaves to make tea became popular, replacing the older custom of powdered tea (see volume 2, chapter 10). Aromatic elements like jasmine were mixed with the leaves, while great attention was paid to the production of tea-related vessels, especially in porcelain.9 The early Ming Dynasty established a strong Chinese presence along commercial routes, both on land and by facilitating the export of Chinese products (especially sugar) and ensuring the import of spices and other delicacies (like the bird’s nest from Southeast Asia). However, from the mid-fifteenth century onward, the government decided to focus on continental matters and to discontinue its foreign commerce by sea. Despite their interest in developing agricultural production, the late Ming showed a lack of interest, if not distrust, toward innovations. It has been suggested

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that this attitude was due to the overabundance of the rural population: it was often cheaper to use human labor than to invest in capital-intensive new technologies.10 The last decades of the Ming Dynasty were marked by growing corruption among the state officials, which, together with political repression and the reduction of trade flows, led to tax misappropriation, financial mismanagement, and eventually to the economic stagnation and peasant rebellions that led to the dynasty’s demise in 1638 at the hands of Tungus invaders, the Qing Dynasty.

JAPAN AND KOREA Japan adopted a method to preserve fish, probably first perfected in Southeast Asia. This consisted of packing salted fish with boiled rice in a sealed container and leaving it for months to undergo lactic fermentation, which imparts a sour taste to both the rice and the fish and is known as narezushi (matured sushi). Often the rice was discarded and only the fish eaten, as the still-extant funazushi of Lake Biwa seems to prove. From the fifteenth century, the Japanese took to eating this dish after a few days, when the rice grains were still intact, had become only slightly acidic, and could be eaten together with the fish.11 As Zen Buddhism developed, the vegetarian meal called shojin ryori became part of the hard training in monasteries. It was composed of a bowl of rice, a soup, and a couple of side dishes, often consisting of wild greens, seaweeds, soy, or nuts like walnuts and pine nuts. Nothing was discarded: the leftovers from vegetable preparations were used to make soup, or were mixed with rice to provide the evening meal. Tea became the core of rituals known as chadô or chanoyu, whose popularity spread also to nonreligious circles. Public tastings and games were organized where onlookers wagered on the capacity of the participants to recognize the tea varieties drunk in the contest, which was often followed by sake consumption.12 During the civil wars of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, tea drinking became an occasion to enjoy peace and tranquility. In the shogun court it turned into a very elaborate and complex ceremony called shoin, which was also used as a political tool to display power, wealth, and social order.13 Ikkuy (1394–1481) and his student Murata Shuko (1423– 1502) refined the ceremony, introducing the Zen elements of wabi (frugality,

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simplicity), sabi (rusticity, withered with age), and ichigo ichie (one life, one encounter: meaning that participants had to act like it was the only occasion to share the ritual in their whole life). The ceremony as we know it owes much to Sen Rikyu (1522–1591), who codified its unfolding in detail and acquired large influence among the nobles. For Rikyu, the ceremony needed to present four characteristics: wa (harmony), kei (respect), sei (cleanliness), and jaku (serenity). Rikyu introduced simplicity and aesthetic refinement. He was named “master of tea” under the shoguns Nobunaga and Hideyoshi, who then forced him to commit suicide since he had become too powerful. Rikyu is also credited for the refinement of the formal meal consumed in conjunction with the tea ceremony, called cha-kaiseki, which was derived from the shojin ryori with the addition of various courses. The new style, focusing on the sequence of small dishes and the wabi aesthetic, constituted a reaction against the excesses of upper-class formal dining in Japan.14 Japanese nobility became particularly enamored with Korean tea pottery, as Hideyoshi showed during his temporary invasion of the peninsula in 1597. The Japanese invasion coincided with the establishment of a new dynasty in Korea, called Choson, which lasted until the new Japanese invasion of 1910. The dynasty—which borrowed many administrative institutions from China, as well as Confucianism as the state ideology— focused on the diffusion of new farming techniques. The dynasty also published books to increase farmers’ productivity, which provided the bulk of taxes collected. Reservoirs were built and granaries established in order to ease the effects of droughts and famines.15

INDIA After the invasion by the Central Asian armies of the Turkish Mongol Timur at the end of the fourteenth century, India experienced a period of political fragmentation. At the beginning of the fifteenth century, the Muslim ruler of Kabul, Babur, occupied Northern India and founded the Mughal Empire. From a culinary point of view, this period marked the introduction of many elements from Central Asia and Persia into the subcontinent, such as pilau-style rice (cooked in a closed pot with fat, meat and vegetables); kabab meats, ground meats mixed with nuts or dried fruits; the use of asafetida and saffron; biryani (meat marinated in yogurt, fried, and

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then stewed with spices and rice); and sherbet, crushed fruit mixed with ice. According to the information in the Ain-i-Akbari, a book about the court of Babur’s successor Akbar written by a contemporary, the Mughals showed inclusiveness toward the foodways of the local subject.16 However, there was a deep cultural difference between the invaders’ love of hunting and their sensual appreciation for food, and the more ascetic approach to eating from the local upper classes, the Brahmins, who were averse to the use of meat (especially beef) due to religion and the current medical theories that considered nutrition fundamental for personal health. Babur, a Muslim, tried to avoid meat—perhaps out of respect for his mostly Hindu subjects. Curiously, the Mughal founder drank water from the Ganges, a custom adopted by his successors. The newcomers showed appreciation for wheat-based breads and fruit from Central Asia such as melons, peaches, apples, and grapes. In the courts, alcohol was prohibited; but nobles and even some of the emperors drank wine, imported from the north or from Persia, and toddy from the fermented sap of the palm tree. Muslims from lower classes maintained a taste for meat and wheat-based naan, although they also adopted the rice and pulse mix (khichri) that often constituted the nutritional cornerstone for many Hindus.17

AFRICA Due to environmental barriers and diseases carried by insects such as malaria, yellow fever, or trypanosomes, in Africa most commerce happened at the local or regional levels. Commerce focused on high-value items, thus limiting exchanges in terms of food and cuisine over the long distance. However, when different environments were close to each other, products were traded: for instance, cattle, groundnuts, and karité (shea butter) from the savannah was bartered for palm oil, palm wine, kola nuts, and yams from the forests.18 The period before the arrival of the Western explorers, for which we have valuable sources like the traveler Ibn Battuta or the historian Ibn Khaldun, saw the expansion of regional empires based on both agriculture and commerce: Songhay in West Africa, Kongo on the coast of Central Africa, Lunda and Luba in the interior of today’s Congo, and Mwenemutapa between the Zambesi and Limpopo rivers, where the

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Bantu populations practiced intensive terraced farming.19 In Ethiopia, the mobile camps of the Christian royal dynasty that claimed to descend from Solomon thrived on the surplus extracted from local agriculture and from long-distance trade, while granting land endowments to the monasteries that became centers of food production and distribution.20 On the East African coast, the commercial towns tightly integrated in the Indian Ocean maritime routes where the Swahili culture developed became areas of introduction for Asian crops such as citrus fruit, rice, coconuts, bananas, and sugarcane, the latter perhaps introduced by the Indonesians who had settled in Madagascar.21 The global relevance of these urban centers is proved by the presence of valuable items such as copper, silver coins, and porcelain from China, mostly for table use. The arrival of the Portuguese and of Western colonizers marked the introduction of another set of new crops, as part of what is now known as Columbian Exchange.

EUROPEAN EXPLORATIONS Around the mid-fifteenth century, with the beginning of the Portuguese explorations, the internal dynamics of agriculture and food consumption in most of the Old World changed drastically. Stimulated by the expulsion of the Moors from Spain and Portugal, and determined to break the monopoly held by the Egyptian Mamluks—and later by the Ottomans after their conquest of Egypt in 1517—over the trade of gold, slaves, and the precious spices that trickled into Europe through Venice and few other ports, Lisbon embarked on a program of exploration. The colonization of Madeira, the Canaries, and the Azores islands became steppingstones for the introduction of Old World crops such as sugar and bananas into the Atlantic basin. After establishing trading bases on the Western coast of Africa, and passing the Cape of Good Hope, the Portuguese imposed their presence along the Indian Ocean trade routes. Due to their lack of manpower, they opted for the occupation of crucial ports, such as Malacca in today’s Malaysia and Hormuz in the Persian Gulf. They imposed the cartaz, a sort of pass, over all ships trading in the area, acquiring control over much of the spice flow from South and Southeast Asia. Furthermore, the Portuguese established bases in Macao to trade directly with China, and in Nagasaki, opening the first commercial gate to Japan.

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Many Portuguese merchants and artisans who arrived on the coast of Malabar in 1498 and later in the city of Goa married local women and created a hybrid cooking style. Over time, this provided the foundation for Goan cuisines. These cuisines included rice, coconut milk, tamarind (originally from the coasts of East Africa), dough raised using the fermented sap of the palm trees, marzipan, egg-based desserts that employed jaggery (sugar extracted from palm tree sap), and vindaloo. The dish, whose name comes from the Portuguese carne de vinho e alho (meat marinated and cooked in vinegar) saw the addition in India of chili, black pepper, tamarind, and palm tree vinegar instead of wine vinegar. Despite many Goans’ conversion to Catholicism under the pressure of the Inquisition, the cuisine maintained Hinduist elements, particularly when it came to issues of purity and cleanliness. However, the use of meat, especially pork, remained prevalent in the area.22

THE COLUMBIAN EXCHANGE While the Portuguese circumnavigated Africa and penetrated the Indian Ocean, the Spaniards crossed the Atlantic looking for alternative spice routes. At the end of the fifteenth century, the arrival of Western European explorers in the Americas marked the beginning one of the largest movements of people, plants, and animals in human history, commonly known as the Columbian Exchange.23 The effect of this epochal series of events was amplified by the establishment of European colonies not only in the Americas, but also in Africa and Asia.24 The arrival of explorers and settlers from the Old World in the Western Hemisphere also marked the appearance of previously unknown diseases, such as measles, typhus, and smallpox, which wiped out a large percentage of the natives.25 Food easily traveled from one corner of the world to the other, while plants and animals were adopted in places very far from their original environments thanks to the improvement of naval and seafaring technologies. Corn is probably one of the best examples of these new global crops: already in the sixteenth century it was widely adopted in Western and Eastern Europe, in Africa, and in other parts of the Old World. On the other hand, plants from Eurasia like radishes, cabbages, citrus fruit, banana, and sugar cane thrived in the Caribbean.

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Sweet potato, potatoes, beans, tomato, chili peppers, maize, peanuts, and pineapple were introduced to the Indian Ocean by the Portuguese, and entered China via Macao and Manila, where the Spaniards had brought them from Mexico. Adaptive to marginal lands, assuring high yields, and often introduced into new areas by local officials, sweet potatoes, maize, and beans allowed the survival of the poor peasantry and fuelled the population growth in China, where smallholdings became more common following the peasant rebellions at the end of the Mongol domination. In Japan, the Portuguese not only introduced New World crops, but also had an influence on some dishes. These included tempura (whose name may derive either from the Latin tempora, referring to the periods where meat was not allowed, or from the Portuguese temperar, which means seasoning); konpeito, small sugar balls, from the Portuguese confeito; karumera, soft candy, from calamela; and kasutera, a sort of sponge cake since found in Nagasaki, from Pao de Castela (Castile bread). Some southern feudal lords, under the cultural influence of the newcomers, even started consuming meat. In West Africa, probably through the same short-distance commerce that allowed the movement of coastal goods like sea salt and fish into the interior, crops from the Americas such as corn, peppers, and beans penetrated the continent. This had happened in the past on the East African Coast with bananas and other crops from Asia. Communities of African traders played a major role in these dynamics by acting as intermediaries between the interior populations and the European representatives on the coasts.26 It is likely that the American crops were first grown in the European trading posts and slave stations along the shore to feed the prisoners during the long periods between their capture and the actual Middle Passage, and later during the crossing of the Atlantic Ocean. The African slaves, once settled in the New World, often continued growing the same set of crops that ensured their sustenance in Africa, like okra, black eyed peas, rice, and corn, which had acclimated so fast that it was often perceived as truly African.27

THE SPANISH COLONIZATION In the initial Caribbean settlements, the Spaniards could not acknowledge the existence of efficient local agriculture. The system known as conuco

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on the islands and as milpa on the mainland, a mound of dirt planted with maize, beans, squash, cassava, and other crops creating a microenvironment able to thrive in the tropical climate, was considered merely a demonstration of the natives’ inability to practice rational agriculture. Yet, the Spaniards were not able to introduce their traditional crops like wheat, olive trees, and grapevines. Over time, the Spaniards managed to grow sugarcane and bananas, which were already prospering in their Atlantic possessions like the Canary Islands. They introduced poultry, goats, and pigs, which were brought from Europe to counteract the local lack of domesticated animals and ensure the provisioning of meat. The new species acclimated rapidly. When the Spaniards moved their attention to the mainland and all but abandoned the islands, the animals multiplied for lack of human predators, sometimes going back to a semi-feral state.28 In many areas besides the all-important ports of La Havana in Cuba and San Juan in Puerto Rico, the few remaining colonists intermarried with surviving natives and escaped slaves, creating communities that in time turned to piracy. Some consider these communities the originators of the first truly hybrid Caribbean cuisines, with important contributions such as barbecue.29 The Spaniards’ impact on the mainland was quite different, due to the presence of stronger polities. In Mexico, the Aztec state was still flourishing. The city of Tenochtitlan boasted large markets, with floating gardens, a thriving commercial network that allowed the exchange of crops from all over the empire, and a food culture deeply integrated in the religious and social life.30 Squash, beans, nopal cactus, algae from the lake, and the chili that flavored all condiments were all part of a solid culinary tradition that had its staple in corn, cooked in many ways but above all ground into masa dough and made into tortillas and tamales. Chocolate, on the other hand, was the stuff of formal occasions and religious ceremony, available almost exclusively to the upper classes.31 The arrival of Fernando Cortés in 1521 marked the destruction of the local culture in urban environments, although it partly survived in the countryside. In the Andes, the Inca Empire was already in a state of disarray due to internal strife. The local culture was mostly vegetarian: based on some of the same products that were common in Mexico (beans, squash, chiles), but also on crops that had been domesticated locally, such as quinoa, potatoes, and tubers like oca and ullucu. Locals also chewed coca as a stimulant

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and hunger suppressor. It seems that Andean women had played a greater role in agriculture compared to Mexico.32 The Spanish occupation was organized at first in encomiendas, which gave the conquerors control over a certain amount of population, in terms of labor and production. Faced with the demographic consequences of the new diseases, the newcomers started importing slaves. Over time, the cuisine that originated in the encounter between Europeans and natives adopted ingredients and techniques from the local cultures, but also features of the Spanish foodways, adapted to the new condition. Eventually, wheat thrived in northern Mexico, while olive trees and vineyards did better in Peru and California.33

NORTH AMERICA North America—admired by the first seventeenth-century European settlers for its abundance of vast forests and herds of wild animals like elk, caribou, deer, moose, mountain sheep, and bison—was probably far from being a pristine environment. It seems unlikely that native agricultural cultures would have appreciated flocks of birds and all sorts of hoofed animals destroying their crops, which were used as barter for meat and furs from the woodland hunters.34 The massive number of wild animals that awed the newcomers can be explained by the fact that the sedentary cultures of the Great Plains were in a phase of decline. Further north, migratory populations such as the Algonkian-speaking people, the semi-sedentary Iroquois confederation of northern New York State, and the Huron of Ontario, had adopted crops like maize, beans, and squash; gathered wood nuts and berries; and often obtained furs (especially beaver) and fish from their northern neighbors in exchange for agricultural products.35 On the coasts, fish and seafood proliferated. Tribes lived off salmon, sturgeon, and trout from the rivers; gathered clams and oysters; fished flounder and striped bass in the tidewaters; caught cod by line and hook; and harpooned seals and even whales in deeper waters.

notes

Introduction 1. “neque ulla ratio est cur gulae maiorum nostris praeferantur, et si enim ab illis in omnibus fere artibus serperamur, una tamen gula non vincimur; nullum enim propre in orbe terrarum irratamentum gulae est, quod non huc tanquam ad gymnasium popinarum sit translatum, ubi acerrime de conditura obsoniorum omnium disseritur” (Platina 1470, 292). 2. Grewe 1991. 3. Ibid., 59. 4. Crescentiis 2010. 5. Thorndike 1934. 6. Ibid., 183–90. 7. Viandier 1988, 282. 8. Greco 2009, 253–56. 9. Heiatt 1996, 102. 10. Frati 1986, 3. 11. Faccioli 1966, 1:21–57. 12. Mulon 1971. 13. Rupert of Nola 1988. 14. Martino 2005, 9. 15. Chiquart 1986. 16. Keukenboek 1872. 17. Ibid. 18. Austin 2000. 19. Ibid., 9. 20. Liber Cure Cocorum 1862, 25.

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21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63.

NOTES

Laurioux 2005. de la Marche 1883. Daz Buoch 2000, 96. Platina 1998. Martino 2005. Ibid., 70. Boke of Cokery 1500. Ibid, viiiv. Elias 1978. Erasmus 1537. Livre fort excellent 1555. See also Livres en bouche 2001. Mennell 1985, 71. Livre fort 1555, xv, xvii. Ibid., xi. Messisbugo 1549. Ibid., 42f. Proper Newe Booke of Cokerye 1995. Livre fort excellent 1555, lvii. Messisbugo 1549, 79v. Ibid., 56. Proper Newe 1995, 68. Iodoco Willich 1563. Ibid., 23. Ibid., 108. Ibid., 131. Herrera 2006, 70. Alamanni 1804. Tusser 1812, 36. Etienne 1616, 36. Bruyerin-Champier 1560. Ibid., 32. Ibid., 55. Ibid., 72–73. Ibid., 85–89. Ibid., 103. Romoli 1560. Scappi 1570. Ibid., 198. Granado 1971. Lancelot de Casteau 1983. Good Huswifes Handmaide for the Kitchin 1992. The Good Hous-wives Treasurie 1588, n.p. 11th fol. Dawson 1996.

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64. Welserin 1980. 65. Weckerin 1598.

Chapter 1 1. Any attempt to cover such a vast subject in a short chapter will inevitably lead to generalizations that cannot fully cope with the richness and variety of models that coexisted in this part of the world. The following pages are only an attempt to isolate some of the more important aspects of a complex and varied reality. 2. Food regimes for high-latitude populations, while studied since the early nineteenth century when polar exploration required more complete knowledge, remain very little studied from an historical point of view. Paucity of sources is only a part of the reason. Some interesting groundwork has been done by both historians and archaeologists. For an early and somewhat problematic account of this diet, see Proceedings from the 6th Nordic Conference on the Application of Scientific Methods in Archaeology, Esbjerg 1996. 3. Even the monumental Cambridge World History of Food (Kiple and Ornelas 2000) does not dedicate any space to this topic. An exception is a chapter in Kategorii i simvolika traditsionnoi kul’tury mongolov (Zhukovskaia 1988). 4. Duby 1973. 5. This is the expression used by Montanari, Alimentazione e cultura nel Medioevo, chapter 2, “Barbari e Romani,” 1988, 13. This idea is picked up again but developed in a somewhat different way in ibid. La fame e l’abbondanza, 1993, 12–19. The following account of this opposition is, essentially, a digest of these two chapters which have left their mark on many food historians over the last two decades. 6. Montanari 1988, 14. 7. Certainly the best contribution on this topic remains the seminal article by Flandrin 1983, 369–401. 8. MacKinnon 2001, 649–73, effectively shows the importance of this animal in Roman Italy. 9. On the late medieval revival of intensive pig raising, see Ervynck 2007, 171–93. 10. The history of fruit growing is a little-developed field, but for a good account of Roman times see André 1981, 74–91. 11. On the late medieval and Renaissance revival of fruit and fruit growing in Europe, see Grieco 1993, 145–53. 12. Mane 1983, 204–5. 13. On the French interest in fruit growing among both the court and the middle classes, see Quellier 2003. 14. Flandrin 1983. 15. For a more detailed overview of olive oil production in this period see Grieco 1993, 297–306.

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16. Mane 1983. The cycles she chose to examine are early ones, considering the period being examined. The popularity of these cycles continues well into the sixteenth century, thanks to increasingly luxurious calendars in manuscript form that repeated the representations developed much earlier in the history of this genre. 17. Mane 1983, 155. 18. Piccolomini 1937, 19. 19. Dyer 1988, 21–37. 20. By the early fifteenth century, England, quite unlike the southern European areas of the continent, enjoyed an increased amount of meat consumption. Even the harvest workers had 23 percent of their calories come to them in the form of meat. Dyer 1988, 26. 21. Dyer 1988 table 1, 25; table 2, 26. 22. Two examples come to mind. Wine shipped down the Rhine valley to Holland, and then in decreasing amounts as far as the Baltic, can be seen in the German wine market of the late Middle Ages analyzed by Sprandel 1998. The second example is the large-scale Anglo-Gascon wine trade of the early fourteenth century, which ensured cheap and plentiful wine supplies in England until the outbreak of the Hundred Years’ War in 1337. For a study of this trade see James 1951, 170– 96, or her book on the same subject, Studies in the Medieval Wine Trade 1971. 23. For a useful survey of wine consumption in various Italian cities see Pini 1974, 135 note 316. Much the same importance has been observed in the South of France by Stouff 1970, 223–24. 24. For a useful overview see Unger 2005, chapter 7. 25. For these statistics see Unger 2005, table 4, 128. 26. Ibid., 108–9. 27. An opposition that even then seems to have been more discourse than reality. On this see Auberger 2009, 15–37. 28. I would like to thank Phil Withington for drawing my attention to Wine, Beere and Ale, Together by the Eares 1629. 29. In Bologna, for example, in the early fifteenth century, sheep and goats represented close to 60 percent of all the animals sold; beef about 25 percent, and pork only 15 percent. For these figures see Nepoti 1988, Appendix 1, 292–93. 30. The importance of this meat in continental Europe has been shown by Blanchard 1986, 427–60. 31. Banegas López 2010. 32. Wandlungen 1938, 417. 33. van Bath 1962, 84. 34. This was probably due to the demographic development after the black plague. See Stouff 1970, 191–92, and Benassar and Goy 1975, 418; 422–24 and table III. 35. Dyer 1993, 154. 36. Aymard 1975, 594. 37. Stouff 1970, 190. 38. Benassar 1961, 733.

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39. Fiumi 1966 and Fiumi 1953, 221–22. 40. For a complete discussion of this figure, see Nigro 1983, 55–60. 41. For a recent contribution on the difficulty of making generalizations using only a geographical parameter, see the excellent article by Banegas López 2010. 42. Ibid., 77–79. 43. See the conclusion of Blanchard 1986, 455. 44. Dyer 2000, 130. 45. Unpublished data calculated by the author using data from the accounts of the Mensa della Signoria archives in Florence. 46. See Rucquoi 1984, 300–303. 47. The percentages mentioned below are recalculated using the data in Garcia Marsilla 1997, 834. 48. For the data used to calculate these percentages see Nigro 1983, 167–81.

Chapter 2 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26.

Lane 1996, 111–13. Ashtor 1978, 272. Krondl 2007, 81. Galloway 1989, 51. Braudel 1972, 168. Braudel 1972, 43. van der Woude 1990, 141. Lane 1934, 38. Jacoby 1999, 49–59. Unwin 1991, 184. Mak 2000, 30. Toussaint-Samat 1993, 113. See the Trˇebonˇsko local government website http://www.trebonsko.com/ historie-rybnikarstvi. See Kurlansky 1997, ch. 1, for his speculations. Toussaint-Samat 1993, 318. Chisholm 1910, 16:428. Wiesner 1986, ch. 4. Braudel 1972, 43. Krondl 2007, 192. Wheaton 1983, 72. Toussaint-Samat 1993, 544. De Vries 1984, 75. Wiesner 1986, 221. Vilar 1976, 48. Quoted in Camporesi 1993, 96. “English Prices and Wages, 1209–1914” n.d.

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NOTES

27. I’m assuming 2 pounds of whole wheat bread has about 2,650 calories. 28. For an attempt to quantify prices and wages in the fourteenth century see Mueller 1997, 648. 29. “Praha je už levneˇjší než Bratislava,” 2009 Hospodárˇské noviny, 24. 8., http:// hn.ihned.cz/c1–38130930-praha-je-uz-levnejsi-nez-bratislava, quoting a 2009 study by the Swiss bank UBS. 30. The prices and wages are averages from the first decade of the sixteenth century. See “Prices in Augsburg, 1500–1800,” Global Price and Income History Group, http://gpih.ucdavis.edu/Datafilelist.htm#Central. A pound of flour yields about one and a half pounds of bread. For rye-to-rye flour conversion see USDA, “Conversion Factors and Weights and Measures for Agricultural Commodities and Their Products,” http://www.ers.usda.gov/publications/sb965/sb965h.pdf. 31. Based on USDA allowances, I figure the family would need about 13,000 calories, which would be provided by about 9 pounds of rye. 32. See Grieco 2008, 303. 33. For extensive spread sheets on European incomes see links in Robert Allen, http://www.economics.ox.ac.uk/Members/robert.allen/WagesPrices.htm. 34. Cipolla 1976, 66. 35. Luzzatto 1959. 36. Cipolla 1976, 27. 37. See “Vienna prices 1439–1800,” Global Price and Income History Group, http://gpih.ucdavis.edu/Datafilelist.htm#Central. 38. See “Augsburg 1500–1800,” op cit. and “The prices of the most important consumer goods, and indices of wages and the cost of living in the western part of the Netherlands, 1450–1800,” International Institute of Social History, http://iisg.nl/hpw/data.php#netherlands. 39. See “Spain 1351–1800” and “Wroclaw 1507–1618,” Global Price and Income History Group, http://gpih.ucdavis.edu/Datafilelist.htm#Central.

Chapter 3 The author wishes to thank his colleague and friend, Tim Newfield, of McGill University, for several important references. All errors remain the author’s. 1. Jordan 1996, 128–34; Campbell et al. 1993, 8–12. 2. Lucas 1930; Kershaw 1973a; Jordan 1996. 3. Campbell 2007, 2009a. 4. Larénaudie 1952. 5. Caferro, 1998, 27. 6. Puigferrat i Oliva 2000, 79; Franklin-Lyons 2009. 7. Newfield 2005, 2009. 8. Slavin 2010a. 9. Benedictow 2004.

NOTES

10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52.

Campbell and Bartley 2006, 70–1. Campbell 2000, 61–62. Duby 1968, 266–67. Rawcliffe 1999, 70–72. Slavin 2008, 203–334. Duby 1968, 266–67. Lomas 1978, 339–42. Campbell 2000, 233–34. Slavin 2008, 229–47. Harvey 1969; Lomas 1978; Mate 1983. Kitsikopoulos 2000, 238–44. Dodds 2008. Dyer 1989, 134. Harvey 1993, 69–70; Slavin 2008, 328–33. Stouff 1970, 46. Campbell 2009a. Campbell 2007. Jordan 1996, 25–26. Tscharner-Aue 1983, 124–25; Demade 2007, 222–23. Richard 1892. Appleby 1978, 112–13; Campbell 2009b. Franklin-Lyons 2009, 60–63. Munro 2006. Kershaw 1973a, 9. Jordan 1996, 171–72. Newfield 2005; Newfield 2009; Slavin 2010a. Maxwell 1913, 228. Titow 1962, Appendix A. Hampshire Record Office, 11M59/B1/65–74. Slavin 2010a. Norfolk Record Office, DCN 60/23/14–22. Munro 2009. Campbell 2007. Appleby 1978, 95–108. Vassberg 1984, 227. Willard 1913, 517–21; Maddicott 1975, 1–12; Prestwich 2005, 165–87. Mate 1983. Maddicott 1975. Mate 1983. Calculated from Kershaw and Smith 2000, 285–456. Krug 2006, 78, 105–7. Galbraith 1928, 210. Watt et al. 1990, 11.

201

202

NOTES

53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66. 67. 68. 69. 70. 71. 72. 73. 74. 75. 76. 77. 78. 79. 80. 81. 82. 83. 84. 85. 86.

Prestwich 1967. Raine 1839, 102. Dodds 2007, 56–58. Kershaw and Smith 2000, 470–72. Dodds 2007, 55–70. Bois 1984, 316–45. Franklin-Lyons 2009, 136. Laurénaudie 1952, 28–29. Caferro 1998, 27. Hog 1846, 3. Pernoud et al. 1998, 228–30. Bain 1887, 113. Grundman, 1970, 225–27. Ó Gráda, 2009, 199. Glenisson 1951, 314. Franklin-Lyons 2009, 136. McCloskey and Nash 1984. Puigferrat i Oliva 2000. Lucas 1930, 355–56. Hog 1846, 3. Dunning 2001, 97. Maxwell 1913, 228. For instance, The National Archives, SC 6/918/15. Sabine 1933, 337–39. Jordan 1996, 114–15; Marvin 1998. Jordan 1996, 114–15. Slavin 2008, 346–47. Franklin-Lyons 2009, 143. Dunning 2001, 97–98. Puigferrat i Oliva 2000, 79. Jordan 1996, 100. Rawcliffe 1999, 164, 185. Hanawalt 1993, 35. Thus, Norwich Cathedral Priory in 1315–1316. Norfolk Record Office, DCN 1/1/25. Slavin 2008, 338–51. Franklin-Lyons 2009, 126–27. Kershaw 1973a, 31. Calculated from Kershaw and Smith 2000, 300–552. Kershaw 1973b, 106–7. Calculated from Kershaw and Smith 2000, 285–456. Kershaw and Smith 2000, 431. Slavin 2008, 220–47.

87. 88. 89. 90. 91. 92. 93. 94.

NOTES

203

95. Sen 1981. 96. Slavin 2010b. 97. Jordan 1996, 188.

Chapter 4 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36.

Bullard 1982, 280. Epstein 2000, 109–10. Calabi 2004, 56–57, 190, 192; Braudel 1972, 1:329; Quellier 2003, 348. Brucker 1999, 374; Braudel 1972, 1:329–30; Quaglia 1980, 450. Quaglia 1980, 450–52. Epstein 2000, 112–13; Quaglia 1980, 450–53. Bullard 1982, 280; Partner 1976, 84–85. Partner 1976, 85. Laven 1971, 19–20. Guerzoni 2007, 85. Braudel 1972, 1:329–30. Usher 1913, 126–80. Miskimin 1975, 78–80. Cohen and Cohen 2001, 46. Calabi 2004, 193–94. Tilly 1971, 35. Murphey 1988, 221–34, 246; Bulut 2001, 47. Braudel 1972, 1:329. Epstein 2000, 106; Laven 1971, 147. Muto 1990, 212. Bulut 2001, 47. Hale 1985, 159; Parker 1996, 77. Parker 1996, 75–77; Davies 1964, 234; Tallett 1992, 56. Hale 1985, 156, 159; Tallett 1992, 63–64, 80. Parker 1996, 76; Murphey 1988, 240. Hale 1985, 156, 159; Tallett 1992, 56–64, 80, 113–22. Mollat 1986, 290, 295. Davis 1975, 38–39; Mollat 1986, 274–77, 280–81. Mollat 1986, 272; Soly 1997, 90. Soly 1997, 87; Knecht 2001, 28–29. Pullan 1988, 178. Kamen 2000, 179–80. Muto 1990, 232; Mollat 1986, 272, 290, 295; Pullan 1988, 194. Davis 1975, 29, 39, 48, 54. Soly 1997, 90–92. Muto 1990, 205–7, 215.

204

37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66. 67. 68.

NOTES

Jütte 2004, 100. Pullan 1988, 182, 201. Lindenmann 2007, 439–40; Terpstra 2005, 43; Braudel 1972, 1:328–29. Dean 2000, 172–74. Knecht 2001, 134–35, 448; Davis 1975, 24. Soly 1997, 87; Davis 1975, 28. Chambers and Pullan 1992, 108–15. MacKay 1979, 58–59. Jeanneret 1991, 49–50; Albala 2007b, 4–6. Jeanneret 1991, 50–51. McGowan 2004, 123. Aliverti 2004, 232. Albala 2007b, 5. Oberling and Smith 2001, 78–79, 103–4. Ibid., 101–3. Ferring 1959, 312–33, 154. Bertelè 1935, 5–29, 33–35, 59, 70–73. Hughes 1983, 71–74; Killerby 2002, 24–25. Killerby 2002, 41–42. Ibid., 66–67, 95. Mennell 1985, 30; Killerby 2002, 67. Greenfield 1918, 67, 79, 150. Killerby 2002, 102, 107–9. Malkiel 2001, 134–35. Göçek 1996, 39; Hamadeh 2007, 300–301. Holt 2006, 30–36. Hamadeh 2007, 300–301. Chambers and Pullan 1992, 106–7. Camporesi 1993, 84. Battershall 1887, 2–3. Mennell 1985, 30; Killerby 2002, 99–100. Robisheaux 1994, 93.

Chapter 5 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.

Woolgar 1999, 24. Menagier de Paris 2009, 253–70. Huizinga 1954, 56–177. de la Marche 1883, 20–53. Flandrin and Lambert 1998, 32, 114–15. Jeanneret 1991, 51–54. Boke of Kervynge 1868, 265–86.

NOTES

8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36.

205

Jeanneret 1991, 59–61. Henisch 2009, 155. Albala 2007, xi–xii. Wilson 1991b, 9–35. Cartellieri 1929, 151–52. Huizinga 1954, 92. La Marche 1888, 95–157. Cartellieri 1929, 135–63; Nicholas 1994, 271–95. Attreed, 1994, 208–31. Huizinga 1954, 50. Lydgate 1934, 623–24. I am grateful to Professor Lisa H. Cooper of the University of Wisconsin for this reference. Albala 2007b, 8–12, 19, 60–61. Albala 2007b, 13. Huizinga 1954. See http://opera.stanford.edu/Purcell/KingArthur/libretto.html. Huizinga 1954, 130–31. Huizinga 1954, 128–37. Jeanneret 1991, 22–27. Colonna 1999, 94–116. Shore 2007, 303. Deschamps 1891, 88–90. Webb 2001, 93. Jusserand 1929, 130. Jusserand 1929, 126–29. Henisch 2009, 71–89. Braudel 1972, 1:240. Raupp 1986. Vandenbroeck 1984, 79–124. Fita 1886, 107–10.

Chapter 6 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9.

Garzoni 1675, 505–10. di Schino 2007. Epstein 1995. Chaucer 1988, 29. Ibid., 378 Boccaccio 1982, 299. Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet IV, ii. Shakespeare, Henry IV part II, VI, i. Shakespeare, Taming of the Shrew IV, i.

206

NOTES

10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18.

Henisch 2009. Cogan 1589, 150. Weber 1998. Cervio 1593. Arjona 1960, 209–13. Faccioli 1966, 316–41. Alberti 1969. Scappi 1570. Rumpolt 1581; Weckerin 1597; for Hans Burgkmair’s woodcut see http:// cooksoracle.com/Index.html. 19. Cellini 2010.

Chapter 7 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19.

20. 21. 22.

23. 24.

Sarti 2002, ch. 4. Thirsk 2006, 43–44. Ibid., 10, 26. Freedman 2008, chs. 4–5. Henisch 2009, 102–8. Ibid., 32. Jardine 1996. Guerzoni 2006, 149. Ajmar-Wollheim 2006, 152–63. Elias 1978. Goldthwaite 1989, 1–32. Syson and Thornton 2001, 223–27. Morrall 2002, 263–73. Ajmar 2003, 55–64. McCray 1999. Goldstein 2006, 116–64. Grieco 2006, 247, 251. Montanari 1991, 81–85. See, for example, Giacomo Castelvetro, an Italian writer who published The fruit, herbs & vegetables of Italy (1614) about vegetables when he was in England at the end of his life. The book had a strong influence on English interest in eating vegetables. On the history of the credenza in courtly settings, see Taylor 2005, 621–33. On the credenziero, see Terence Scully 2008, 663–68. See, for example, the Venetian sumptuary law of 1562 regulating the kinds of sweets that can be served at a colazione, cited in Montanari 1991, 107. On collations, known as banquets in England, see Girouard 1978, 104–6. Bandello quoted in Montanari 1991, 67–72. Roper 1991.

NOTES

207

25. Morrall 2002, 263. 26. Castiglione 2002. 27. Guazzo 1993, book IV.

Chapter 8 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37.

Burton 1602, Q1r. Spenser 2001, 2.9.28.1–9. Galen and Culpepper 1653, F2v–F3r. Galen and Culpepper 1653, F3v. Ibid., F4v–F5r. Ibid., F5v. Spenser 2001, 1.4.20.5–8. Ibid., 1.4.21.2–9. Elyot 1595, M1r. Spenser 2001, 1.4.24.5–6. Delany 1909. Epistle to the Romans 16:18. Proverbs 23:20–1. Ecclesiastes 10:17. Church of England 1563, Oo5v. Ibid., Oo6v. Ibid., Oo7v. Bullein 1595, B1r–B1v. Boorde 1547, C3r. Wingfield 1551, A6r. Church of England 1563, Nn1v. Ibid., Mm6v. Ibid., Oo2v–Oo3r. Genesis 9:3. Moffett 1655, E4r. Vaughan 1612, E4v. Cogan 1589, N2r. Ibid., N2v. Ibid., I4r. Critchley 2008, 155. Albala 2007b, 73–89. Jonson 1960, 1.5.111–17. Fudge 2004, 75. Albala 2003, 27. Elyot 1595, F3r. Bullein 1595, H6r; Cogan 1589, D4r. Boorde 1547, G4v.

208

38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66. 67. 68. 69. 70. 71. 72. 73. 74. 75. 76. 77. 78. 79. 80.

NOTES

Albala 2007a, 58. Jonson 1968, 1.2.33; 1.2.39. Jonson 1995, 442n40. Breitenberg 1996, 50–51. See Starks 2004, 245. Bullein 1595, L6r. Barrough 1583, X6r. Butts 1599, E2v. Elyot 1595, E2v, Cogan 1589, N1v. Gerard and Johnson 1633, L3r. Elyot 1595, O4r. Bullein 1595, E3r. Cogan 1589, S1r. Bright 1586, B6v. Burton 1621, F4r–F4v. Moffett 1655, U1v. Bullein 1595, K5v. Mark 6:35–42 Benedict 1952, 91, ch. 36. Moffett 1655, H3r. Jeninges 1590, D3r. Ibid., D3v. Church of England 1563, Nn4r. Forsyth 1999a, 14. Forsyth 1999a, 17; Forsyth 1999b, 28. Forsyth 1999a, 17–18. Clark 1978, 48. Stubbes 1583, I3v–I4r. Clark 1978, 48. McBride 2004, 187–88. Boorde 1547, G1v. Cogan 1589, Y2v. Chaucer 1988, 84, lines 4346–48. Titus Andronicus 5.2.203–4. Timon of Athens 3.5.14. Romeo and Juliet 4.2.6–8. The Taming of the Shrew 4.1.40. Ibid., 4.1.148. Henry IV Part II 2.4.43–44. Titus Andronicus 3.1.177–178. Rowe 1994, 290n22. Titus Andronicus 3.1.201–2. Ibid., 3.1.281.

NOTES

81. 82. 83. 84. 85. 86. 87. 88. 89. 90. 91. 92. 93. 94. 95. 96. 97. 98. 99. 100. 101.

102. 103. 104. 105. 106. 107. 108. 109. 110. 111.

209

Shakespeare 1768–83. Shakespeare 1594, F2r. Shakespeare 1623, dd3v. Noble 2003, 677. Wall 2002, 197. The Merry Wives of Windsor 3.5.16–17 Schoenfeldt 1999, 99. Thomas 1971, 53. Aston 1988, 7–8. Jauregui 2009, 73. Bacon 1639, R7v. Ibid., R8v. Titus Andronicus 5.3.124–26. Ibid., 5.3.192–93. Ibid., 5.3.195–99. Ibid., 5.3.178–82. Fitzpatrick 2002, 140. Titus Andronicus 5.3.69–71. Jonson 1960, 2.2.90–106. Jonson 1969, 410, lines 25–26. Jonson 1988, 4.2.19–21. This description of the sweating cook recalls Lickfinger who also describes himself as sweating after running to reach his master’s house: “You might haue followed me like a watering pot / And seen the knots I made along the street” (2.3.15–16). Jonson 1960, 2.2.49–53. Jonson 1960, 2.2.42–45. Jonson 1960, 2.3.52–55. Paster 1993, 39–41. Paster 1993, 50. This is an important difference between Ursula and the sweating Lick-finger (above), since Lick-finger does not apparently sweat into the food he prepares. Jonson 1960, 2.5.150–3. Jonson 1969, Neptune’s Triumph for the Return of Albion line 218. Ibid., line 224. Ibid., lines 349–35.0

Chapter 9 1. 2. 3. 4.

Arano et al. 1992. Martino 2005. Tolkowsky 1938. Scappi 1570.

210

5. 6. 7. 8. 9.

NOTES

Janick and Paris 2006. Roland 2005. Sullivan 1989. Hammer-Tugendhat 2000. Varriano 2009.

Chapter 10 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35.

Pomeranz and Topik 1999, 5, 28–31. Kömeçog˘ lu 2005. Singer 2002. Goodwin 1998, 65–70. Roden 1998, 41–50, 211–20. Chang 1977. Anderson 1988, 100 Bray and Needham 1984, 415–22. Martin 2007, 97–105. Bray 1986. Ishige 2001. Ludwig 1981. Martin 2007, 71. Cwiertka 2006, 108–14. Pettid 2008, 15–17. Collingham 2006, 13–46. Achaya 1994. Curtin 1984, 15–34. Wilson 1975; Ki-Zerbo and Niane 1997. Ki-Zerbo and Niane 1997, 169–80. Connah 1987, 209–10. Achaya 1994; Collingham 2006, 47–80. Crosby 1972. Chaudhuti 1985; Pomeranz and Topik 1999. Diamond 1997. Curtin 1984, 15–59. Mintz 1996; Carney 2001; Yentsch 2008. Pilcher 2006, 21. Le Bris 2002. Pilcher 1998, 7–24. Coe 2007. Bauer 2001, 27–33. Pilcher 2006, 21–3. Krech 1999. Curtin 1984, 207–29.

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contributors

Ken Albala is professor of history at the University of the Pacific in Stockton,

California, where he teaches food history, food policy, and courses on Early Modern Europe. He is the author of many books including Eating Right in the Renaissance, Food in Early Modern Europe, Cooking in Europe 1250–1650, The Banquet: Dining in the Great Courts of Late Renaissance Europe, Beans: A History (winner of the 2008 International Association of Culinary Professionals Jane Grigson Award), and Pancake. Albala was also editor of three food series for Greenwood Press with twenty-nine volumes in print and has recently completed a four-volume Food Cultures of the World Encyclopedia. Albala is also coeditor of the journal Food Culture and Society. He is currently researching a history of theological controversies surrounding fasting in the Reformation Era, and has also coauthored a cookbook for Penguin/Perigee titled The Lost Art of Real Cooking, the sequel of which is now being written: The Lost Arts of Hearth and Home. Eric R. Dursteler is an associate professor of history at Brigham Young

University, where he has taught since 1998. He is a former Fulbright fellow, NEH fellow, and fellow of the Harvard Center for Italian Renaissance Studies in Florence, Italy. His first book, Venetians in Constantinople: Nation, Identity and Coexistence in the Early Modern Mediterranean, was published in 2006; his second book, Renegade Women: Gender, Identity and Boundaries in the Early Modern Mediterranean, was published in

232

CONTRIBUTORS

2011. He is the editor of the News on the Rialto, and book review editor for the Journal of Early Modern History. He is married to Whitney Dursteler and has three children. Joan Fitzpatrick is the author of Food in Shakespeare: Early Modern

Dietaries and the Plays (2007) and a dictionary titled Shakespeare and the Language of Food (2010). She has also edited a collection of essays titled Renaissance Food from Rabelais to Shakespeare: Culinary Readings and Culinary Histories (2010) and is currently preparing an edition of three early modern dietaries for the Revels Companion Library Series. Paul Freedman is Chester D. Tripp Professor of History at Yale University.

A medievalist, he has specialized in the history of the Catalan peasants, church, and nobility in the period 1000–1500. His work on food history has been developed over the past ten years. He is the author of Out of the East: Spices and the Medieval Imagination (2008) and edited Food: The History of Taste (2007), which has been translated into nine languages. His article “American Restaurants and Cuisine in the Mid-Nineteenth Century” appeared in the March 2011 New England Quarterly. Fabio Parasecoli is associate professor of food studies at the New School

in New York City. His research focuses on the intersections among food, media, and politics. His current projects focus on the history of Italian food and on the sociopolitical aspects of geographical indications. His recent publications include Food Culture in Italy (2004), the introduction to Culinary Cultures in Europe (The Council of Europe, 2005), and Bite Me! Food in Popular Culture (2008). Philip Slavin is currently a Mellon postdoctoral fellow at the Department

of Economics, McGill University. His main interest concerns the economic and environmental history of late-medieval England, with a special interests in agricultural changes, food production and consumption, and economic and ecological crises. His book, dealing with food provisioning of a late-medieval monastic community, will be published in 2012.

CONTRIBUTORS

233

Alison A. Smith is an associate professor of history at Wagner College in

New York City. She received her PhD in Italian renaissance history from the Johns Hopkins University and has published articles on gender, material culture, and the Verità family in renaissance Verona. Her research currently focuses on elite sociability and the Accademia Filarmonica in the later sixteenth century.

index

Aertsen, Pieter, 120, 179 Africa, 4, 47, 55, 183, 189–92 agriculture, 59, 66–7, 172, 175, 188–90, 192–4 agronomic literature, 3, 21–2 Alamanni, Luigi, 22 Alberti, Leon Battista, 127 ale see beer and ale almond milk, 4–5, 7, 10, 27 almonds, 4–5, 9, 13, 27, 48, 50, 53, 102, 129 ambrosino recipe, 9 anise, 13, 22 Antwerp, 46, 48, 91–2, 94 apples, 12, 14, 54, 60, 110, 158, 171, 173, 175, 180, 189 Arte Cisoria, 105, 125 bacon, 7, 13, 15, 20, 22, 56, 102, 112, 160, 169, 173–4 Bacon, Francis, 166 bakers, 53–4, 84–6, 88–9, 94, 100, 113, 119, 130, 138 banquets, 11, 19, 23, 61, 83, 95–6, 101–8, 111, 115, 119–20, 122, 124–5, 148, 155–6, 158, 164, 174–6, 178–9 see also wedding feasts beans, 2, 6, 9, 49, 56, 75, 159–60, 177, 180–1

New World, 61, 192–3 see also individual species beef, 12–13, 27, 29, 38–40, 53, 58–60, 66–72, 108, 153, 160, 189 broth, 7, 18, 21–2 feet, 122 marrow, 25 salt, 114 tongue recipe, 16 see also cows; veal beer and ale, 27, 29, 31, 36–7, 48, 50–1, 54, 58–60, 89, 100, 113, 136, 144, 153, 167 alehouse, 162–3 brewing, 89, 130, 140 prices, 70 Belgium see Low Countries Beuckelaer, Joachim, 120–1, 179 Biffront, Jacob (or Bifrons), 21 Black Death see bubonic plague blancmange, 7, 10–11, 16, 103, 165, 181 boar, 6, 11, 104, 160 head, 12, 108, 163 heart, 122 Boccaccio, Giovanni, 122, 178 Bockenheim, Jean de, 12–13 Boorde, Andrew, 156, 159, 163 Botticelli, Sandro, 178

236

bourgeois, 7–9, 15, 27, 58–9, 97, 102–3, 121, 124 boussac (recipe), 7 Brazil, 47, 55, bread, 2, 4, 10, 22, 26, 29–31, 35–7, 52, 56–9, 79, 85–6, 88–9, 91–2, 98, 104, 110, 113, 119, 122, 130, 138, 147, 162, 173, 181, 184, 189 adulteration, 99–100 black, 112 chestnut, 23 crumbs, 4–5, 18 riots, 83, 92–4 soup, 13 toasted, 5–6 trencher, 4, 132, 143–4 breast-feeding, 22 browet recipe, 12 Bruyerin-Champier, Jean, 22–3 bubonic plague, 1, 57, 64, 67, 69–73, 91, 101, 135–6 Bullein, William, 155, 159–61 Burton, Robert, 151, 160 butchers, 8, 53–4, 56, 60, 119, 121, 165, 169, 180 butter, 15, 17, 19–21, 25, 50, 130, 162, 178 cabbage, 2, 9, 40, 42, 109, 112, 177, 180, 191 calorie requirements, 36, 57–8, 67–8, 78 cameline (sauce), 7 Campi, Vincenzo, 121, 177 canela see cinnamon cannibalism, 78–9, 165–6, 169 capon see chicken Caravaggio, Michelangelo Merisi da, 171 cardamom, 5 carving, 11, 13, 104–6, 119, 124–5, 132 cassia buds, 4 Castiglione, Baldassare, 17, 150 Catalonia, 10–11, 64–5, 67, 69, 77–9, 90, 105 Catholicism, 2 cattle, 11, 66–72 see also beef

INDEX

caviar see sturgeon, roe Cellini, Benvenuto, 132 Cervantes, Miguel de, 112 Cervio, Vincenzo, 105, 125 charity see poverty, poor relief Charles V of France, 6, 123 Charles V of Spain and Holy Roman Emperor, 13, 56 Charles the Bold of Burgundy, 13, 104 Chaucer, Geoffrey, 112, 121–2, 163, 165 cheese, 13, 15, 18, 21, 25, 27, 30, 39, 48–9, 52, 56, 59–60, 89, 98, 109–10, 119, 121, 125, 130, 147, 162, 174, 177 cheesemongers, 53 chestnuts, 23, 159–60 chicken, 8, 11–15, 21, 25, 59, 108, 120–1, 128, 160, 172–3 capon, 7–9, 18, 25–6, 102, 104, 108, 111, 164 gizzards, 12 offal, 178 chickpeas, 9, 112 Chigi, Agostino, 179 chili peppers see peppers (capsicum) China, 183, 185–7, 190, 192 Chiquart Amiczo, 11 cinnamon, 3–5, 7–8, 10, 13, 19–20, 24, 60–1, 105, 139, 176 Clare, Gilbert de, Earl of Gloucester, 66 climate, 29–30, 34, 37, 39–41, 51, 64, 70–2, 81–2 cloves, 4–7, 11, 13, 46, 61, 139, 176 Cogan, Thomas, 122, 158–60, 163 colonization, 2 see also exploration coloring food, 4, 16 compost recipe, 15 convalescent cooking, 11 cookbooks, 3, 5–28 cooking profession, 6, 9–11, 21, 24, 53, 104, 113–14, 117–120, 124–5, 127–33, 138–41, 147–9, 163–4, 184–5 cookshops, 114, 118–19, 162 in literature, 121–3, 163–7, 170

INDEX

cows, 60, 71–2, 75, 77, 138 credenza, 18, 25, 125, 148, 178, 181 Crescentiis, Petrus de, 5 Crivelli, Carlo, 174–5 crop failures, 1, 48, 68–9, 71–3, 77–8, 80–2 cubebs, 4 cuisine medieval, 1 Renaissance, 2–3 dairy products, 15, 17, 20, 23–4, 27, 50, 64, 66–7, 71–2, 110, 124, 130 dais, 8 Danish, language, 5 dates, 5, 8, 10 Dawson, Thomas, 26 Daz buoch von guoter spise, 13 De civilitate morum puerilium, 17 demographics, 1–2, 30, 39, 63–5, 75, 91–93, 135–7, 192, 194 dietary literature, 3, 6, 18–19, 22, 122–3, 152, 155–7 dill, 13 disguised food, 4, 12 dolphin (porpoise), 11 Dryden, John, 110 Dutch see Low Countries Een Notabel Boecxhen van Cokeryen, 16 eggs, 11, 13–15, 20–1, 54–5, 59–61, 98, 105, 140 fertilized, 20 Elias, Norbert, 16–17 Elyot, Thomas, 154, 159–60 England, 7–8, 15–16, 20, 31, 35, 37–8, 40, 46–7, 50–2, 57, 60, 64–79, 84, 99–100, 106, 139, 158 Englishmen, 13 Erasmus, Desiderius, 17 escabetx, 10 Etienne, Charles, 22 Eucharist, 104, 122, 165–6, 169–70 exploration, 2–3, 183, 190 famine, 23, 56, 61, 64, 69–82, 87, 90–1, 93–4, 99–100, 137, 157, 186, 188

237

farming see agriculture fasting, 2–3, 9, 31, 33, 39, 50–1, 68, 147, 153, 156–7, 161 see also Lent fava beans, 6, 9, 70, 177 Ferrara, 18–20 feudalism, 8, 10, 55–6, 66–7, 71, 79, 105, 114, 123–4, 145, 192 figs, 12 fingers, eating with, 4, 176 fireplace see hearth fish, 13, 18, 161 see also individual species flan, 11 flatulence, 17, 144 Florence, 32, 39, 41–2, 46, 48, 57–8, 63, 76–7, 85–6, 93, 98, 114, 172 Fogolino, Marcello, 172 forks, 17, 132, 146–7, 150, 176 Forme of Cury, 8 France, 6–8, 17–18 Francis of Assisi, 90 fritters, 12, 15, 21, 25–7, 108, 111 fruit, 15 dried, 5 galangal, 4, 11, 121 Galen of Pergamum, 152–3, 160–1 Gama, Vasco da, 45 game see venison garbage recipe, 12 garlic, 18, 23, 40, 110 sauce, 105 Garzoni, Giovanna, 181 Garzoni, Tomaso, 118–19 gelatin, 7, 16 genestada recipe, 10 Genoa, 3 Germany, 13–15, 30, 32–3, 38–9, 48, 50, 51–2, 56, 61, 63, 65, 69, 78, 87, 100, 106, 114, 129, 149 Germans, 13 language, 5 Ghirlandaio, Domenico, 172 gifts of food, 56, 83, 96, 98–9, 109, 139

238

ginger, 4–8, 11, 13, 20, 46–7, 59–60 gingerbread, 52 Giovanni da Udine, 179 glassware, 131–2, 145–6, 148, 150, 173, 181 gold, 55, 190 gilded food, 4, 13 platters and tableware, 96, 111, 132, 146, 178–9, 181 Good Hous-wives Treasurie, 26 Good Huswifes Handmaide for the Kitchin, 26 grains of paradise see Meleguetta pepper Granado, Diego, 26 grill, 5, 7, 12, 128–30 Guazzo, Stefano, 150 Guerzoni, Guido, 142 guilds, 53, 92, 103, 115, 118–20 Harleian mss, 279 and 4016, 12 hazelnuts, 177 hearth, 5, 120, 128–30, 138, 140, 143, 162, 185 heathen’s head recipe, 14 herbs, 4, 13, 18–20, 52, 158, 164, 167, 177, 181 herbals, 3 see also individual species heron, 12 Hererra, Gabriel Alonso, 21–2 herring, 48, 51, 53, 58–60, 102, 114 Hoefnagel, Joris, 178 Holland see Low Countries Holy Land, 3, 103 Homily Against Gluttony and Drunkenness, 152, 155–6 Homily of Good Workes: And Fyrst of Fastyng, 156, 161 household accounts, 3 humanism, 14, 17, 111 Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, 111–12 Icelandic, language, 5 India, 4, 45–6, 183, 185, 188–91 Indonesia, 4, 47, 190

INDEX

inns, 102, 112–13, 162, 181, 186 Islam, 3–4, 14, 65, 183–4, 188–9 Italy, 2, 9, 15, 24, 29, 34–6, 38–40, 47–9, 56, 61, 63, 65, 86–9, 95–8, 100–1, 103, 126, 131, 137, 144–6, 148, 173, 177 Roman era, 32 see also individual cities Japan, 187–8 Jews, 95, 99, 185 Jonson, Ben, 158–9, 167–9 Kuchenmeysterey, 15 labor, 58, 72–3, 109, 114, 138, 140–2, 187, 194 demand for, 1, 119, 136 laborers, 54–5, 67, 94, 120, 156, 159 Labors of the Months, 32–6 lamb, 11, 25, 59 see also mutton lamprey, 12 Lancelot de Casteau, 26 Lancerio, Sante, 126 lasagna, 9 Latin, 5 leche see gelatin leeks, 9, 40, 42, 52, 102, 112 Lent, 4, 12, 20, 31, 33, 39, 48, 50–1, 59, 109, 156 lentils, 6 Levant see Holy Land Libellus de arte coquinaria, 5 Liber cure cocorum, 12 Liber de coquina, 9 Libre de Sent Sovi, 10 Libre del coch, 10 Libro della cocina, 9 Libro di cucina, 9 Liebault, Jean, 22 Livre fort excellent de cuysine, 17 London, 37, 47, 50, 53, 63, 70, 78–9, 87, 89, 118, 162, 178 long pepper see pepper

INDEX

Lorenzetti, Ambrogio, 172 Low Countries, 2, 11–12, 16–17, 33, 51–2, 56, 61, 63, 67, 79, 89, 180 lupins, 6 Luther, Martin, 50–1 macaroni, 15, 48 Magninus Mediolanensis, 6 Magno, Alessandro, 45–6 majordomo, 18, 123, 126, 176 Mannerism, 19, 103 manners, 3, 16–17, 124, 136–7, 144–6, 150, 172, 180 Mantegna, Andrea, 175 Martino of Como, 3, 10, 14–15, 173 marzipan, 25, 178, 191 mawmenee recipe, 8 measurements in recipes, 6, 9, 139 meat consumption, 1 medical literature see dietary literature Meleguetta pepper, 4, 11, 55 Menagier de Paris, 7–8, 53, 59, 102 merchants, 2, 41, 45–6, 48, 50–2, 55, 84–6, 89, 94, 99, 108, 112, 135, 140, 145, 186, 191 Messisbugo, Cristoforo di, 18–20, 24, 105–6, 117–18 mezzadria, 127 middle class see bourgeois milk, 10, 18, 20, 25, 110, 113, 130, 179 milkmen, 119 production, 71–2 soup, 25 sour, 23 see also dairy products Mirrause recipe, 10 mobility, social, 17, 135–6, 137, 144, 150 Moffett, Thomas, 157, 161 Moors see Spain Morosini, Bernardo, 59 mortar and pestle, 5, 121, 129, 142, 177 Muslims see Islam mustard, 6–7

239

mutton, 8, 13, 21, 26, 30, 38–9, 40, 60, 67, 108, 122, 160 see also sheep (rearing) napkins, 13, 17, 96, 111, 125, 133, 143–5, 172–3, 178 Nation States, 2 Netherlands see Low Countries New World foods, 2, 27, 61, 179, 192 Nostradamus (Michel de Nostradame), 62 nutmeg, 4–5, 11, 26, 129, 139 nuts, 4–5, 8, 78, 110, 142, 162, 187–8, 194 sugared, 53, 139 see also individual species olive oil, 17, 30–1, 48, 50, 60, 85, 137, 185 olives, 22, 30, 33, 130, 193–4 Olivier de la Marche, 13, 104, 107 onions, 6, 13, 17, 40, 110, 112, 174 Opusculum de Saporibus, 6 oranges, 17–19, 104–5, 162, 173, 175 trees, 22 Ottomans, 65, 87–9, 96, 99, 184–5 ovens, 5, 26, 89, 113, 130, 162 oysters, 102, 109, 129, 194 pancakes, 12 Paris, 7–8, 53, 58–9, 61, 63, 87, 100, 102, 104, 108, 118–19 parsley, 6, 13, 17 partridge, 18 pasta, 15, 20, 23–4, 119, 124, 130, 142, 173, 177 see also individual shapes pastoral, 109–11 pastry, 7, 13, 16, 19–21, 25, 129, 178 coffin, 7 cook, 53, 119, 121 edible, 15 tools, 129, 142 peacock, 4, 11–13, 61, 98, 104, 108, 112, 174 peasants, 38, 54, 56, 61, 63–4, 67–8, 71–3, 75, 77–8, 85, 109, 114–15, 136–40, 173, 181, 185, 192

240

pepper, 3–5, 11, 13, 15, 20–1, 24, 26, 47, 60, 112, 139, 191 long, 4 merchants, 45–6, 51, 53 peppers (capsicum), 10, 61, 192 pheasant, 8, 98, 104, 112, 173 Feast of the, 107 Philippe de Vitry, 110 Piccolomini, Anea Silvio (Pius II), 35 pies, 13, 15, 21, 25–6, 53, 104, 109, 113–14, 119, 121–3, 162, 164, 177 tins, 129 see also pastry pigeons, 10, 25 carrier, 174 dung, 78 pigs, 11, 31–2, 38, 47, 80, 108, 138, 168–9, 172, 193 pine nuts, 4, 8, 10, 19, 25, 78, 111, 176, 187 pineapples, 192 plates, 131 Platina (Bartolomeo Sacchi), 2, 14–15, 19, 21, 118 pomegranate, 7, 22, 53, 109, 181 Pontano, Giovanni, 95 Pontormo, Jacopo, 147 population see demographics pork, 6, 9, 11, 12–13, 15, 38, 43, 59, 67, 80, 153, 160, 167–70, 185, 191 fat, 173, 177 salt, 49 smoked, 27 suckling pig, 104 see also bacon; pigs Portugal, 18, 47, 49, 55, 60, 90, 185, 190–1 poverty, 57–8, 68, 79–82, 85, 87, 90–2, 94–7, 100, 103, 114–15, 135, 137–8, 140, 149, 154–5, 158, 162, 192 foods associated with, 2, 159 poor relief, 76, 79, 83, 92–3, 184 printing, 3, 15–16, 20, 117, 136, 144 professional class see bourgeois Proper Newe Booke of Cokerye, 20–1

INDEX

prosciutto, 19, 25 Provence, 39, 68 quince, 11, 177 paste, 174 Quinsa, Giovanni, 177 Rabasco, Ottaviano, 106 rabbit and hare, 7, 25, 57, 104, 173 Rabelais, François, 114 raisins and currants, 15, 19, 25, 48, 139 ravioli, 15–16, 27 Reformation, 2, 20, 50, 92, 149 Counter (Catholic), 24, 92 Registrum coquine, 12–13 Renaissance (intellectual and artistic movement), 1–4, 14, 17, 19, 88, 90, 93, 95, 97, 101, 103–4, 108–11, 117, 124, 141, 144, 148, 150 see also humanism rice, 8, 10, 11, 13, 103, 184, 186–92 drinks, 23 starch and flour, 7, 10, 53 riots, food, 83–4, 87, 93–4, 98 Rome, 13–15, 40, 85–6, 126, 174, 179 ancient, 2, 5, 14, 21, 33, 110, 118, 175 Romoli, Domenico, 23–4, 118 Ronsard, Pierre, 111 rosemary, 6, 18, 179 rosewater, 4, 7, 20, 27, 107, 111 Rossetti, Giovanni Battista, 109 royalty, dining habits, 1, 6–10, 13, 95, 104, 108, 124–5, 132, 154–5 and food regulation, 97 Rumplot, Marx, 26, 129 Rupert of Nola, 10 Ruralia Commoda see Crescentiis, Petrus de Sacchi, Bartolomeo see Platina (Bartolomeo Sacchi) saffron, 4–5, 13, 16, 18, 20, 48, 59, 111, 188 sage, 13, 16 salad, 23, 33, 42, 109, 111, 119, 125, 147–8, 175 oil, 168–9 salami, 125, 177 salmon, 12–13, 15, 17, 194

INDEX

salt, 4, 8, 12–13, 15–16, 20, 24, 26, 48, 58, 110, 114, 192 cellar, 8, 108, 132, 144–5, 175, 186 price, 55, 61, 70 salted fish, 39, 48, 52, 102, 114, 187 salted meat, 22, 38, 48–9, 114, 139, 141, 160, 174 trade, 48 Sano di Pietro, 173 sauces, 4–8, 10, 15–18, 20, 25, 102–3, 105, 109, 112, 114, 119, 121, 128–9, 181, 186 medical logic of, 6 sausages, 9–10, 25, 27, 51, 114, 140, 149, 180 fish, 12 savory, 15 Savoy, 11, 102 scalco see steward (banquet manager) Scandinavia, 31, 63–4, 66, 69 Scappi, Bartolomeo, 24–6, 118–19, 126, 128–9, 175–7, 181 servants, 13, 56, 59, 61, 67, 102, 111, 113, 120, 122–7, 140–2, 149, 172, 178 sflogliata recipe, 19–20 Shakespeare, William, 122, 163–8 sheep (rearing), 11, 38, 47, 59–60, 66–7, 71, 77, 194 see also mutton Sicily, 3, 39, 64, 84 slavery, 47, 55, 190, 192–4 sofregit, 10 Spain, 3, 10–11, 22, 26, 33, 38–41, 48, 61, 63, 65, 73, 95, 126, 131, 146, 185 Moorish, 3, 5, 65, 190 Spenser, Edmund, 151–4 spices, 1, 9, 11, 16–21, 26–7, 45–7, 53, 55, 59–61, 102, 104, 106–7, 109, 113, 119, 121–2, 137, 139, 142, 177, 183 box, 129 medical logic, 4, 6, 10 trade, 45–51, 184–6, 190 see also individual species spikenard, 4 spit (turnspit), 5, 7, 13, 15, 24, 109, 114, 120, 127–30, 138, 177–8

241

status, conferred by food, 4, 18, 32, 56, 95, 97, 135–7, 139, 150 steward (banquet manager), 11, 23, 109, 123–4 stockfish, 13 Stubbes, Phillip, 162–3 sturgeon, 105, 109, 194 roe, 105, 109, 169 subtleties, 4, 108 sugar, 4–5, 7–8, 10–11, 13, 17–19, 20–1, 24–6, 46, 53, 61, 105–6, 111–13, 137, 139, 148–50, 172, 175 confections and sculptures, 96, 104–5, 125, 176, 186, 190–2 grater, 129 production, 47, 55, 61 sumptuary laws, 97–100, 137, 147–8 Surflet, Richard, 22 swans, 13, 108 sweetbreads, 19, 25, 177 tables, dining, 8, 25, 96–7, 105, 107, 111, 121, 124–5, 131–3, 136, 143–6, 150, 171–4, 176–8, 181 Tacuinum Sanitatis, 173 Taillevent (Guillaume Tirel), 6–7, 17 taxes, 64, 73–5, 82, 86–7, 91, 186–8 records, 3, 68 relief, 107 tomatoes, 9–10, 61 Tractatus de modo preparandi . . . , 9 trade, domestic, 2–3, 50, 54, 76, 84, 86–8, 187 international, 2, 45–6, 48, 51, 65, 70, 73, 137, 139, 183–5, 190 trenchers see bread turnips, 9, 40, 109 turnspit see spit (turnspit) Tuscany, 9–10, 33, 41, 61, 64, 93, 172 see also Florence Tusser, Thomas, 22 Vander Noot, Thomas, 16 Varenne, François La, 17 Vaughan, William, 158–9 veal, 6, 19, 22, 25, 29, 40, 109 eyes, 19

242

vegetables, 9–10, 18, 33, 40–2, 51–2, 56, 59, 79, 109, 141, 148, 157, 177, 179–81, 187 wild, 23 Venice, 3, 9, 40, 45–8, 53, 55, 57, 63, 65, 84, 86, 88, 94–5, 98–9, 190 venison, 6, 11, 20, 26–7, 104, 108, 160 verjuice, 4, 7, 17, 20 Veronese, Paolo, 175–7 Viandier see Taillevent (Guillaume Tirel) Vikings, 5 vine tendrils, 15 vinegar, 4–6, 10, 13, 15, 17, 176, 186, 191 Vives, Juan Luis, 91 wages, 1, 54, 56–8, 60–2, 69, 72, 91, 94, 118–20, 123, 136 see also labor walnuts, 5, 187 war, 2, 65, 68, 73–8, 81, 110 armies, 88–9 purveyance, 64, 74–5, 89 weather see climate Weckerin, Anna, 27, 129 wedding feasts, 53, 98, 107, 111, 114–15, 119, 148, 164, 171, 178

INDEX

Welserin, Sabina, 27 whale, 194 sculpture, 107 wheat production, 2, 29–30, 34–6, 48, 55, 57, 67, 69–70, 74–5, 80, 84, 87, 186–9, 193 porrige, 108 price, 59–62, 70, 91 Willich, Iodoco, 21 wine, 7–8, 15, 13, 18, 25, 29–30, 36, 42, 48–50, 60, 73–4, 80, 89, 98, 104, 107, 112–13, 119, 124, 126–7, 136–7, 139, 144, 149, 153, 162, 173, 176, 189 adulteration, 100 consecrated, 31 faults in, 10 glasses, 131, 146, 181 making, 36–7 palm, 23 sweet, 48, 55, 148 women, 36, 40, 51–2, 79, 93–4, 118, 120–1, 127, 138–9, 146, 154, 175, 178, 191 childbirth, 148–9 cookbook authors, 26–7 greensickness, 158 humoral makeup, 168–9 Wynkyn de Worde, 105