Medieval food: What did a knight's servants eat?

we have moved up in status a little bit so I am now playing the role of a travelling knight who is visiting one of his retainers somebody of moderate means sort of mid-range social status but he's also aware that the the posh guy is coming so Christie wants to take a story of what you've presented for me again we have bred slightly better bright at the last time well it's still brownish this is made with wheat flour right and I particularly like this because this is made in a traditional medieval way and it's made using bee balm instead of yeast so this was beard balm this is the frost of the beer right and it contains lots of good yeasty stuff right fantastic so it's still not white bread though no it's still a what we would call a wholemeal bread and it's fairly heavy yes which is lovely I like heavy bread is not light and fluffed up bacon bacon yeah they have a present pork but this is sliced now this is this is proper bacon as we understand it and this is going to go in a bean cottage again it's called being pottage because it's cool Tina oh and leeks alia leeks most people even if they lived in a town would have a little garden patch just out the back just out the back where they grow some herbs grow a few vegetables keep the pig just tell us a little bit about the sort of preservation of food you talked about for the peasant having maybe their Pig hanging by the fire what other kinds of food preservation well there are three main ways of preserving food and have been since prehistoric times these are smoking salting and drying okay and one of the things that appears quite often in medieval food is dried meat right which is a bit like shoe leather right and you have to cook it twice you boil it the first time to revitalize it and the thing with salt meat you have to boil it a couple of times Kazuma to remove the huge amount of salt yes in it right and that again wasn't thrown away that was something that was used by the tanners there is something that a Tanner will not use that's fascinated Society was very much about look that has value let's let's let's sell that to somebody or give it to somebody or have it with salt an important commodity then it sounds like there must be very important yes it was because the salt was a marker of your social status if you had your own salt pot you were probably quite well-off and would salt have been expensive then I mean if people are using it for preserving food presume it's not that expensive it was it was quite an expensive commodity it's in England we don't have naturally really naturally occurring salt it either has to be mined usually from Cheshire right where it's still mine today or it's produced by process called panning where you take brackish water and you you boil it so you evaporate it so that the salts in the bottom which they still do on the East Coast so I presume there was this a medieval industry of people making salt and in there transporting it to the middle of there yes absolutely the country and it probably got more expensive the further away oh yes you vent yes um is that just gonna go in like that or no I need to do some chopping up if you chop the leek I'll chop the bacon this is a big medieval shaped knife isn't it yes of course if you were a refreshment cook you would have your own set of knives should be the tools of your trade right and different knives are different jobs of the zoo and most people will be carrying their own utility knife anyway yeah we couldn't have a penknife or yes if he went out to dinner anyway you would take your own cutlery [Music] I'm just going to put this in the box so that's the leaks going into the box with the broad beans and some onions stock the bacon of course will help to provide a salt food of course is salted bacon and batters on it and leave it cook while we're waiting for the pottage to cook cause you know take some time you've got some other things here so we got the bread and I notice the plates are different as well yes we've worked up in stasis Jason right so we're no longer using wood apart from the occasional wood utensil we've now got a bit of money so we're investing in some quite nice pottery and it's got a little bit of decoration on the other half yes so it's sort of showing you moving up in the world yeah and you don't have to use wood anymore and what is this this is a boiled pork with a sage sauce food would have been seasonal as well wouldn't it so your garden would have grown a certain things at a certain time and stuff would have been available to buy but only when it was incidentally in season and it was very much the thing in the Middle Ages you would eat what you had available there are stories of people in times of famine waiting for the new grass to come through in the spring because that was the only green stuff they could find to eat good grief yes so you'd be very much more aware of the seasons as well as your food would vary with the season so you might look forward to mushroom season for example you might look forward to obviously harvest and a harvest festival means so much more when that's the surplus of putting aside for the winter yeah so back to the pork then shall I um till I try this I think a very brave joint you want to know what's in the sauce yes please all right the source is parsley in the sage ground together right with you know mortar and pestle and mortar with the addition of a hard-boiled egg yolk which works as an emulsifier or a thickener and then with some vinegar some wine vinegar added to it didn't they use egg yolk for paints as well yes sir yeah that was our alright sorry that was your raw egg-yolk raw egg-yolk right where this is stripe this is the Hollis's cook tech yeah right so can I use fingers eukaryote you think no you think your fingers in the Middle Ages was absolutely the thing to do as long as you only use two fingers of your right hand right hand not left hand yes one of the problems we have with recreating medieval dishes is that the recipes we have were written by professional cooks for professional cooks so they don't have any quantities right so so it's sort of its moral aid memoir yeah or it's showing off this is what I cooked getting absolutely quite a kick it's just a surprise mm-hmm would that be something as you moved up the status so ladder you start to get stronger flavor certainly yes if you're at the bottom you don't have the money to be able to access some of the things that give you the strong flavors mm-hmm was quite surprising about some it's quite heavier it's not unpleasant but it was it's very different from the sort of hearty mellow fare of the peasant food that we've experienced that I actually like it go up in it so there's quite an aggressive food yeah bizarre to say it but you really know you're eating something that's strongly flavored and I suppose for somebody Mitch status referring somebody high status look here's something I think something I think you might like yes no you brought a lovely pie along here tell me about pies and the history of pies is that because that seems very English to me yes pies were medieval fast food I have a special treats you made this pie with proper pastry right rather than basic medieval pastry which was just flour and water so pastry is technically edible but yes well it's it's more like the box that your burger comes in than something you would want to eat its packaging and it's ovenproof cookware all-in-one right that's interesting way of keeping some of the moisture in the food while it's in the oven do you think I suppose people would have eaten if they were very hungry away definitely the the basic flour and water pastry I suspect people would have thrown away bearing in mind this was a time when there wasn't good dentistry right so it would have been quite hard actually right but then you've created here slightly more modern pastry recipe so that I can Chinese is a medieval pastry recipe right because we're in the sort of yeoman farmer region I've put butter in it as shortening to lift it a little bit yes make it more edible and less teeth destroying fantastic it's a little bit of onion and some coriander okay well looking forward to this will fall apart oh my goodness for that out now one of the other things that occurs to me is all this food is quite hearty and quite filling yes you don't need to eat much of it I mean this sort of level we're still talking about people who are getting up with the dawn and going out to work delicious absolute delicious yeah I like it there is them very simple hmm but the sort of thing you could take if you were going on a journey or if you were going to be out in the field all day and not being able to get back in medieval towns there would have been pie shops working 24 hours a day oh so they did have sort of cook shops and stuff would the average medieval person of this status have their own ovens and what sort of would they have an open fire like we have here after the countryside they would have probably had an open fire as we have here they might if they were a bit higher up in status than I yeoman farmer have had a cook house or a or an oven but ovens were very expensive to build more likely you would be in a village setting where you would have a village Baker and you would take your pie as your pasties you even your your pot edges and cook them in the village bake house have a communal bake house or the book for this group of people usually you might have a baker who was running it as a business baking the bread but once the bread was baked he would leave the oven hot so that everybody else could go along and cook their food what she will communal then then we have today and often people go off and eat their own meals in the same family whereas then it was the whole you know whole community would have been using the same facilities and everybody would have been chatting away and cooking and comparing and probably gossiping a lot oh yes absolutely yeah this pie feels like travel food was just fantastic this is exactly what it is that pastry axes are kind of packaging for you and it's very hearty and kind of filling um this is a little bit more like status food it's got much stronger flavors it's the sort of thing you serve to guests if you ought to impress them should we see how the the pottage is doing what is this in here this is broad beans with bacon and leeks fantastic and I have a you've given me a lovely horn spoon there so again slightly higher status and a nice plate with some decoration on it and bread and bread as always you'll put the trencher bread I thought some of the the beans soften the bread of it have some juice yeah [Music] mmm really nice more complex flavors than the earlier food we were eating this is one of those crossover dishes this could be just as easily by the peasant in his cottage the night in his castle right but therefore the peasant it would be more sophisticated - and for the night it would be a simple addition yeah I I have to say it's very nice very nice indeed this is what a night might have eaten when he was visiting one of his mid status retainers next episode we're going to have a look at what a night would have eaten at home would it be different or would it be more of the same let's find out from the pie in me thanks for watching please like and subscribe and don't forget that notified button and we'll see you next time [Music]

Channel: Modern History TV

Views: 2,993,791

Rating: 4.9349694 out of 5

Keywords: history documentary, jason kingsley, medieval, middle ages, knight, food, drink, cooking, pie, herbs, lamb, beans, bacon, leek, chris carr, peasant, yeoman, farmhouse

Id: nPpWughBPc4

Length: 13min 2sec (782 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 09 2018

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[u/Geo_95]

I watched the entire video and I have no regrets