Please , get out of the spirit that spices masked the stench of damaged meats. The creative Middle Age in many domains was it also in art of cooking. We invite you to discover the subtle balances between spices, saffron yellow, cinnamon, ginger, clove, cardamom, macis, maniguette, the steams of the rose water, the  salty / sweetened, or the sourness of certain sauces which can embarrass us today.

Fish of sea or river, beef, pig, sheep, poultry, rabbits, games, can be cooked in a medieval way. It will be impossible to serve as the peacock, swan, heron, stork or the whale.

Our medieval receipts result from the middle class of big cities, middle-class persons, artisans and traders.

The ménagier of Paris, Viander de Taillevent, Mister Chiquart, Libro de Arte of coquinaria, Liber of coquina

Jeanne Bourin, Odile Redon, Françoise Sabban, Silvano Serventi, the university of Poitiers.

In our family, we make  the medieval cooking since 1992 following an experience with a young student in history, a friend of our daughter. During the years, we looked for works on the medieval kitchen. Then we made out a were, liked or threw back, and sometimes modified certain culinary practices to adapt them to our way of making and for our tastes.

When we propose a medieval meal, we can assure you that receipts and manners to make are authentic, and that you really go to discover savours and new tastes.

The kitchen is a cultural practice. It depends on geographic imperatives of supplies. Cities are stocked well, in campaigns the farmers should content themselves with their plots of earth, the food and social disparity seems registered in the order of things. In the Middle Age the church imposes days fat and thin days.

The farmer will be nourishing mainly on cereal in the form of boiled, on bread or on pancakes and on soups with any sorts of plants, roots, spices, turnips, vegetable, and aromatic. It eats some meat several times in the year mainly during the holy days of Carnival, the Easter and in the daytime of the patron saint of his village. In case of famine he will suffer from it the first one.

The Lord has reserves of cereal, he goes hunting, he has also some meat and vegetables at his disposal. According to his position he will organize banquets more or less often.

The city appears as a place of plentiful and varied consumption. The big capitals of the Christendom abound in different products and in spices. It is in the kitchens of the middle-class persons, the princes and the prelates that elaborates the art of cooking of the Middle Age.

The order of the meals was different. The big banquets got organized around several successive services containing each a set of varied dishes which are arranged together on the table in front of the host. These dishes will travel towards the extremities of the table or are placed people of lesser importance so these dinner guests will have access to a number restricted by dishes, the most sophisticated dishes being taken by the important hosts.

It is ruler to wash itself hands before passing at table. Very often it will be necessary to share with a stranger its bowl, its glass, its place settings, and its chopping board, (wooden plat  on which are arranged the solid food). He is fashionable to suggest the best fragments to his companion tailloir, especially if it is about a woman, to eat little, and not to rush on the food.

It is difficult to imagine a banquet or a simple meal without wine. That this was mostly cut by water. The quality was very variable because the processes of wine making were not still in the point, that is why it was often flavored by spices, such Hypocras or Claret.

In the Middle Age the culinary activities get organized around an opened fireplace where is made the cooking of food. Only the big houses possess room which one could call cook. Very often the oven is community to save the wood which is expensive and to reduce fire risks.

To chop, to crush, leak out are operations very important for the Middle Age. Knives are tools indispensable to the divisions of meats, to the cuttings of vegetables, and in uncountable minced meat in any kind. The grinding and the pilage in the mortar hold an important place in the medieval kitchen. To perfect the result it is also necessary to filter various liquids to obtain a volatile aroma, a subtle flavor, without having in the mouth the dregs of the product, a disagreeable deposit, it is there all the subtlety of the medieval kitchen.

Different cookings could be applied successively to the same foodstuff or collectively to several ingredients which one associates to the finish of the dish. It is certainly disconcerting to cook a meat in some broth or some wine and to make it roast then, but the crunchy and soft mixture of this meat surprises pleasantly. Certain receipts do the opposite for example a hare is put under the steak pan before being cooked in stew, it avoids burning some lard when one makes return a meat.

The medieval kitchen is the art to master spices in seasonings. Mostly they are added at the end of cooking having been reduced to powder diluted with a liquid, a broth, a sauce, wines, or a verjuice then very finely having filtered.

If spices structure the taste, they need a support and a connection to realize their presences. The bread and its crumb dried out , roasted, burned, is one of the first sociable dispositions of sauces and broth. Eggs, chicken liver, almonds in powder, rice, are sociable dispositions usually used. It results from its practices of sauces in the taste and in the texture unusual which do all the charm of the medieval kitchen.

Of any evidences the culinary preparations do not aim that to satisfy a biologic necessity, they hear getting also of the pleasure, the pleasure of the taste but also the sight and the smell.

Colours were important in the presentation. The white of the almond oil, the rice, the white of a capon evoked the purity. Certain dishes were presented sprinkled with saffron of highly-rated one so yellow and of caster sugar of the other one so white in one concerns of aesthetics. It is on sauces, that have not for objective to be nourishing, but should correct and deepen the taste, that play best colours, because been of use side by side in bowls, the dinner guests will choose, to the taste overestimate or in the colour: Saracen (black), the cameline ( cinnamon colour) the green, yellow or pink sauce. These colours were obtained by natural products leaves, spices, fruits, spices, prunes, chicken livers …

Colours also let guess the thick, the fluid, ribband, or the rough. The densities of liquids are chosen, one thickens a broth one filters a cream, one can want a clear juice or a sauce in the irregular grain.

One of the sides surprising with the medieval kitchen is its indifference to distinguish the salty flats(dishes) and the sweet dishes. Any sorts of dishes can welcome sweet elements at the same time as some salt. Sweet and salty are not culinary categories in this time.

Unlike the Roman Antiquity the honey is used only in some receipts. The sugar resulting from the stick comes from Andalusia or from Sicily. It is also frequent to use dried fruits such as grapes, dates, prunes, apricots, which bring a savour sweetened in dishes.

In the salty / sweet the Middle Age adds the acid or the sour to its savours. The taste for the sour seems to have in all the countries preceded that of the sweet food. It results essentially from some vinegar or from some verjuice but also from some juice of any green fruits and lemons, limes, oranges, or acid leaves such the oseille.

Finally a big custom of spices characterizes the medieval kitchen and differentiates it of our. It is not a question of hiding a taste, but to invent a who of should to it be pleasant. The art of the cooks of the Middle Age was the subtle use of spices, with sometimes medical connotations (certain number of receipts was found in textbooks of medicine). The least fortunate doing a custom abounding in onions of garlics, and nice-smelling spices.