Adamson - Food in Medieval Times

FOOD IN MEDIEVAL TIMES
sweeter, spicier and more complicated. For example, more dried fruit was
added by the fifteenth century.51
One thing these transformations of the dish make clear is the empha-
sis on color. And that, too, medieval Britain adopted from the Arabs.
The Baghdad Cookery Book, like other Arabic texts on food, contains
countless golden, saffron-tinted, red, white, scarlet, gold, silver, and
vermilion-colored dishes.52 Thanks to the crusaders who experienced
Arab cuisine in Antioch and the crusader kingdoms in the eastern
Mediterranean, the Normans in southern Italy and Sicily, and not to
forget the Arab civilization in Spain, saffron became one of the most
popular ingredients in England and on the Continent, and this pri-
marily for the golden color it imparted on a dish. Another way of gild-
ing food was by glazing it with egg yolk. This was the method used for
Pommes dorrées (“gilded apples”), a standard dish in many late-
medieval English cookbooks.53 The older Anglo-Norman form
Poumes d’oranges reveals the Arab origin of the dish even more clearly,
which in the Baghdad Cookery Book appears as naranjiya, or “or-
anges.” Ground mutton or chicken was formed into meatballs that
were roasted on a spit and basted with egg yolk and saffron. Another
original ingredient was the juice of bitter oranges, which in the late
thirteenth century were still a rarity in northern Europe. In the
fourteenth-century version from the Forme of Cury the dish has un-
dergone some changes compared to its Arab ancestor, not the least of
which being the option to use parsley to cover the meatballs. This
would have turned them into green apples, rather than oranges, a fruit
much more familiar to the northern Europeans:
For to Make Pomes Dorryle and Other Things [To Make Golden Apples and
Other Things]
Take the flesh of raw pork and grind it small. Mix it up with strong powder, saf-
fron, salt, and currants. Roll it into balls and wet it well in egg white and cook
it in boiling water. Take them out and put them on a spit. Roast them well.
Take ground parsley and press it together with eggs and plenty of flour and let
the paste flow from above the spit. And if you wish, take saffron instead of pars-
ley and serve it forth.54
These meatballs made to look like oranges or apples are just one ex-
ample of the many sotelties, or foods meant to look like something
else, that English cookery in the Middle Ages was famous for. An-
other, more elaborate dish designed to entertain, and in all likelihood
also based on an Arab ancestor, is the multicolored “Turk’s Head,” an
open tart with a filling and a top layer of nut paste in red, yellow, and
100
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