Adamson - Food in Medieval Times

FOOD IN MEDIEVAL TIMES
and grated cheese formed into egg-sized balls. They are fried in pork
fat and served on a bed of sugar with sugar on top as well.127
Another important Catalan cookbook that became much more in-
fluential than the Libre de Sent Soví, thanks to the invention of print-
ing, is the Libre del Coch. It was put together in the fifteenth century
by a certain Mestre Robert, or Rupert de Nola, who calls himself cook
to “don Ferrando, rey de Napols [king of Naples].” The latter was
probably Ferrante I, who ruled Naples from 1458 to 1494.128
Through Mestre Robert, Catalan cooking became more widely
known in Italy, but the influence went both ways, with the Catalan
cook also incorporating Italian recipes and cooking styles in his reper-
toire. The cookbook was published in Catalan in 1520, and in Castil-
ian translation in 1525. It quickly became a bestseller and by the late
eighteenth century had gone through several editions in both lan-
guages.129 As a truly Mediterranean cookbook, the Libre del Coch
combines recipes of Catalan, Italian, French, and Arab origin. Written
for an aristocratic audience and influenced by the Italian Renaissance,
the text contains much more than just recipes. In the first part in-
structions are given for the proper way of carving meat, setting the
table, and serving, plus information on the cooking and serving
staff.130 The second part deals with dishes for meat days, including
sauces and fruits, and the third part with Lenten food. Of the sauces
in the Libre del Coch two stand out, one a peacock sauce that is praised
by Mestre Robert as being among the best dishes in the world, and
the other, called Alidem, for its versatility. The former is made with al-
monds, the liver of peacock or other fowl, bread, orange juice or vine-
gar, egg yolks, sugar, and cinnamon.131 Alidem, served with anything
from roast pork, kid, chicken, or small birds to fried eggs and pies, ap-
pears to be of Arab origin. It combines pepper, ginger, saffron, and
other spices, with meat stock, eggs, and verjuice or vinegar.132
Nearly a quarter of the approximately two hundred recipes in the
book are for fish and seafood; many of them are adaptations of meat
dishes suitable for consumption on fast days. Trout, barbel, conger
eel, tuna, dentex (a European marine fish), hake, spiny lobster, squid,
cuttlefish, octopus, and swordfish are made into empanadas, or fish
pies. Alternatively, they are grilled, boiled, or cooked in stews and
casseroles. For the fast-day version of blanc manger the cookbook rec-
ommends fish stock instead of beef stock. Some maintain that blanc
manger was actually invented in Tarragona in the eighth or ninth cen-
tury.133 The recipe for baked dentex, entitled De Déntol en Cassola, is
typical of the way Mestre Robert seasoned a variety of fish. The
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