EATING HABITS AND FOOD IDEAS
if they had to, only communicate with one another by gestures. Ac-
cording to the Rule of Saint Benedict, supper in silence was to be fol-
lowed by a reading from an edifying book, which was often the
Collationes by Cassian. In fact, it is from the title of this work that the
modern word “collations,” meaning a light meal or repast, is de-
rived.30
Outside monastery walls, however, dinner was one of the occasions
for people to pass on the latest information and gossip, or simply to
chat. That there were cultural differences in the amount of conversa-
tion at state banquets, for instance, can be seen from comments made
by Venetian and Bohemian travelers to England who remarked on the
unusual silence in which diners, who were probably overly concerned
with etiquette, partook of their meal.31 In the majority of cases, how-
ever, dinners were a noisy affair. Aside from conversation, there was the
blow of the horn that announced the start of the meal, the music em-
anating from the musicians’ gallery above the door opposite the dais,
the singing of the latest love songs or political satires by minstrels, the
performances of actors, jesters, tumblers or acrobats, jugglers, animal
trainers, conjurors, comedians, and mummers or mimes.32 Among the
medieval musical instruments used were the harp, the lute, and the
viele, a forerunner of the modern violin.
And then there were the oohs and aahs of diners expressing their
amazement over the master cook’s latest invention of a sotelty. That
they could easily turn into shrieks of horror can be seen from the many
practical jokes found among the medieval texts and household ob-
jects. The recipe in the Menagier de Paris for turning white wine into
red wine at table, and Albertus Magnus’s recipe for making a chicken
leap in a dish may have been amusing, but the two recipes from an En-
glish cookbook describing the preparation of dishes made to look as if
they were full of worms, or raw and bloody, more likely caused the
squeamish female diner to turn away in disgust.33 Similarly, guests in
all probability marveled at a reusable puzzle jug that looked like a
three-story building, with openings for the windows through which
bishops and abbots could be seen on the first and third floors, a
woman looking out of a window on the second floor, and musicians
playing on the floor below her. The liquid that was poured into the
jug flowed through the handle to the base and out the spout, bypass-
ing completely the “open windows.” Another such marvel was the
“Tantalus cup” equipped with concealed hollows and tubes; when a
person drank from it, the level of wine would sink, but the drinker
would either be denied any wine or have it pour out from the cup’s
165
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