Adamson - Food in Medieval Times

FOOD IN MEDIEVAL TIMES
If we ask for the reasons why imitation meat dishes for Lent were so
popular in the Middle Ages, several come to mind: especially in the
upper classes from which most of the medieval cookbooks originated,
the concepts of food and entertainment went together. This is exem-
plified in the medieval banquet, which was as much an aesthetic and
social event involving all the senses as it was a gastronomic one.50 The
idea of making dishes look like something else found its most vivid ex-
pression in the fantastic creations called sotelties that were an integral
part of great feasts. Furthermore, by telling the faithful that the host
is the body of Christ and stamping his picture on it, the Christian
church, too, made use of the idea of imitation food. By indulging in
imitation meat on fast days medieval diners may well have felt some
titillation. After all, they were, on the surface at least, breaking the fast
without the consequence of committing a sin. Another reason for the
proliferation of imitation meat may have been the belief that by eating
something that looked like the forbidden foodstuff, one could partake
of some of the powers that were thought to be inherent in the actual
meat dish.51
The internal struggle over fasting that Christians in the Middle Ages
were engaged in, and that led to such phenomena as imitation meat,
also found its expression in art and literature, where it is often por-
trayed as a literal battle. Long before Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s fa-
mous 1559 painting of the Battle between Carnival and Lent, in which
corpulent Carnival and gaunt Lent are involved in a joust, the Spanish
writer Juan Ruiz, the archpriest of Hita who died in 1350, describes in
an elaborate allegory the battle between Sir Flesh (Don Carnal) and
Lady Lent (Doña Cuaresma), and their respective armies. In the Span-
ish narrative poem, Lent’s armor consists of roach, salmon, pike,
plaice, and lamprey. With fish bones as her spurs and a thin sole as her
sword, she rides humbly on a mule. Carnival, by contrast, wears pork,
mutton, partridge, quail, and a boar’s head as a helmet, and rides on a
proud stag in the poem. Attacks by roast capons, beef, eggs, lard, and
animal milk which form Don Carnal’s army, are countered by Doña
Cuaresma’s troupes of whiting, halibut, mackerel, herring, olive oil,
and almond milk.52 Lent’s victory on Ash Wednesday is only tempo-
rary, because after 40 days the battle escalates again and this time the
army of meat gains the upper hand and celebrates its victory in a
sumptuous feast on Easter Sunday.
As this poem makes abundantly clear, food was on the minds of me-
dieval Christians practically all the time, and the deprivations endured
on fast days could easily lead to excesses on feast days. To counteract
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