FOOD IN MEDIEVAL TIMES
and cheap inner organs like liver, kidney, spleen, and heart. Tough
pieces are pounded and put in water mixed with vinegar, powdered
spices, and bread. Dubois maintains that this is good food for hard-
working people. Furthermore, cartilage, soft bones, tendons, and
nerves, pounded and well cut are acceptable ingredients. Thick and
sticky ragouts with ingredients such as testicles, milk, sour milk, or
bread soaked in milk are also for the lower classes. All the animals and
birds peasants and townspeople can catch are edible, he claims, among
them dogs, cats, rats, foxes, donkeys, crows, barn owls, magpies, kites,
starlings, and any other birds that are young and supple. Tough birds,
such as ringdoves, are to be parboiled in water, then cooked with
herbs or cabbage. Also listed as edible foods by Dubois are snails,
earthworms, ring snakes, and frogs. The latter are to be cleaned,
washed, and fried in butter or oil with a little bread or flour. For lean
days he recommends herring, fresh cod, squid, oysters (for instance,
cooked in salted butter), and salted salmon. When it comes to drink,
he concedes that wine is too expensive and therefore advises the poor
to drink other fermented drinks, such as beer, cider, pear must, apple
juice, pear juice, other juices made from wild berries, or water boiled
and flavored with a little honey, sugar, grapes, licorice, vinegar, or
bran, yeast, bread, or an assortment of herbs and spices, beer, cider, or
pear must, or water mixed with tartar (acid sediment deposited during
fermentation) of good strong wine.
Regarding poor intellectuals, medieval and Renaissance medicine
faced a dilemma. On the one hand, their bodies were considered inca-
pable of digesting the coarse food of the hardworking peasants due to
their sedentary lifestyle, but on the other their modest incomes made
it impossible for these individuals to indulge in the fine foods of the
leisure class. Dubois suggests starting the day with gruel made from
rye bread, wheat bread if possible, or cereals such as barley, oats, rice,
or millet prepared with a little fat, lard, butter, or oil. Water mixed
with a little vinegar, cow’s milk, or beer makes for a cheap beverage.
In cold weather spices can be mixed in whose humor adds heat to the
beverage. Gruel with cheese, and the veins of liver are to be avoided.
Starving students can appease their hunger with vegetable soup, or
with cod or other cheap fish that can be smoked for flavor. Fresh eggs
are a good staple, and for dessert Dubois lists boiled or roasted chest-
nuts, almonds, hazelnuts, prunes, raisins, dry figs, or fruits fried in
butter. Pastries are too expensive and unhealthy anyway, he maintains.
Moderately priced light wine is the ideal drink, but fermented drinks
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