FOODSTUFFS
anise, caraway, and cardamom.4 Considered by the medical commu-
nity as eminently healthy, wine was not only drunk but also included
in many different dishes. For those who had the means or lived in a re-
gion where wine was plentiful and cheap, pieces of bread, or “sops,”
soaked in wine were a popular breakfast. Cooks, too, made extensive
use of wine in the kitchen, judging from the many late-medieval
recipes that ask for the liquid. It figures prominently in soups and
potages, especially in Germany, and in a variety of sour sauces, for in-
stance. As an accompaniment to food, clear, fragrant, and good-
tasting wine was recommended in the health books. Diners were also
advised to drink wine in more concentrated form at the beginning of
the meal, the reason being that the food consumed later would pre-
vent the wine from going to the person’s head. It was generally held
that children under five should not be given any wine, and those
under fourteen only small amounts that were well diluted. Described
as warm and dry in nature, wine was thought to be the ideal drink for
convalescents, pregnant and lactating women, and the elderly. Many
were the virtues ascribed to wine, such as fortifying the body, acting as
a digestive and a diuretic, correcting humoral imbalances, and bright-
ening the mood. Thick red wine was especially praised as a foodstuff
easily converted into healthy blood, from which, of course, it was not
dissimilar in appearance to begin with. In conjunction with other
food, wine supposedly acted as a kind of “vaporizer,” carrying even
the smallest food particles to all regions of the body. Excessive wine
consumption, however, was blamed for a variety of ills, ranging from
damage to the brain to trembling and the loss of motor skills.
Mead
Mead, with its principal ingredients water and honey, is the oldest
known alcoholic drink of the Teutonic tribes; it was later adopted by
the Romans and still drunk in Europe in medieval times. After the in-
vention of beer brewing, and wine making, however, the importance
of mead slowly waned, and by the end of the Middle Ages it appears
only occasionally in the culinary literature. The relatively few dishes
that ask for mead usually mention it as an alternative to wine or beer.
A detailed recipe for mead is contained in the oldest German cook-
book from the mid-fourteenth century. In addition to two parts water
and one part honey, hops, sage, and yeast are listed as ingredients. A
similar recipe from Paris circa 1390 suggests the infusion of the
ground spices ginger, long pepper, grains of paradise, and cloves as a
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