FOOD PREPARATION
tending the fire to drawing water, scrubbing, and guarding the food-
stuffs from theft. At the court of the duke of Burgundy fuellers, fire
tenders, potters, and doorkeepers carried out these tasks. But by far
the biggest contingent of workers in a big medieval kitchen were the
scullions. They were the unpaid apprentices who turned the spits,
cleaned the fish, scoured the pots and pans, and usually also slept in
the kitchen. Some scullions managed to climb in the hierarchy of the
kitchen and end up as cooks or master cooks. The already mentioned
Taillevent, chief cook of King Charles V of France, too, began as a
kitchen boy in the early fourteenth century.13
The primary workplace where cooks and their staff prepared most
of the food was the kitchen. In the early Middle Ages the hearth was
still centrally located, even in the wealthier households, with the
kitchen and dining hall forming one big room. Gradually the kitchen
became a separate room, or in some cases a separate building con-
nected with the main building through a walkway that was usually
covered to protect the servitors and their precious cargo from the el-
ements.14 There were several reasons why those who could afford it
tried to separate cooking from dining, first and foremost to minimize
the danger of fire, but also the noise and the smells emanating from
the kitchen area. The big aristocratic and monastic kitchens of the
later Middle Ages usually had stone walls and a stone floor, and more
than one fireplace built against the walls. The kitchens of the dukes of
Burgundy in Dijon, France, for instance, had six stone-hooded
hearths built in pairs against three of the four walls. A big window
and sinks occupied the fourth wall.15 Windows and louvers in the roof
made sure that medieval kitchens were properly ventilated. Derived
from the French word l ’ouvert, meaning “the open one,” the louver
was a lantern-like structure on the roof that allowed the smoke to es-
cape through openings on the sides. Slatted louvers were closed in
bad weather by pulling on a string. More durable and entertaining
than these wooden louvers were the ones made of pottery, often in
the shape of a head with the smoke escaping through the eyes and
mouth.16 Windows and the glow from the fireplaces were the main
sources of light in medieval kitchens, complemented at times with
candles and torches.
Kitchen waste was either dumped into the river, if the castle or
monastery was situated on one, or dumped down a chute into the
moat that surrounded the castle walls and was periodically cleaned. In
medieval towns householders frequently dumped their garbage di-
rectly in the street below, judging from the various laws that tried to
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