FOOD PREPARATION
really know how dominant their taste was in a given dish. Spices surely
lost some of their strength between the time they were harvested in
Africa and Asia and the time they finally reached the European con-
sumer, which could be months. Being sold and stored in powder form
rather than whole also likely diminished their potency. And, of course,
adulteration reduced the quality and strength of spices, if not chang-
ing their taste altogether. On top of that, medieval cookbooks hardly
ever give amounts for the ingredients to be added.
Aside from spices, acidic liquids were a medieval predilection, one
that the lower classes also could afford. Wine, vinegar, and verjuice, or
the fermented or unfermented juice of unripe grapes or other unripe
fruit, formed the basis for a wide variety of dishes. In the fifteenth cen-
tury citrus fruits such as lemons, limes, citrons, and bitter oranges, to-
gether with pomegranates became part of the repertoire of acidic food
substances. Unlike vinegar and verjuice, however, these fruits were ex-
clusive foodstuffs only the upper class could afford. To produce the
many sauces that accompanied roast meat, these tart liquids were usu-
ally combined with powdered spices and thickened by way of reduc-
tion or concentration, bread crumbs, eggs, the liver and breast meat
of fowl, ground almonds, or rice flour. Starch was used only rarely as
a thickener, and flour, dairy products, or roux, the combination of fat
and flour, not at all.52
To counterbalance the tart flavor of the various acidic liquids, sugar,
honey, must (unfermented grape juice), dried fruit, and other sweeten-
ers were frequently added giving the dishes the desired sweet-and-sour
or bittersweet taste that was the hallmark of medieval European cook-
ery. When it comes to fat, pork fat was the undisputed king in the Mid-
dle Ages. Olive oil and nut and seed oils were used in salads—inasmuch
as salads were eaten at all in a given region—and these oils were used as
substitutes for pork fat on fast days. Butter played a comparatively
minor role in the medieval cookbooks. Much more prevalent than the
taste of cow’s milk and butter was the taste of almonds. Like the ubiq-
uitous grape juice, almonds were a durable if somewhat pricier food-
stuff that was immensely versatile. Not as distinct in flavor as vinegar or
verjuice, in fact rather bland, almonds were used in various ways,
whole, slivered, or ground, or turned into almond oil, almond milk, or
almond butter. The almond’s flavor would either disappear completely,
blend in with the other flavors, or be the main flavor, albeit a dainty
one, as in the case of marzipan, the famous sweetmeat.53
For those who could not afford the luxury of expensive spices, gar-
den herbs and bulbs were a way to add flavor to their dishes. Leeks,
67
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