Soooooooooo who is hungry for Tudor Food? :D You’ll never be stuck for reading on a rainy day with a copy of Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About the Tudors but were Afraid to Ask on your shelf. It’s packed with fascinating titbits on the notorious Tudor monarchy, from the undervalued Henry VII to the overrated Henry VIII and his Queen Anne Boleyn’s brilliant daughter Elizabeth I. You’ll not only read about the monarchy and the nobility but the everyday life of the common people. Covering everything from the economy, crime and punishment, music, literature, Tudor dress, ghosts, the origins of nursery rhymes and one of my favourite topics, Tudor food, there’s something to suit your every mood. Author Terry Breverton joins us today for a good long discussion on the Tudor dinner table. Tudor people actually did have perfectly good table manners didn’t they? There was a form of etiquette at court, the great houses and with the gentry, but for the poor meals were just fuel to get them through a long working day – the mass of the people worked or starved. In a civilized household, at some point before the meal, the hands would be washed, often in water sweetened with roses or rosemary. In nearly every home, the meal would begin with the saying of Grace. With the saying of Grace, the company would begin to eat. If a man had servants, they would pass from guest to guest, with each dish, and the guests would help themselves to as much from each plate as they liked. Even in gentry households, the fingers were generally used for plucking out the tasty morsels from the dishes, the sign of good manners being that you did not return to the dish anything you had touched. If no servants were available, the women and children of the house would serve the dishes, sitting down to eat after all the men and guests had taken what they wanted. All men at the table ate with their hats on (unless they went hatless out of deference to a high-ranking member of their dinner party), and every well bred guest had a clean, white napkin on the left shoulder or wrist, upon which soiled fingers or knives could be wiped. The servants who attended the table were hatless, since they could not remove their hats (their hands being full) and they would not dream of attending upon their betters with their hats on. Conversation at the table was considered commendable, but riot and clamour was frowned upon. When a guest came to supper, he or she would bring utensils along. The host was not expected to supply them. The rich would have a beautifully made and adorned knife and spoon (carried in an ornamental case in Tudor times only a spoon and a knife were used at mealtimes, forks were not used for eating with until the late 17th century. Tudors would have used a spoon for serving and a knife for cutting the food. Fingers were often used for eating with. The poor man often went about with his spoon in his hat or his pocket, and his knife on his belt. The Boke of Keruying (The Book of Carving) by Wynkyn de Worde, printed in 1508, lists the rules and customs which should be followed by those preparing and by those serving the dishes: it includes everything from the hand washing ceremonies to the exact placement of the trenchers (bread plates) by the carver, who could only touch the food with his left hand, by a thumb and two fingers etc. One instruction is: ‘Place the salt on the right side of your Lord’s seat, and the trenchers to the left of the salt. Then take the knives and arrange the loaves of bread side by side, with the spoons and napkins neatly folded by the bread. Cover your bread and trenchers, spoons and knives, and set a salt cellar with two trencher loaves at each and of the table … then serve your Lord faultlessly.’ What crockery and cutlery did was used on a Tudor table? There were no forks – they had not been invented. They used wooden spoons, fingers and knives. Poorer people ate off trenchers, while richer classes might use pewter. One important change in dining habits was that trenchers (plates) began to be made of wood rather than thick slices of bread. These square wooden boards were carved with separate hollows for meat, gravy and salt. Silver was very rarely used for plates by the nobles and court. Diners would eat off of plates suitable to the wealth of the hosts. Food was often eaten off large slices of bread called trenchers, which could then be eaten at the end of the meal or in large houses given to the dogs, servants or the poor. Richer people generally ate off of wooden trenchers and bowls for everyday meals, but might have pewter plates for special occasions. The wealthier would have pewter for daily use and silver for special occasions. Middle classes generally drank out of crockery, wood or leather, with pewter cups being a valued luxury. The very wealthy had glass goblets for the best company. China-ware was unknown. How big an operation was a kitchen that served the king’s court? Tudor feasts were legendary for their extravagance and Henry’s annual hospitality bill was enormous. During Henry’s reign, vegetables, previously considered poor man’s food, became increasingly popular with the nobility. The king was especially partial to artichokes, loved fruit and, together with Anne Boleyn, shared a passion for strawberries and cherries. Around half of the population lived at subsistence level, but Henry VIII enjoyed banquets so much that he extended the kitchen of Hampton Court Palace to fill fifty-five rooms. His 200 members of kitchen staff provided meals of up to fourteen courses for the 600 people at court. Typical dishes included spit-roasted meat, usually a pig or boar. Only the rich could afford fresh meat year-round, and only the very rich could afford to roast it, since this required much more fuel than boiling. The richest employed a ‘spit boy’ to turn the spit all day, although dogs were also used. Each member of the court consumed about twenty-three animals every year. Hampton Court kitchens were built to feed the Court of Henry VIII, designed to feed at least 600 people twice a day. You can still see the largest kitchens of Tudor England at Hampton Court, and they are often still used to prepare Tudor meals. Between their construction in 1530 and the royal family’s last visit to the palace in 1737, the kitchens were a central part of palace life. For many people today, Hampton Court Palace is Henry VIII, and Henry’s abiding reputation remains a ‘consumer of food and women’. But Henry’s vast kitchens in the palace were not for him. They were built to feed the six hundred or so members of the court, entitled to eat at the palace twice a day. This was a vast operation, larger than any modern hotel, and one that had to cope without modern conveniences. The kitchens had a number of Master Cooks, each with a team of Yeomen and Sergeants working for them. The mouths of the 1,200-odd members of Henry VIII’s court required an endless stream of dinners to be produced in the enormous kitchens of Hampton Court Palace. The annual provision of meat for the Tudor court stood at 1,240 oxen, 8,200 sheep, 2,330 deer, 760 calves, 1,870 pigs and 53 wild boar (pork or boar meat was called brawn at this time). This was all washed down with 600,000 gallons of ale each year, enough to fill an Olympic-size swimming pool, and around 75,000 gallons of wine, enough to fill 1,500 bathtubs. What sort of dishes would one see on a nobleman’s table? Meat and fish were luxuries reserved for the rich, who could choose among ‘brown meats’ such as beef, veal, pork, lamb, mutton, venison, as well as rabbit, fowl, salmon, trout, eel and shellfish. A boar’s head, garnished with bay and rosemary, served as the centrepiece of Christmas feasts, known as the Yule Boar. The rich also ate bittern, duck, geese, owl, pheasant, blackbirds, swans and peacocks. Pigeons, robins, sparrows, heron, crane, pheasant, woodcock, partridge and blackbirds were also eaten. People also ate badgers, hedgehogs, otters, tortoises and seagulls. Whole roasted peacock was served dressed in its own iridescent blue feathers (which were plucked, then replaced after the bird had been cooked), with its beak gilded in gold leaf. Roasted swan was often presented to the table with a gold crown upon its head. English law still stipulates that all mute swans are owned by the Crown and may not be eaten without permission from the queen. The Tudors liked spicy sauces and pies. They occasionally took vegetables such as turnips, carrots, radishes, and fruits such as apples, plums, gages and wild strawberries. The menu for a nobleman’s dinner of around 1550 included: roast beef, powder (salted) beef, veal, leg of mutton with ‘gallandine sauce’, turkey, boiled capon, hen boiled with leeks, partridge pheasant, larks, quails, snipe, woodcock, salmon, sole, turbot and whiting, lobster, crayfish, shrimps, ell, pike, young rabbit, leverets, marrow on toast, artichokes, turnips, green peas, cucumbers and olives, quince pie, tat of almonds, fruit tarts and cheese. A merchant’s dinner of the same time would be slightly less adventurous, featuring sausage, cabbage, porridge, pike with a ‘high Dutch sauce’ stewed carp, roasted blackbirds, larks, woodcock and partridge. And what sort of dishes would we see on a peasant’s table? The poor generally ate ‘white meats’, which contained little meat, and consisted primarily of dishes using milk, cheese, butter, eggs, breads and pottages (soups). Peasants mostly ate coarse bread and ‘pottage’, a thick soup in which onions, cabbage and beans were boiled up with herbs and perhaps a little pork or bacon. Most food was too expensive for the poor. For them, bread made from wheat was a rarity, usually it was coarse and made from barley or rye, but in hard times they used a mixture of beans, oats or acorns. Their diet was occasionally supplemented with locally caught fish, rabbits or birds, but taking any larger game was poaching and punishable. The poor also ate a great many more greens than the rich, who insisted that their vegetables be elaborately prepared. All classes ate fish, because the law required that fish be consumed on Fridays and Saturdays, and other meats laid aside. This was a government mandated support for the fishing industry. Despite bread being a staple part of the diet it could actually get quite expensive to make couldn’t it? Bread was the staple of the Elizabethan diet, and people of different statuses ate bread of different qualities. Wealthy people also enjoyed a fine white bread called manchet that was made from wheat flour with a little bran and wheat germ added. It was creamy-yellow in colour. Raveled bread or yeoman’s bread was made from coarser whole-wheat flour with the bran left in, a darker colour and less expensive than manchet. ‘Carter’s bread’ was dark brown or black bread, the bread that the poorest people ate. It was made from maslin; a mixture of rye and wheat, or from drage, a mixture of barley and wheat, or from rye alone. Horse-corn was bread made from peas, beans, lentils and oats and was eaten by poor people when the wheat harvest failed. Sometimes acorns were used. The bread would have been kept in an ‘ark’, a wooden box, to protect it from mice and damp. Everyone had to eat a lot of fish on fasting days, what are some of the more creative substitutions for fish? In 1563 William Cecil introduced ‘Cecil’s Fast’, which imposed punishments for eating meat during Lent and on certain other days of the week. This was imposed to ensure the population consumed enough fish that an adequate number of seamen could earn their living. Thus it would be possible to maintain sufficient ships and crews who could defend England in time of war. Until they were hunted to extinction, beavers were classified as fish, and grilled beavers’ tails were thus popular on Fridays, when it was forbidden to eat meat. Whale meat was fairly common and cheap, due to the plentiful supply of whales in the North Sea, each of which could feed hundreds of people. It was typically served boiled or very well roasted, again on a Friday as whales were classified as fish. Friday was a meat-free day, but for centuries the church had allowed Barnacle Geese to be eaten on a Friday. No-one had seen the nest of the migrating geese, and it was believed that they emerged from barnacles, so were thus regarded as fish. Not until 1597 were their nests found on Novaya Zemlya in the Arctic Ocean by William Barents’ expedition. What sort of sweets did Tudor people enjoy? The poor could not afford sugar or almonds – sweets were non-existent except wild fruits. The rich ate marchpane (marzipan) sweets, made of finely ground almonds and sugar, which was then mixed with rose water. The marchpane would then be made into flat discs and baked before being decorated with other marchpane shapes, confits (sugared seeds, spice or dried fruit) or, for very special occasions, with edible gold leaf. It is said that Elizabeth I was given a marchpane model of St Paul’s Cathedral and that someone made a marchpane chess set. Such sweets were given as gifts, or to impress guests when giving a feast. Other sweets would include sugar ribbons, gingerbread, gooseberry tart with saffron pastry, pears in spiced honey syrup, apple fritters, or spiced custard with dates and raisins. Fruit was preserved in syrup for the winter months. There are recipes for Tudor sweets on the net. Desserts such as pastries, tarts, cakes and crystallized fruit were popular. Puddings were made with sugar and honey. Many courtiers had rotten teeth because of the diet. Vegetables were thought as food for the poor, as the rich considered food from the ground to be lowly, and only made up about 20% of the rich man’s diet. Diet was far from healthy. Both rich and the poor had imbalanced diets. The lack of vegetables and fruits in their diets caused a deficiency in vitamin C, sometimes resulting in scurvy. John Nichols’ history of Queen Elizabeth’s journeys through Britain offers a glimpse of the luxurious nature of some sweets: ‘Where the Queen paraded through a country town, almost every Pageant was a Pantheon; even the pastry cooks were expert mythologists: at dinner select transformations of Ovid’s Metamorphoses were exhibited in confectionery and the splendid icing of an immense historic plumb-cake was embossed with a delicious basso-rilievo of the destruction of Troy.’ What’s the strangest dish you’ve come across?What sort of sweets did Tudor people enjoy? The poor could not afford sugar or almonds – sweets were non-existent except wild fruits. The rich ate marchpane (marzipan) sweets, made of finely ground almonds and sugar, which was then mixed with rose water. The marchpane would then be made into flat discs and baked before being decorated with other marchpane shapes, confits (sugared seeds, spice or dried fruit) or, for very special occasions, with edible gold leaf. It is said that Elizabeth I was given a marchpane model of St Paul’s Cathedral and that someone made a marchpane chess set. Such sweets were given as gifts, or to impress guests when giving a feast. Other sweets would include sugar ribbons, gingerbread, gooseberry tart with saffron pastry, pears in spiced honey syrup, apple fritters, or spiced custard with dates and raisins. Fruit was preserved in syrup for the winter months. There are recipes for Tudor sweets on the net. Desserts such as pastries, tarts, cakes and crystallized fruit were popular. Puddings were made with sugar and honey. Many courtiers had rotten teeth because of the diet. Vegetables were thought as food for the poor, as the rich considered food from the ground to be lowly, and only made up about 20% of the rich man’s diet. Diet was far from healthy. Both rich and the poor had imbalanced diets. The lack of vegetables and fruits in their diets caused a deficiency in vitamin C, sometimes resulting in scurvy. John Nichols’ history of Queen Elizabeth’s journeys through Britain offers a glimpse of the luxurious nature of some sweets: ‘Where the Queen paraded through a country town, almost every Pageant was a Pantheon; even the pastry cooks were expert mythologists: at dinner select transformations of Ovid’s Metamorphoses were exhibited in confectionery and the splendid icing of an immense historic plumb-cake was embossed with a delicious basso-rilievo of the destruction of Troy.’ What’s the strangest dish you’ve come across? Tudor chefs came up with the idea of the ‘cockenthrice,’ which can take the form a pig’s upper body sewn onto the lower body of a turkey or chicken, including the bird’s long legs. The cook should boil and drain the animals before slicing them in half at the waist, and sewing them together so that the pig’s upper body is on the chicken’s lower body and vice versa. The recipe then demands that the chef stuff the creature as he would a pig and then ‘putte hem on a spete, and Roste hym’ which means roasting the meat on a spit over an open fire. Just before the creation is ready, the recipe says to brush egg yolk mixed with a little saffron, ginger and the juice of parsley over the meat so that it goes golden. The recipe also suggests the chef should ‘erue it forth for a ryal mete’ (serve it quickly for a royal meat option.) While such dishes were designed to be show-stoppers, they were by no means the most complex Tudor dishes for raucous dinner parties. Some were designed to be the entertainment as well as the main course and one, called Rôti Sans Pareil was an intricate version of Turducken, which is a a duck stuffed inside a chicken stuffed inside a turkey. It was created by stuffing 17 birds into one another like Russian dolls, ranging from the smallest at the centre of the dish – the Warbler – to the largest – a Giant Bustard. Historians believe the cockenthrice might have been inspired by explorers’ trips to the Americas and the tales of strange animals which lived there. The landowner and gentry would keep geese, to be eaten at feasts. The gentry would have had dovecots in their courtyards, as a great delicacy was ‘squab’, or young dove. Like pigs, many people would have kept chickens, not to be eaten until the end of their natural lives. They were needed for eggs, and for pest control in gardens. Many wild birds also found their way into the cooking cauldrons. The wealthy ate pheasant and grouse, while the poor might trap blackbirds to make into a pie. It is known that a 16th-century amusement was to place live birds in a pie, as a form of entremet. An Italian cookbook from 1549, translated into English in 1598, contained such a recipe. The nursery rhyme Sing a song of six pence has the line of ‘four and twenty blackbirds baked in a pie’. The way Tudors made pie crusts was a little different in that the thick crust could be baked first, and would rise forming a pot, hence the term ‘pot pie.’ The lid would be removed from the pie, and birds would then be set inside, the lid put back on, and then this entertaining dish placed before the host of the party. Thus the birds were not actually cooked in the pie. It is said that not only were birds baked into pies, but rabbits, frogs, dogs, dwarfs (who would pop out and recite poetry) and at one time a whole little musical group. Today the rich have strippers popping out of cakes. The experimental celebrity chef Heston Blumenthal attempted to create the dish for an episode of his television series Heston’s Medieval Feast. Discovering that blackbirds are a protected species he altered the recipe to pigeon. The pie and pie lid were cooked separately and allowed to cool, and live pigeons inserted only moments before presentation. Initial attempts resulted in the pigeons refusing to fly out. This was solved by using trained homing pigeons to fly to their cages suspended in the ceiling. When the pie was opened, the homing pigeons flew to their cages. I think we also have to talk about feasts here. In a feast in 1457 given by Gaston IV, Comte de Foix, at Tours to honour the Hungarian King, there were seven courses; starting with toast of the finest bread, dipped in wine, followed by capon paté and hams of wild boar, with no less than seven kinds of pottage, all served on silver plates. Then came ragouts, made of every kind of game bird and wild bird, including swan and geese. In the first entremet came twelve men wheeling in a castle on a rock – a fully realised scale model castle with four corner towers with a lady sat in the window of each, while a child sang atop each tower! The feast resumed with more pottage and other dishes, with the added interest of everything being golden in colour or gilded in real gold. The second entremet saw six costumed men carrying a man disguised as a tiger, the tiger spat fire while the men danced! The next course included delicate tarts, sweet dariols, and fried oranges. The most impressive entremet was next … twenty-four men dragged in a model of a mountain containing two fountains, one of rose-water the other of ‘eau de muscade’, to the delight of everyone rabbits came out of the rocks, scampering, while live birds emerged to fly all around the hall. Four boys and four girls, all dressed as savages, came down the mountain and danced a morisco. Desserts followed with hippocras and wafers, with a final entremet of man all in crimson satin riding a crimson harnessed horse, carrying a wax model garden filled with roses to set before the ladies. The last course involved a sugared heraldic menagerie, sculpted stags, lions, monkeys and various other birds and beasts, each holding in its paw the coat of arms of the Hungarian King. Then in came a live peacock, with the French Queens coat of arms around its neck and the coat of arms of the French ladies court draped over its body. All the French lords pledged loyalty and support to the Hungarian King (it being customary to make vows of chivalry on birds). ‘The Feast of the Pheasant’ was held at Lille in 1454. From the Memoires d’Olivier de La Marche: ‘The dishes were such that they had to be served on trolleys, and seemed infinite in number … The figure of a girl, quite naked, stood against the pillar. Hippocras [mulled wine] sprayed from her right breast and she was guarded by a live lion who sat near her on a table in front of my lord the duke … My lord the duke was served at table by a two-headed horse … next came a white stag ridden by a young boy who sang marvellously, while the stag accompanied him with the tenor part … Then two knights of the Order of the Golden Fleece brought in two damsels, together with a pheasant, which had a golden collar around its neck decorated with rubies and fine large pearls …’
Posted on: Mon, 10 Nov 2014 17:12:46 +0000
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