#i got interested in european medieval food very recently and i havent had time to read much about it

[wawek]

Such a cool topic! Yeah the old italian problem I assume applies to nearly all european national dishes (we didn’t have potatoes once upon a time??). I think basically all the ‘classic’ welsh dishes are post-medieval.

The 14th c diet would have been v similar to mid/southern English, excluding influence of more hills and sheep farming (already big by 14th c), so you can really look around widely. Obviously it would have been super difficult without some sort of grain finding its way into your bowl. For those living a settled life, gruel was defintely the default (as in Poland or anywhere in Europe I assume).

Local texture I can add is walking up a local mountain/hill, the Blorenge (rhymes with Orange!!!!), with my father and collecting what we’d call wimberries (commonly: bilberry, in Welsh: lluen). These aren’t grown commerically and were v likely there in 14th c. Tiny, blue, and tasty in a grassy way.

Today’s ‘welsh cakes’ are clearly products of a later age, but the idea of cooking things on a large slab of slate/stone/etc called ‘bakestones’ (‘bake stones’ are confusingly something else) is something that we could reasonably imagine being v old. Probably something like an oatcake was the proto-welsh cake. The bakestone itself might be a fun weapon in a pinch for dnd.

So yeah, a bilberry oatcake baked on a stone. An authentic treat from South Wales 14th c, maybe.

I've never used hogweed in cooking! What would you reccomend? Oh but yeah we do have shit tons of garlic, as in most of Europe. The local castle, Castell Coch, (a weird and cool 19th c pseudo-medieval build today, but was around in 14th c too), is just surrounded absolutely everywhere by the smell of wild garlic. I use the leaves in a stir-fry instead of spinach.

Omg this is all very interesting thank you for writing so much :0c!!! I really appreciate the info about bilberries and welsh cakes and bakestones, this is all so so cool!!

And to be honest i have also never used it myself jdbdjf i just have a very hazy memory of my grandma collecting and drying it in the kitchen but i have no idea what for :'3. But ive seen it in some foraging videos now and apparently you can pickle the leaves and also use em as greens in soups ect, also spinach like... and i made a mistake as well, giant hogweed was indeed imported only in the 19th century but common hogweed is native to europe and is actually where the name for one of my favourite soups "barszcz" comes from... it was originally made from that plant i had no idea :0c bc nowdays its commonly made with beets...