#medieval pottage

[thejoyofseax]

Sigginstown Pottage

One of the most basic dishes of the medieval period - and in any culture, pretty much - is the pottage. This is basically "stuff cooked in a pot with water", which is a very broad definition. This particular "recipe" is one that I think is straightforward enough, uses common enough ingredients, and is palatable enough that it was almost certainly made in pre-Norman Ireland (by statistical inevitability, if nothing else). I've given it the name of "Sigginstown Pottage" because I first made it at Sigginstown Castle, and it's useful to have a name by which to refer to it.

1 smoked pale ham, chopped into 1cm cubes 2 onions, chopped (or some celery, also chopped) 2 leeks, roughly chopped 6 carrots, roughly chopped c. 500g pearl barley, bulgur wheat, or other likely whole grain Water to cover

Put everything above into a pot, and simmer until the meat and grains are cooked. Taste and season with some black pepper if needed. Serve hot.

Some observations: Onion is the more "authentic" between it and celery, but both were available. I've been going easy on onions lately due to food sensitivities. Leeks are absolutely a period Irish food, and possibly close to a staple; they're mentioned a fair bit in texts.

The pale ham (I don't know if this is known outside Ireland; it's a small chunk of cured ham, which is pretty salty) provides enough salt that you shouldn't need to add any more. The smoking is pretty solidly attested in period by the number of bones we see with holes for hooks.

You'll see some people claiming that carrots only arrived in Ireland with the Normans, but there are carrot seeds in the archaeobotanic remnants from Viking Dublin, and there's an old Irish word, meacon, which denotes tap-rooted vegetables like parsnips and carrots, but is usually used for carrots. So I'm pretty confident in including these.

The end result is a very solid, stick-to-the-ribs kind of stew; good eating for colder weather or when you've been doing physical work. I've only ever cooked it in cast iron, and it turns out that if you leave the leftovers in the pot overnight, the combination of whole grains and iron results in a horrifically grey stuff, which still tastes fine, but looks absolutely awful. So eat it hot, and don't leave leftovers.

[milkywayan]

tfw you see some stupid post that paints medieval peasants eating just plain grey porridge and acting as if cheese, butter or meat was too exotic or expensive for them, and have to use all your inner strength to not just reblog it with an angry rant and throwing hands with people. so i will just post the angry rant here

no, medieval people did not only eat grey porridge with no herbs or spices, they had a great variety of vegetables we dont even have anymore, grains and dairy products, not to mention fruits and meats, all seasonal and changing with the time of the year. no, medieval food was not just tasteless, maybe this will surprise some of you but you can make tasty food without excessive spice use, and can use a variety of good tasting herbs. if you'd ever tried to cook some medieval recipes you would know that. medieval people needed a lot of energy for their work, if they would only eat fucking porridge all of the time they would get scurvy and die before they could even built a civilisation. they had something called 'pottage' which was called that because it was cooked in one pot. you could leave the pot on the fire and go about your day, doing stuff and come back to a cooked meal. they put in what was available that time of the year, together with grains, peas, herbs, meat etc etc. again, if you would try to make it, like i have with my reenactment friends, it can actually be really good and diverse.

dont confuse medieval peasants with poor people in victorian england. dont think that TV shows what it was really like. dont think that dirty grey dressed people covered in filth were how the people looked like.

they made use of everything. too poor to buy proper meat? buy a sheeps head and cook it. they ate nettle and other plants we consider weeds now. they foraged and made use of what they found. hell, there are medieval cook books!

most rural people had animals, they had chickens (eggs), goats (milk and dairy), cows (milk and dairy), sheep (milk and dairy) and pigs (meat machine), and after butchering they used ALL THE PARTS of the animal. you know how much meat you can get out of a pig, even the smaller medieval breeds? the answer is a lot

if you had the space you always had a vegetable garden. there are ways to make sure you have something growing there every time of the year. as i said they had a variety of vegetables (edit: yes onions are vegetables, for those who dont seem to know) we dont have anymore due to how farming evolved. you smoked pork in the chimney, stored apples in the dry places in your house, had a grain chest. people could go to the market to buy fish and meat, both fresh and dried/smoked. they had ale, beer and wine, that was not a luxury that was a staple part of their diet.

this post ended once again up being longer than i planned, but please for the love of the gods, just actually educate yourself on this stuff and dont just say stupid wrong shit, takk

[homunculus-argument]

The more you look into it, the funnier the whole myth of The Grim And Depressing Dark Ages is, in the extent in which it covers everything. Like no matter what area of medieval life you look at, the common misconception of it is something bleak, drab, colourless, joyless and smelling like shit. Like at best, an average peasant's life was repetitive, boring, joyless and smells like shit, and at worst it was terrifying, hopeless chaos that smells like blood and rotting plague corpses. I mean okay it was like that sometimes, but not all the time. They had enjoyments in life. Like consider food.

Medieval peasants' food wasn't just grey wet gruel for every meal and hard bread if you were lucky. One major staple food that was commonly eaten by peasants across Europe was pottage. I think every time and culture has some variation of the "just throw whatever we've got at hand in there and boil/fry/cook that shit" sort of meal, and for medieval peasants, that was pottage. And as the name would imply, it's made by throwing the aforementioned whatever-you-have-at-hand ingredients into a pot and then boiling that shit. And that's what's for dinner every day unless it's a special occasion.

And yeah eating the same damn boiled mush every damn day probably doesn't sound much less depressing than just eating bland gruel, but that's the thing, the pottage wasn't the same thing all the time, every time. The ingredients varied by whatever was available at any given time, by harvests, by what herbs are in season and what produce happens to be in the most ample supply. Different ratios and combinations of the same ingredients, fresh or dried or otherwise preserved, changing from season to season.

Freaking imagine being a medieval peasant whose favourite food in the entire world is spring pottage with meadowsweet mead, best thing you can think of. You've heard talk of finer meals, roast boar with wine sauce that they cook for kings, but you're pretty damn sure that it can't better than the pottage you get on the first weeks of May. The one meal that you'd have every day year round if you could, but you can't, so it's the highlight of your year. The thing you look forward to for months at a time. You're sure that is what is served every day in Heaven, and not only are you 100% down to physically fight somebody about it, you absolutely have. You broke your nose, it never quite healed right, and you regret nothing.

And then spring finally comes, and you've been eagerly keeping an eye on how all the right ingredients start to reach their right time, and not only have you been looking forward to May ever since the snows started melting because that specific Best Goddamn Pottage is the only thing you can seem to think about, everyone in your household has been looking forward to it as well - because it's the only thing you seem to talk about, too, and they're sick of hearing about it.

And this year it tastes like shit.

[fatehbaz]

Christmas pudding [...] [is] a boiled mass of suet - a raw, hard animal fat [...] often replaced with a vegetarian alternative - as well as flour and dried fruits that is often soaked in alcohol and set alight. [...] [I]t is a legacy of the British Empire with ingredients from around the globe it once dominated [...].

Christmas pudding is a relatively recent concoction of two older, at least medieval, dishes. [...] “Figgy pudding,” immortalized in the “We Wish You a Merry Christmas” carol, appeared in the written record by the 14th century. [...] During the 18th century, the two ["plum pottage" and "figgy pudding"] crossed to become the more familiar plum pudding – a steamed pudding packed with the ingredients of the rapidly growing British Empire of rule and trade. The key was less a new form of cookery than the availability of once-luxury ingredients, including French brandy, raisins from the Mediterranean, and citrus from the Caribbean.

Few things had become more affordable than cane sugar which, owing to the labors of millions of enslaved Africans, could be found in the poorest and remotest of British households by mid-century. Cheap sugar, combined with wider availability of other sweet ingredients like citrus and dried fruits, made plum pudding an iconically British celebratory treat, albeit not yet exclusively associated with Christmas.

Such was its popularity that English satirist James Gillray made it the centerpiece of one of his famous cartoons, depicting Napoleon Bonaparte and the British prime minister carving the world in pudding form.

In line with other modern Christmas celebrations, the Victorians took the plum pudding and redefined it [...], making it the “Christmas pudding.” In his 1843 internationally celebrated “A Christmas Carol,” Charles Dickens venerated the dish as the idealized center of any family’s Christmas feast [...].

Three years later, Queen Victoria’s chef published her favored recipe, making Christmas pudding, like the Christmas tree, the aspiration of families across Britain.

Christmas pudding owed much of its lasting appeal to its socioeconomic accessibility. Victoria’s recipe, which became a classic, included candied citrus peel, nutmeg, cinnamon, lemons, cloves, brandy and a small mountain of raisins and currants – all affordable treats for the middle class. Those with less means could either opt for lesser amounts or substitutions [...]. Eliza Acton, a leading cookbook author of the day who helped to rebrand plum pudding as Christmas pudding, offered a particularly frugal recipe that relied on potatoes and carrots. [...] The high alcohol content gave the puddings a shelf life of a year or more, allowing them to be sent even to the empire’s frontiers during Victoria’s reign [...].

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In the 1920s, the British Women’s Patriotic League heavily promoted it – calling it “Empire Pudding” in a global marketing campaign. They praised it as emblem of the empire that should be made from the ingredients of Britain’s colonies and possessions: dried fruits from Australia and South Africa, cinnamon from Ceylon, spices from India and Jamaican rum in place of French brandy.

Press coverage of London’s 1926 Empire Day celebrations featured the empire’s representatives pouring the ingredients into a ceremonial mixing bowl and collectively stirring it.

The following year, the Empire Marketing Board received King George V’s permission to promote the royal recipe, which had all the appropriate empire-sourced ingredients. Such promotional recipes and the mass production of puddings from iconic grocery stores like [Sains-bury's] in the 1920s combined to place Christmas puddings on the tables [...].

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All text above by: Troy Bickham. "How the Christmas pudding, with ingredients taken from the colonies, became an iconic British food." The Conversation. 8 December 2023. [Bold emphasis and some paragraph breaks/contractions added by me. Image and caption shown unaltered as they appear published by Bickham along with the article's text.]

[the-mediaeval-monk]

Let's build a medieval monastery! (Again!)

my last poll is getting reblogged again, so I figured I'd make another one, but this time with more options!

The options with * next to them are based on real medieval stories to some extent.

[ohhxdile]

Mysterious Man ☆ OS

∞ ₒ ˚ Pairing: Geralt of Rivia x reader

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Words: 793

Summary: Typical night for you working in a Tavern that is also an Inn. But tonight is different, there is a strange man in the corner of the room

Warnings: reader pov, use of medieval words, reader as an accent

(A/N: oh my god! i didn't expect my first fanfic to get attention, idk how to thank you all 💕😭)

⋆༶⋆˙⊹

I worked in this tavern for over years now. I’ve experienced many festivals, towns people's departure, new faces, mariage and even rivalry. We could call this quite the “experience”

But today was different, while a few drunk men were singing in the middle of the tavern, ripping their vocal cords and pouring ale on the floor. Messy customers that we didn’t really enjoy to serve, but they consumed the most. Something else was different. A blond-white haired man was sat at the corner of the tavern, a long black piece of linen covered his whole body, I couldn’t quite make out his apparence. 

The owner approached me while I was rearranging the barrels “The Witcher wants his pottage with boef” I stood up with a quirked eyebrow questioning him, he pointed quickly to the white-haired man. “Fine, sure” I sigh and put down the barrels I was occupied with, taking the wooden tray in my hand with the pottage and boeuf.

I walked to him and served him “Here is the pottage and boef, Mister asked” I took the empty vessel asking him if he wanted more to drink, he nodded and thanked me. I got to work and poured another drink for him.

Night was settling in, people were leaving, some bought a hall to sleep in. People were getting kicked out forcefully, typical day for a tavern that also works as an Inn.

My hands were sticky with all the type of ale and meals. I cleaned my hands while the owner cleaned a few vessels and plates. “Tonight was good” I smiled at him, when I turned my head, the empty barrels took my attention “Ah ya’ I forgot to refill them, Would ya please get the Pale Lager in the Undercroft?” I nodded and took in hand the empty Pale Lager and got working. I rummaged through all the cask, they were a lot of them, I quickly found the right one and filled in the empty cask. 

It was getting pretty cold in the tavern and I shivered a bit. Someone didn’t leave and It was the “Witcher” I quickly glanced at him and approached him “You’re leaving soon the village?” He raised his head at me and chuckled “I need to stay here for quite a while, people are asking me to solve a town problem.” His rough voice was like neumes to my ears, but soon after something bothered me in his sentence “a town problem?” I take a hold of his empty tankard and ask him “What? I never heard about a problem here before?” His eyebrows raised itself just like mines and we stared at each other.

Continuously we talk to one another, I understand what he means by “problem” there is a thief that is fliching money from ladies by making them buy deadly roses, what a complete disaster. I understood now why he would stay here for a while. “This is quite the story ya’ have” I chuckled to him and he shrugged off, raising his shoulders slightly. “It is my duty as a Witcher” The strange man was interesting, more than any menne I’ve meet along my years of working, he started ruffling through his piece of linen and gave me a sack of gold, I stared at him for approval and he made a sign with his hand. I opened the bag and counted the coins.

He had the perfect amount for the ale, pottage and boef he ate. I was pretty satisfied and thanked him. “My pleasure, the food here is gracious and the ale is smooth to the gullet” I blushed a bit, happy that he was satisfied. I took the bag of gold, content and walked to the owner giving him the coins.

Before leaving the Witcher came close to me, I looked up at him and he smiled, silence settled between us. I didn’t know what to say, but I was a tad busy with wipping the tables that I haven’t realised his eyes travelled around my figure. “Thank you again” I shrugged off his comment and said It was my pleasure. “I still haven’t asked your name” He mentionned and yes, I realised I never introduced myself to the stranger and I told him my name. 

He said my name, and the way It rolled on his tongue was mischievous I liked it. “My name is Geralt” I smiled hopping he wouldn’t see it since my head is lowered to the table in front of me. Suddenly dead silence and I lifted my head.

 Geralt was gone, he left the Inn with a souvenir and a warm welcome, and I was left with many questions in my mind and hoping that he would come back.

[meanderingmedievalist]

Are you really living up to your medieval pottage cottagecore fantasies without a good cookbook of monastery soups?

[bleedforever]

medieval pottage comments i’ve been thinking about for years

[em-writes-stuff-sometimes]

Hey,

Do you know what Babey's pregnancy cravings will be? Quail eggs? Iced milk? Lemon cakes? Candied chestnuts? Roast venison (if meat stops making her feel sick towards her third trimester and she actually starts to crave it)?

Capons stuffed with mushrooms, mashed neeps, and salad? Trout and salmon baked in lemon juice with a side of devilled eggs spiced with saffron? Fruit tarts and scones spread thick with honey and raspberry conserve? CREAM CAKES?

Onion soup topped with the finest aged cheese the Vale could produce? Buttermilk braised hare? A selection of the finest sugared delicacies? Rabbit or pigeon pie? Custard topped with sweet cream? Braised lamb with garlic? GARLIC BREAD and soft white bread in general?

Meat from a kid goat glazed in a honey and tumeric mixture served with mashed turnips? Orange juice, whose oranges were shipped in from Dorne to the Arbour specifically for the Princess? Whole roasted pheasant and duck served in a salad of glazed cabbage and small lettuce? Lamb chops spiced with black pepper and nutmeg, served with mashed carrots sweetened with syrup?

Yum, YUM, YUM 😋

The options are deliciously endless when you're rich in a medieval world. I didn't include potatoes or tomatoes cause they weren't around in medieval times.

Thanks!

P.S. If you can't already tell, I love meat. 🍖 🥩 🍖. Lmao, if you ever chose to follow a few suggestions from this, just remember this type of food is exclusively for the noble classes, and an ordinary person would never be able to afford this in medieval times. They'd just eat pottage. The Crown will end up spending a load of money on Babey's food.

I have to admit, I have… not thought about it yet, haha! This, though…. This has given me all the possible ideas, nonnie. OMG, thank you so much! To be honest, I was probably going to go with sweets, just because they’re pretty easy to identify. BUT, now I have this heckin’ great list to make weird and arguably reprehensible combos with! THANK YOOOO, AAAAAAAAAAH!

[briarcrawford]

Recipes: A Secret Marketing Tool

Lord of the Rings, The Hunger Games, and Harry Potter all have very specific food mentioned, and for good reason. Not only does it activate three of the senses for your readers (taste, smell, and sight), but it is can also be a secret marketing tool!

If someone likes your story enough, they may make fan recipes for it. A person who follows the blog of that cook or baker may get curious of the source of the recipe, and pick up your book. That means it is just yet another way fans can help spread the word about your stories.

World-building and Plotting

Not only can your food help with marketing, but it can also help with world-building and plotting! For example, it is a cliche that the evil kingdom is put somewhere creepy like a volcano, a rocky wasteland, a frozen northern climate, or even somewhere with endless night. I get it, they have to live somewhere as scary as they are, right? But what do they eat? If they are somewhere without an inch of growable soil in sight, where do they grow food? Is it all imported? If so, what do they have wealthy enough to export in exchange?

Once you figure out how they get their food, think about that evil king/lord in charge of that evil kingdom. Often, he wants to kill everyone, but if he does, who will farm the lands?

Tracking where food comes from and how can transform your story and make it seem more real.

The Food Can Be More Than Stereotypes

In second-world fantasy stories, characters often all eat the same things. Peasants eat bread and cheese, and royals have massive chunks of meat. You can do more than that! For example, medieval peasants ate fish, bread, honey, ale, pottage, fruits, veggies, dairy, nuts, forage foods, and some meats. There are a lot of things that can come out of those ingredients that are incredibly tasty meals. Here is one video that chats about what peasants would have eaten.

The rich in medieval times had even more access to ingredients, and had whole recipe books. For more information on this, one documentary I suggest is Clarissa and the Kings Cookbook. It follows a woman making recipes from a medieval-era cook book. As well as that, here is a great youtube video on the subject.

If you are questioning what ingredients your characters could be eating, this Food Timeline website will greatly help you out.

You can have your characters eat gingerbread, venison pie , clarrey, and so much more!

Make Sure Your Starved Character Paces Themselves

I don’t have to tell you that food is important, but if your character goes days without eating then suddenly finds food and eats non-stop, it could be harmful to them.

While I was doing solo survival outings for testing, I was very restricted on what and how much I was allowed to eat when I returned. We(myself and the other students) were told that if you go too long without eating, your stomach shrinks.

We were told that if you suddenly ate too much after starving, it could make you throw up, or could make you very ill and possibly kill you. This is called “Refeeding syndrome.”

“Refeeding syndrome can develop when someone who is malnourished begins to eat again. The syndrome occurs because of the reintroduction of glucose, or sugar. As the body digests and metabolizes food again, this can cause sudden shifts in the balance of electrolytes and fluids. These shifts can cause severe complications, and the syndrome can be fatal. It can take as few as 5 successive days of malnourishment for a person to be at risk of refeeding syndrome.” From this article

So, your starved character has to be fed very moderately.

[thejoyofseax]

An Early Irish Feast for Drachenwald's Spring Crown, AS LVIII

Spring Crown this year was hosted by Dun in Mara in the territory of Glen Rathlin. As with almost all SCA projects, this feast didn't quite hit all the things I intended. In particular, I'd been thinking of having documentation available alongside it, and of a few more dishes that didn't make it in the end. A fermented porridge was high on that list. Next time!

Before I start talking about food, though, let me thank my kitchen crew: THL Órlaith Caomhánach, Lady Gabrielle of Dun in Mara, Noble Mallymkun Rauði, Lady Erin Volya and Cassian of Allyshia. There were a few other folk in and out of the kitchen too (THL Yda Van Boulogne did excellent work on the various flavoured butters), but these five did the bulk of the work. Lady Erin also provided lunch; cooking at Crown for 80 people as her first event cookery is notable.

The main idea here was to lean heavily on seafood, which isn't often done in SCA feasts in my experience, and represents the food of Ireland well. I also wanted to include pork as a main meat, emphasise oats and barley, and use plain vegetables presented well. There were to be condiments on the table, hence Yda's butters: plain, honey, mackerel and garlic-and-chive, as well as green sauce (largely Órlaith's work, with Cass finishing it out). Condiments and the number of them available were an important aspect of Irish medieval hospitality.

I also wanted to nod to the usual progress of early Irish feasts, which started with formal services and frequently ended up so raucous and drunken that the nobility woke up the following morning on the hall floor along with everyone else. So we served to the tables to begin, and then had a less and less orderly buffet.

The first "course" was a set of pottages. The main one was pork, cabbage, onion, carrots, turnips, and barley, which had been slowly cooked down over a number of hours. There was also a version with lamb, for those who couldn't eat pork, and this doubled as the gluten-free version, having no barley. And there was a vegetarian one, including barley, but substituting mushrooms for the meat. These were served with flatbreads, risen yeast dough having been a tough proposition in the Irish climate (and still is, really; that's why the most Irish of breads is soda bread).

As that was consumed, we stocked the buffet with: sides of salmon (steamed then baked), mussels (boiled), monkfish and mackerel (also steamed and baked), chicken pieces (baked), hard-boiled eggs, turnips with butter, carrots with honey, samphire (new to many, most enthused about it), caramelised onions, creamed leeks, buttered cabbage with and without bacon bits, and a broth-based porridge, accompanied by a variety of flatbreads and oat pancakes. And as that all cleared, we put out fruit, some cheese, some oaten biscuits, and a "cheesecake", of sorts.

Everything was plausibly pre-Norman Irish, with the exception of the oaten biscuits and the cheesecake base, which were egregiously modern - although I could argue for something very like them. Simple cooking techniques mean that those are broadly plausible as well - steaming may seem incongruous, but I'll have more to say on that again.

It all seemed to go down well. A number of people said they weren't sure about fish, and then followed with "… but that was great!", and the green sauce, the samphire and the cheesecake were particular hits. The technique of doing a wide variety of simple things usually does well, I find; even the pickiest of eaters can usually have a few things, and the adventurous can pile their plates with a wide variety.

And I had energy enough left to wander around the party hall later offering plates of fruit, cheese and biscuits, which is one of my favourite things to do.

[milkywayan]

made some green pea pottage, following a 14th century recipe from the book 'curye on inglysch'

though i left out the saffron and added a green, sour apple, because i love the taste of onion and apple together

very good

and yes i am using my medieval bowl and spoon because i cant wait for the big reenactment event in three weeks pssstt

[the-mediaeval-monk]

Let's build a medieval monastery!

[patricia-von-arundel]

One more way Fates stands out from other FE games...

Most at least try to use vaguely medieval-sounding terms for foods (pottage, offal, etc.)

Fates?

SURF AND TURF, CORRIN! SURF AND TURF!!!

[tinseltownevents]

ROYAL FEAST

THURSDAY, 09.01, 6 PM - THE GREAT HALL, MAIN CASTLE

ALL LORDS AND LADIES ARE INVITED TO JOIN THE CELEBRTATION!  PLEASE COME DRESSED IN YOUR BEST MEDIEVAL ATTIRE.

MUSIC

DANCING

JESTERS 

MINSTRELS 

ACROBATS

JUGGLERS

MENU

Rich Pottage Stew

POULTRY:  goose, duck, chicken, pheasant

MEAT:  venison, wild boar, hare, mutton

FISH:  salmon, herring, cod, trout, sole

VEGETABLES: peas, beans, carrots, parsnips, burdock, lettuce, beets, cabbage, spinach, leeks, watercress, capers, nuts

GRAINS: spelt polenta, cruste rolle, english egg bread

DESSERT: roman honey cakes, daryoles, pommesmoille, gynger brede, honey nut candy

FRUIT:  apples, pears, plums, peaches, cherries, raisins, oranges, pomegranates, figs, dates

DRINKS: wine, mead, ale

[jaffacakerebellion]

Hey it's Eggy Anon calling and may I just start by thanking you for the nickname, love it! I think you might indeed be on your way to becoming the tumblr egg guy but I'd consider it an honour! :D 

 

I really enjoyed your reply and that egg custard tart you described sounds amazing and it's definitely my mission now to try one! All those dishes you mentioned got me wondering if eggs have a significant role in British food culture? I never thought about it even though I lived there for a few years and also became a little obsessed with eggs. I would eat a bunch of them daily and my egg cooking game improved massively. And when it comes to british food in general, I really enjoyed every british dish I tried despite its bland reputation (deep fried mars bar was pushing it a little ngl). Though I did eat the vegetarian versions of most dishes so I probably didn't get the most authentic experience.

Eggy Anon my beloved! <3

I think eggs are quite important in British cuisine because basically they've been quite an accessible staple in Britain for hundreds of years. If you think about the geography of the UK, in terms of food, the only protein you can really get are meat from livestock, dairy products (which are also quite fatty and therefore good for keeping you going), fish and eggs. Eggs are way easier to get your hands on than fish (which you fish for), meat (which you have to butcher and cook/ preserve/ prepare), and dairy products (require milking and then preparation- cheese can take years).

A lot of British food is meat, potatoes and other veg because that's what we're able to get, basically. But the different parts of the country and the class structure have meant that people have adapted their diets differently.

For example, in largely-dispersed farming communities in the UK, up until less than 50 years ago it was regular for households to make 'pottage' for the winter, which is basically where you place a pot on top of a fire/stove which never goes out for the whole winter, and you just throw in any food you can get your hands on. Grains, vegetables, any meat you can catch, beans. This would just cook continually to avoid mould or germs or whatever, which would eat up fuel but that would just keep the house warm, too. It would be a good idea for the communities to keep chickens around this time to keep a continual supply of eggs or meat if they needed it. I think it was an idea brought over by the anglo-saxons, if I'm not mistaken.

Back in the middle ages, it was very hard for people to get protein and the average person would eat 2-3lbs of rough wheat & rye bread per day (as in, the bread would contain both wheat and rye). If you kept chickens during this time, you'd be way better off I imagine, although this is just my personal speculation.

Britain has many wonderful herbs which can create interesting flavours, although they're not really used much anymore. I mean, dandelion and burdock and wild garlic aren't as valuable as they were because Britain starting colonising other places and straight up thieving some wonderful herbs and spices from places like India and the West Indies, and creating plantations for the things they liked and wanted more of. Once we realised that we could totally fuck the rest of the world over and take whatever the fuck we want then we got things like ginger and tamarind and cumin, and drinks like tea and coffee, and damn the consequences. This is very much reflected in British cuisine.

I've been meaning to read 'The Medieval Cookbook' by Maggie Black, it's got lots of wonderful recipes inside which really contextualise a slice of culinary history and help us open up that slice of history because of the things we know people had access to, due to those recipes left behind. Really, textiles and food and other things found in the home, once looked at closely, can tell you more about history than documents and treaties and speeches. An Aran Isle sweater or a Welsh Love Spoon can tell you more about the geography, culture and history of Aran or Wales than a historian could put into words, honestly.

So yeah, a place is just made up of the things it's got and the people there.

Anyway, here's one of Maggie's recipes which she's put on the internet which I'd totally try:

Rose pudding:

Ingredients

Petals of one white rose

4 level tbsp rice flour or cornflour

275ml milk

50g caster sugar

3/4 tsp ground cinnamon

3/4 tsp ground ginger

575ml single cream

Pinch of salt

10 dessert dates, stoned and finely chopped

1 tbsp chopped pine nut kernels

Method

Take the petals off the rose one by one. Blanch the petals in boiling water for 2 minutes, then press them between several sheets of soft kitchen paper and put a heavy flat weight on top to squeeze them dry. (They may look depressingly greyish but blending will improve the dish’s colour.) Put the rice flour or cornflour in a saucepan, and blend into it enough of the milk to make a smooth cream. Stir in the remaining milk. Place the pan over low heat and stir until the mixture starts to thicken. Put in a (non-medieval!) electric blender, and add the sugar, spices and rose petals. Process until fully blended, then add and blend in the cream and salt. Turn the mixture into a heavy saucepan, and stir over very low heat, below the boil, until it is the consistency of softly whipped cream. Stir in most of the chopped dates and pine nut kernels and stir for 2 more minutes. Turn into a glass or decorative bowl and cool. Stir occasionally while cooling to prevent a skin forming. Chill. Just before serving decorate with the remaining dates and nuts.