The following page is intended as a brief summary of the kinds of food that would have been available in Europe during Medieval times/the Middle Ages. This period is usually defined as the time from the fall of The Roman Empire to the dawn of The Renaissance, so it covers a fair bit of time (1000 years, from the 5th to the 15th centuries, to be rough) which was split into multiple time periods (see The Middle Ages for more information). As a result not all of the information given will apply to the entire timespan, and writers who want to be historically accurate should do additional research to be certain of what food would have been eaten at a specific point.
Note that while many Medieval European Fantasy settings will use a Medieval level of technology, they are still fantasy settings and thus don't need to worry about the specifics unless the author really wants to (in a fictional world where none of the European nobility or the Americas exist, there's no need to debate the "historical accuracy!" of things like women knights or potatoes, after all). On the other hand, if you want to have any semblance of verisimilitude, you might want to at least explain how these peasants can afford to eat roast meat every day in a preindustrial economy.
For fictionalised versions of medieval meals, see Stock Medieval Meal.
Specific Foods
Those who couldn't afford meat got a lot of their animal protein from milk and dairy products. Milk was obtained from cows, sheep, and goats. Fresh milk was drunk by children, the poor, the sick, and the elderly; the average adult didn't drink it often. However, fresh milk did find some use in cooking as a base for porridges (which were consumed by all classes) and soups. Buttermilk and whey (liquid byproducts of butter and cheese making, respectively) were consumed more frequently in liquid form, though in some places whey was also used to make cheese (particularly Italy, where whey had been converted into ricotta since Roman times).
Cheese was far more important in the Medieval diet, because it didn't spoil as fast as liquid milk. Many modern varieties of cheese date back to the Medieval period. The Middle Ages were an innovative time for cheesemaking, with many new techniques being discovered in Medieval Europe. Blue cheeses (e.g. Roquefort and Gorgonzola), soft-ripened cheeses (e.g. Brie), washed-rind cheeses (e.g. Limburger and Appenzeller), and smear-ripened cheeses (e.g. traditional French Munster) are all Medieval inventions. These innovations appear to have been driven by a push-pull process. The push was people (particularly monks) who had little animal protein to eat but cheese and wanted more variety in their diet. The pull was the spread of cheesemaking to Northern Europe, where the cheese wouldn't spoil as quickly and so you could salt cheese less than in the hotter regions of southern Europe where ancient cheesecraft began. This allowed cheesemakers to rely on beneficial microbes (which brought interesting and funky flavors) to preserve the cheese rather than pure salt.
In most of Medieval Europe, cheese was seen as something to be eaten in place of meat when meat was scarce. However, in some areas, such as Ireland, it was seen as an equal to meat, and would frequently be consumed by the noble classes as well as the peasantry. All that said, cheese was often found on noble tables across Europe in two major forms: (1) in elaborate preparations involving more expensive ingredients (e.g. spices, sugar, expensive fruits, or meat)note and (2) on its own as a simple private snack.note It also appears to have been used as field rations for military men of all classes when on campaign (since it could withstand the rigors of war, an army might not be in a position to raid and "live off the land", and a nobleman on active campaign might not have time to hunt).note
Areas that raised a lot of cows also often used butter for cooking. This was usually a cultured butter, as unless you owned a truly massive number of cows, it took several days' worth of cream to make a worthwhile amount of butter; the previous days' cream would ferment slightly while waiting to be churned. This tradition also led to the use of various kinds of sour cream (e.g. crème fraîche in France and smetana in the Slavic world)—which is what you normally get if you just let raw fresh cream stand at room temperature overnight—and buttermilk in cooking.
For all the presence of fermented dairy, yogurt was interesting in its absence. Largely unknown in medieval Europe, yogurt was mostly a Middle Eastern and Central Asian thing.note (The very word yogurt is originally Turkish.) The major exceptions are Ireland and the Nordic countries. It's likely that the cattle-rearing Irish had some form of yogurt, due to the mentions of "sour" or "thick" milk from outsiders. Similarly, modern Icelandic skyr, Swedish filmjölk, and Norwegian (and to a lesser extent Danish) surmelk probably all derive from a common Viking Age yogurt-type product (the Nordic countries generally also being reasonably decent cattle lands—there's a reason modern Denmark, Sweden, and Norway have strong international markets for their dairy). Given that a good part of the Viking Age involved Norse people raiding/attacking/colonising Ireland, one rather wonders who got yogurt from whom....
Almond milk, though perceived as a modern phenomenon, actually dates from this period. Most likely an idea taken from the Muslim world through Spanish and Italian trade links, by the High Middle Ages it could be found in recipes across Europe, where it was often used as a base or thickener in soups and sauces for the upper class. Almonds were expensive—they're labor- and water-intensive, so they were only available to the well-off even in the regions like Spain, Italy, and the south of France with the warm climates needed to grow them in quantity. They were even more expensive in places like the British Isles, northern France, the Low Countries, and Germany, which had to import them from Southern Europe. Almond milk had an important advantage—medieval Catholic rules on fasting didn't just mean abstaining from meat, the faithful were also supposed to abstain from dairy products;note the Eastern and Oriental Orthodox Churches observed the same rules (and still do).note If you could afford almonds, you could use almond milk freely in fast-day meals.
Beers (which are what would now be defined as ales - lager wouldn't be invented until the 15th or 16th century) were produced widely, with the idea of adding hops to act as a further preservative and bitterant appearing in the 13th century and spreading everywhere by the 16th (confusingly, "beer" made without hops is also known as ale). It was available wherever you went in northern Europe and made by everyone from commercial breweries to monasteries (who were obliged to provide both their monks and travellers with it).
Mead and most wines were only available to the more affluent, as they needed large amounts of honey and fruit respectively to be fermented into them. Honey was expensive and fruit was hard to gather in large quantities. Cider was an exception, as apples were plentiful all year round in most of Europe (they keep well even months after harvest). Perry—that is, cider made from pears—was another exception in England and Normandy, as pears grow fantastically well in the area around the English Channel. Though they keep more poorly than their apple cousins, they're just as easy to turn to alcohol, and so what the Normans now call poiré has been known in northern Gaul/France from late Roman times, and has long been available in England as well. (Sources are murky as to whether the pre-Norman Anglo-Saxons made perry or if poiré arrived on English shores with the Conquest,note but they are not murky about the post-Conquest English going bananas for pear cider.)
Another exception was grape wine, at least in the grape-growing regions of Europe. France, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Greece, and the Balkans were (then as now) major grape producers, so wine was a staple of the diet—a legacy of the ancient Roman position that wine was so fundamental, no one, not even a slave, should be made to do without it.note Wine was also common in parts of Central Europe (e.g. the Rhineland, Hungary, and Lower Austria—all major wine regions to this day) that had a good climate for grapes. During the Medieval Warm Period (roughly from the 10th through 13th century), there was even winemaking in the South of England; there is even some suggestion (though no clear evidence) of limited viticulture (mostly for sacramental purposes) in 10th- through 12th-century Sweden. However, the Little Ice Age that started in the late 13th/early 14th century put an end to (to quote James Burke) the "fruity little chateau-bottled numbers from England" (let alone Sweden), and in these countries wine became an imported luxury reserved for the wealthy, as it had long been in other countries with bad climates for vines. In more northerly parts, even the sacramental wine of the Eucharist was usually reserved to a single sip for the priest, in large part because it was so scarce; the rest of the congregation just got the bread. (Whether the laity should be allowed to have the wine at Mass therefore became an issue in The Protestant Reformation, but that's outside our scope.)
Many grape varietals still planted today were refined in Medieval Europe. Merlot, cabernet sauvignon, and sauvignon blanc were grown in western France in the Bordeaux region of Aquitaine; this region was held by the Kings of England from the accession of Henry II in 1154 to the start of The Hundred Years War, and started a wine trade between the two nations that continues to this day. Pinot noir and chardonnay (itself a cross-breed between pinot noir and now-forgotten peasant vintages) were grown in eastern France under the watchful eye of the Dukes of Burgundy. The region of Champagne, north of Burgundy, was mainly known for forgettable wines in the Burgundy style (with mediocre reds and just-barely-good-enough-to-send-to-England whites),note notable mostly because its colder weather would cause "stuck" fermentation that "tainted" the bottled wine with dissolved gas bubbles. (The bottles were also liable to explode if shaken wrong.) It wasn't until the Early Modern period that this became a desired feature (after the English developed both a taste for the bubbles and bottles strong enough to not explode when shaken).
Brandy and whiskey were known in Medieval times (along with other spirits, but specific names for them didn't show up until the Renaissance), but would mostly have been treated as medicines rather than drinks. Distillation was relatively new technology, being introduced from the Islamic world around the 12th century (possibly by returning Crusaders or by merchants following them), and the Muslims largely used the technique to make medicines, perfumes, and cosmetics, and to perform alchemical experiments.note For most of the period, spirits would have been clear: The concept of aging spirits (and wines) in barrels was discovered still later as barrel technology improved through the Middle Ages, leading them to replace ceramic vessels as the primary means of transporting liquid commodities. The flavor they imparted was discovered by accident as a result of long trade journeys.
Coastal regions often ate shellfish such as oysters, mussels, and scallops. River communities ate freshwater crayfish.
The Medieval definition of "fish" was any creature that normally lived in the water. Most geese were counted as birds (thus meat), but until 1215 barnacle geese were classed as fish (possibly because gooseneck barnacles were thought to be young barnacle geesenote ) and thus could be eaten during Lent. The Eurasian beaver was mainly hunted for its fur and castoreum, but was eaten as well; it may have been considered locally acceptable for Lenten consumption (spending most of its time as it does in the water), though the Church didn't officially rule that beavers were "fish" for fasting purposes until the 17th century (after the Bishop of Quebec asked for an opinion regarding the North American species). Whales and porpoises were considered fish and eaten as such.
Available root crops included carrots, parsnips, turnips, and beetroot/beets. These crops—particularly parsnip—often occupied the role that potatoes would in today's European cuisine, being boiled, mashed, put in stews, and so on. Some of them would have looked rather different from what you see in today's markets; carrots in particular were available in many colors, particularly shades of red and yellow, though orange ones were probably around as well. (Claims that orange carrots were first bred by patriotic 17th-century Dutch farmers during The Eighty Years' War lack evidence.) Many root crops and brassicas note that are not eaten or even recognized as edible in the present day were widely consumed by Medieval Europeans. Cabbages, lettuce, and purslane were also grown and eaten. Aubergines (eggplants), a relatively recent import from India via the Muslim world (first arriving through Spain), were eaten in the south of Europe at this time, but were known to be extremely bitter; many Italian eggplant recipes still soak the vegetable for a long time to remove bitterness that has long been bred out.
Onions were widely used as aromatics to impart flavor, as was leek. Garlic was another aromatic common in parts of Europe, particularly the southern and central/eastern regions, but often carried a stigma of association with lower-class cooking. The stigma even obtained in regions whose modern cuisine uses garlic in most savory dishes: a 15th-century aristocrat from Bologna wrote of garlic that it was "always a rustic food [but] at times is artificially made elegant if placed in the cavity of a roasted duck." (Even the snootiest chefs from modern Northern Italy accept the use of small amounts of garlic as a savoriness booster, though they do turn their noses at the quantities used further south.) Celery was also commonly used as an aromatic (it is known from antiquity in its root-vegetable form, celeriac—Homer mentions it in The Odyssey—but stems and leaves may also have been used by the Middle Ages).
Fruits were popular, and were eaten fresh or preserved. They could also be used as sweetening ingredients in other dishes. Apples, pears, plums, and various berries were available. Certain fruits were highly prized for one reason or other (usually difficulty in cultivation, hence rarity); the same 15th-century Italian snob who denigrated garlic also commented on how peaches were reserved for the nobility (and how peasants caught or even strongly suspected of stealing them could be beaten for the offense). Citrus fruits were grown in southern Europe, but would have to have been imported in the north (which would limit their consumption to the rich). Even in southern Europe, citrus was highly prized among fruits (Boccaccio uses the expression "to turn a plum tree into an orange tree" in The Decameron (Day 4, Story 8) to describe turning something ordinary into something magnificent).
Many common modern fruits and vegetables, while known in Medieval Europe, would have looked different and had greatly different availability in the Middle Ages. A typical example is the watermelon, which in those days was smaller, not as sweet, and had much less vividly red flesh than today's fruit. Similarly, while Medieval Europeans knew about strawberries and used them occasionally, they were seen as a wild woodland berry mostly used for medicinal purposes. It was only in 14th-century France that anyone actually started to grow strawberries for food, and even then they were much smaller and seedier and had a different flavor profile from the ones you'll find in today's supermarkets (which are derived from a chance cross between strawberry species indigenous to North America and Chile).
The exact grains grown in an area would depend on the climate. If there was any way to grow wheat, though, there would be at least a small patch as a cash crop. Pure wheat bread was normally only eaten by the upper classes (or at least the rich). The highest grades of wheat bread were made with flour that had its bran sifted out, resulting in a white bread. Lower grades contained the bran, which made a darker loaf. (This accidentally served the nutritional interests of the lower classes, since the bran contains vital micronutrients like B vitamins; nobles got none of this from their white bread, but this was compensated by their higher intake of fruits and meats.) The one exception to this is the sacramental bread of the Eucharist, which was given to everyone every Sunday and per Church law was always made with white wheat flour.
Many Medieval sources refer to "maslin" in terms of both growing and bread-making; this wasn't a single grain, but rather multiple grains being planted in one area at the same time. This was a common tactic to ensure that if one of the grain crops failed, there would at least be something growing in the field.
Other common grain crops were oats, rye, barley, and in Spain through the Moorish conquest, rice. A peasant farmer might sell his wheat to pay taxes or feudal dues and eat one or more of these grains.
Barley was used primarily for brewing beer, as it made for a dense, difficult-to-eat bread (though it could also be made into a fairly inoffensive porridge). "Horse bread," made of barley and legumes, was, when not fed to horses, often eaten by the poorest peasants when they couldn't afford anything else. Similarly, oats were primarily animal fodder, except in marginal grain-growing areas such as Scotland.note Rye was, after wheat, the most prized bread grain, and the bread eaten by most peasants would consist of a mixture of the two. Buckwheat—which is not a grain, strictly speaking, but generally treated like one culinarily—was also known, and common in many parts of Europe, especially ones with cold, damp climates like Brittany and Russia.note It was probably introduced to Eastern Europe before making its way west, possibly during the Middle Ages, and possibly via the Middle East (sources as always are murky).
Many peasants would not eat bread on a regular basis, as the mills and ovens necessary to make it were owned and taxed by their lords. Instead, grains would primarily be consumed in the form of stews or pottages. Porridge was a common dish for all classes, found on the tables of kings and peasants alike; however, there was great variety in the ingredients used. The poorest had to settle for an unflavored gruel of the cheapest grain cooked with plain water, but this was a matter of necessity; nobody who had any choice in the matter (a few particularly hair-shirty monks excepted) would go for it. Anyone (including serfs) with access to broth or fresh milk would use one of those to cook their porridge on non-fasting days, and everyone who wasn't absolutely penniless (or an ascetic) flavored it with whatever they could get their hands on. The rich liked to pour honey, sugar, expensive fruits (e.g. dates), and spices in their porridge, and on fasting days they used expensive almond milk as the cooking liquid. We don't have any clear indication what the (non-destitute) poor would do with their porridge, but both later cuisine and what few records we do have suggest they would would make savoury porridges with herbs, vegetables, and maybe a bit of butter or oil (whichever was local and available), or sweet ones flavoured with ale or sweet wine (whichever was local and available) and more common fruits (e.g. apples).
It's important to note that what are today called "common beans" (Phaseolus vulgaris) were not available in Medieval Europe. This species is indigenous to the Americas and was brought to Europe in the Columbian Exchange. So no kidney beans, cannellini/haricot/navy beans, borlotti/cranberry beans, black beans, pinto beans, flageolets, etc., etc., etc. The same with green/string beans, which are the unripe seed pods of P. vulgaris. Medieval works mentioning "beans" almost invariably refer to fava beans or lupini. Lima beans/butter beans (Phaseolus lunatus) and runner beans (Phaseolus coccineus) are similarly New World and would not be available to Medieval Europeans.
Another legume that was different in the Middle Ages is peas. Today’s sweet garden pea, picked fresh and eaten green (possibly in the pod) was an Early Modern development (where exactly is unclear; France, England, and the Low Countries all have claims). Flat snow peas were similarly unavailable.note Medieval peas were universally grown to full maturity and dried, to be consumed in dishes like pease porridge and pea soup (both preferably, but not necessarily, flavored with cured pork products like ham or bacon).
Unlike most vegetables, which were grown in a family's "croft" (garden), legumes were a common spring planting crop in the common fields. The nitrogen provided by their roots aided fall planting crops such as wheat or rye; the application of this property into a regular form of crop rotation significantly increased food yields in the Middle Ages.
Beef was less common in the Medieval period than in modern days, because cows were more valuable as milk-producers and oxen were too important as plow/draught animals. Older animals might be slaughtered at the end of their useful life, but by then their meat was no longer tender enough to eat rare. Traditional beef dishes therefore generally called for long stewing with aromatics and root vegetables (as with the French pot-au-feu
), which made the tough meat of old milk cows and work oxen edible. The wealthy could afford cattle butchered young, and kept in pasture rather than at work, allowing them to be cooked more quickly (typically roasted).Pigs and chickens were more commonly eaten by the lower classes, as both animals could be easily and cheaply fed. They were common in both the country and the city, as these animals are relatively easy to raise in an urban environment. Pigs in particular were able to sustain themselves on basically anything people fed them; indeed, pigs often formed an important part of a city's sanitation system by eating refuse.note In rural areas, meanwhile, peasants were often allowed to lead their pigs into the forests, where the animals would eat up all kinds of otherwise useless forest-floor waste like acorns and roots. The pigs turned all this feed into flesh very efficiently; even a small pig can easily produce over 50 kilograms of edible meat and fat, and larger ones can produce as much as 150 or more. Pork also had the advantage of being easy to preserve as bacon, ham, and sausage. Pork was therefore relatively abundant, and so when times were at least fairly good, all but the poorest would have access to some kind of preserved pork product for consumption on a regular basis—perhaps not daily, but fairly frequently nonetheless.
Hens might get a reprieve from the cookpot as long as they laid eggs. In practice, this meant chicken was a good bit rarer than pork in the Medieval diet, although less so than beef (Henry IV of France'snote promise that every peasant would have "a chicken in his pot every Sunday" would have been considered an improvement for most people, but not a wildly unrealistic one). As with milk cows, this generally meant chickens were old and tough by the time they found their way onto the table, so chicken was likewise stewed. As for male chickens, ones not needed as roosters for breeding were often castrated to turn them into capons, and sold to the wealthy—mostly nobles and gentry, but rich burghers and churchmen got in on the act as well (monks in particular were popularly associated with a weakness for capons). Capons are fattier and typically slaughtered young, and so would be roasted or perhaps fried—though the English seem to have been fond of boiling them, too, making for a rich soup.
Wool-producing areas might eat mutton if a sheep had to be put down. Mutton was typically cooked using low-and-slow techniques similar to the ones used for past-their-prime milk cows and oxen (the same basic idea as modern English scouse, Welsh cawl, and French daube).note Lamb would have been for the wealthy and would most likely have been roasted, though it might have made appearances on more modest tables in sheep-raising areas on festive occasions; this would usually be Easter (thanks to the Lamb of God symbolism), but poor Muslims in Medieval Spain might have gotten a taste at Eid al-Adha.
Peafowl and swans were more used as display dishes at a feast than as serious sources of protein. Ducks and geese (either domesticated or hunted) were eaten, as were doves, pigeons, and many songbirds. Doves/pigeons (same thing) were also raised in dovecotes (dedicated towers) for meat, generally for the rich; their excrement was also collected and used as an excellent fertilizer. In some places (particularly in parts of France), the right to maintain a dovecote was reserved for the nobility, and peasants frequently complained about their lords' pigeons eating the seeds they had sowed at planting time.note Note, however, that domestic ducks in the Middle Ages would have looked rather different from most of today's commercial varieties (which typically descend from Chinese birds).
Wild game was either hunted legally (by nobles) or poached (by everyone else). Many versions of the Robin Hood story refer to the outlaws poaching deer, but many other wild animals were eaten as well. Rabbits were deliberately introduced to England in the 13th century for food, and legally protected. There are existing Medieval recipes for hedgehog and porcupine. An interesting aspect of the noble hunt is that the practice of hanging game after the kill (to partially dry it for preservation) led much of the European nobility to develop a taste for "gamy" flavors. "Gaminess" is enhanced by oxidation of the meat, which leaving a haunch to dry-age on a hook will tend to encourage. While many cuisines studiously avoid this effect (for instance, the Chinese have a whole array of techniques they use to reduce what they call shānwèi), the medieval European nobility came to call it haut gôut ("high taste") and cultivated an appreciation for it as a mark of a refined palate.
What few spices that could be grown in Europe were also popular. Most common were spices from the seeds of plants in the carrot family, widely grown in Europe. Caraway (which grows well as far north as Sweden and Finland) was used for breads and sweets, while the seeds of herbs and vegetables like fennel, lovage, coriander, and celery were commonly used in sausages and pickling brines.note Cumin and anise also found use in the parts of Southern Europe where they could grow; cumin was particularly popular in Iberia, probably due to Arab influence. (The Arab kitchen has long favored cumin as a flavoring for pretty much anything savory. And now you know where the cuisines of Latin America get their famous affinity for cumin.) Coriander was also used to flavor alcoholic beverages, both in the form of beer (the Belgian tradition of including coriander in wheat beer probably dates from the late Middle Ages) and distilled spirits (gin, which usually includes coriander as a supporting note for the dominant juniper, also dates from the late Medieval period)
Besides these carrot relatives, most of the local spices were noted for sharp flavors that went well with meats, especially preserved meats. Mustard was common across Europe, and highly popular with meat dishes—and especially in combination with sweeteners or sweet-sour preparations. Horseradish was commonly used with meats in the regions that grew it (mostly Eastern Europe, Germany, Scandinavia, and Britain). (The English famously mixed horseradish with mustard to make Tewkesbury mustard no later than the early Renaissance—Shakespeare referenced the stuff.) The "berries" (actually fleshy cones) of the local juniper trees were used to flavor smoked meats, pickles, and (most famously) gin in northern Europe.
Nobility favored imported spicesnote for their food. They still used herbs and the few local spices as well, but it was far more prestigious to season a dish with black pepper and cinnamon than with, say, thyme and mustard. Other popular spices included sugar, cloves, saffron, and nutmeg. Interestingly, saffron, the most expensive spice in the world and thus very popular in the noble kitchen, generally wasn't imported from very far, if at all; the saffron crocus is native to Greece and was cultivated in fairly large quantities across Southern Europe, and some more northern regions also produced small amounts for domestic markets (Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and even England and Sweden have had successful saffron crocus cultivation where mild microclimates allownote ). Then as now, the expense of saffron came from the ludicrously labor-intensive process of harvesting the stuff rather than transportation costs. Some spices were common in Medieval cookery but little-used these days—examples would include grains of paradise,note cubeb, spikenard, and long pepper.
Another popular flavoring among the wealthy was scented water. Rosewater was the most prized, but orange blossom water and lavender water were also known. These scented waters were a byproduct of the process of steam-distilling fragrant essential oils for the perfume industry. Scented waters were usually used to give a pleasant floral aroma and flavor to sweets, though they could also be used to mask off flavors in water or other drinks (orange blossom water is to this day used in the Middle East to soften the taste of hard well water or water stored in porous clay pots for evaporative cooling).note
Contrary to the usual dung ages claim, spices were not used to hide the taste of rotting food. Anyone who could afford the cost of imported spices could afford decent food to use them on. There are also plenty of cases in Medieval law of merchants being punished for breaking food quality laws. Their food might not have been as fresh as what we find in the stores these days, but people didn't eat rotten food unless there was a famine. This is a lot more recent than people realize, as it was started by Jack Drummond in the 1930s. Historians have been trying to debunk his claims
for a long time. Salt was a special case. Salting was one of the few food preservation methods available (drying, smoking, and fermenting were also used), so even poorer people would need to get salt for the kitchen. That said, salt was available in many different grades, each available to different degrees depending on your distance from sources of salt. A peasant family's quality of salt would depend heavily on proximity to the sea, brine wells, and salt mines that served as sources of salt; even a poor seaside family would likely have abundant and fairly pure salt, albeit with a bit of sand in it, while a family far from sources of salt might pay dearly just for salt with so many impurities that it was black or green. Across Europe, nobles would fill their ornate salt cellars (dishes to serve salt at table) with finely ground white salt. To be seated "above the salt" meant you were seated near your host's family, and was an honor.
While it was already widespread in the Islamic world by the middle ages, it took longer to reach Western Europe (cane being a tropical plant, could be grown in warm climates with proper irrigation methods, as it was in the Caliphate of Córdobanote ). However, it was imported (at roughly the same expense as any other spice), and slowly replaced honey as the de facto sweetener. As time went on, it became more and more commonplace (albeit still horrendously expensive). Italy (and specifically Venice) had a near monopoly on sugar imports after establishing plantations on several Mediterranean islands, most especially Cyprus, particularly after The Crusades made it rather more difficult to get the stuff from Egypt (at the time the Mediterranean's main sugar grower and still a significant producer, though far overshadowed by the likes of Brazil and India).
Even in cases where it was available, sugar was extremely expensive and kind of a pain to use. The most expensive kind, refined white sugar, was only available in the form of sugarloaves
, which had to be carefully cut and then ground; pre-granulated sugar was not invented until the late 19th century. Even the (relatively) cheaper brown sugar, which might have been available in looser form, was most commonly available in hard-to-use loaves, rocks, and slabs (like modern Indian jaggery, Chinese piantang, and Latin American panela/piloncillo/ra(s)padura/chancaca/tapa de dulce/dulce de tapa/papelónnote ). Moreover, sugar was used exclusively as a sweetener or sprinkled over something like any other spice. The use of sugar as an actual ingredient (such as in a Victoria sponge cake) wouldn't appear until the Renaissance. Similarly, most traditional sweets, as we know them now, were not invented until about the 18th century (when plantations in the Americas - unfortunately - made it far more widely available and in larger quantities).note There were also alternative sweeteners. Ale was used as a sweetener (not unlike the way cakes can be made using a good stout). Grape-growing regions also had grape syrup from boiling down grape juice or grape must (an ancient tradition dating back to the Roman defrutum). Eastern regions, particularly Russia, may have used birch sap, though sources are murky as to when this started. Also, both anise seed and liquorice root are naturally sweet,note so these spices (both of which were grown in Europe) could be used as sweeteners if you enjoyed/were willing to put up with the liquorice flavor.
That said, sweets were still available. Many desserts would be recognisable to modern palates, including rice pudding, custard tarts, bread and butter pudding, and even cheesecake.note Whipped cream (typically known as "Milk/Cream Snow") was considered an expensive delicacy, as the lack of homogenised, high fat cream (and the fact that the balloon whisk wouldn't be invented until the Renaissance) made it time intensive to produce. (To give you an idea, go ahead, try to make whipped cream with raw-milk cream and a fork. Or just regular modern single cream/light whipping cream and a fork. We'll wait.) Pastry doughs were fried to make fritters. Custards were another dessert staple (as eggs and milk were freely available); the English got a particular reputation for them (by the Renaissance, the Italians were taking notes on trifle), but custard was popular everywhere. Cakes, such as funnel cake, were made using honey, making them a luxury for special occasions only, such as Christmas or Easter—the biggest holidays on the Christian calendar, and the focus of many festive dishes—or to celebrate one's birthday, if you had the money. No seriously: The tradition of having cake on one's birthday dates from the merchant classes of late medieval Germany, and they even had what amount to kids' birthday parties and blowing out candles stuck in the cake. (It would, however, take centuries before it was established that the number of candles should equal the age of the birthday person; this tradition appears to have arisen among 18th-century German upper classes.note )
Fruit was often candied or dried, as it is today, both to preserve it and as a sweet treat. It could also be cooked on its own (e.g. poached pears), used as a filling in a pie or tart, or added to another dish as a sweetener. Breads were often sweetened with fruits such as currants and enriched with eggs and butter to make buns. "Cookies" (small cakes, rather than what would be called a cookie or biscuit today - the word being derived from the Dutch koekje or "little cake") were made using flour and butter, with raisins and other dried fruit as sweeteners. Ginger, honey, and various nuts featured heavily as flavourings.
Speaking of nuts, the wealthy particularly liked to use almonds in various forms to flavor their sweets; besides the aforementioned almond milk, almonds are found in medieval sweet recipes sliced, chopped, ground, in a tincture, etc., etc., etc.—especially in combination with rosewater or orange blossom water. (This preference for almond and/or floral water as a flavoring for sweets persisted in the European upper classes until the mid-to-late 19th century,note when they were replaced by vanillanote and still has holdovers in random recipes to this day.note ) One of the most famous almond applications—the pan-European favorite marzipan—appears to have first arrived on the continent in 12th-century Spain, probably from the Arab World.
Cheese (and other cultured dairy products, as mentioned above) was also a common dessert item. Indeed, one of the more unusual desserts was "Fritter of Milk", made by frying a sort of sweet cottage cheese.
Preservation
Drying was normally used on grain and herbs (which were air dried and stored) and fruits (which could also be air dried, but were more often sun dried in the summer months). It was less commonly used for meat in Europe compared to salting because it would need a specially built storage house, and it would take far longer than in warmer climates (and have far more risk that the drying food would spoil than in colder climates).note However, some air-dried meat preparations (particularly Italian bresaola and Balkan pastirma) may date from the Late Medieval period. Cured hams, already preserved in part by salting, were often also dried for further longevity if conditions allowed. (To this day, traditional Southern European charcuterie calls for drying hams and other meats in the winter. The Chinese ham-producing regions, like the famous Jinhua, follow the same rule.)
Smoking was also commonly used to preserve fish (especially in coastal towns) and some types of meat, particularly pork sausages and bacon. It would usually be soaked briefly in brine before being exposed to wood smoke by drying it over a fire, or storing it in a smoking house. Some types of wood were especially prized for the flavour they gave smoked foods.
As sugar became more common, the wealthy would have had access to preserves like jam and (if they really wanted to show off and obtain citrus fruits) marmalade. Food could also be stored in honey to preserve it, by those who had it.
As mentioned above, milk was almost always allowed to ferment into cheese before being consumed.
Lastly, of course, food could be fermented into hard drinks. This was especially common with apples (as mentioned above under drinks), but wines made of all sorts of fruits and berries were produced, as they could be fermented with wild yeast. Anyone with access to enough honey could also ferment it to produce mead. Beer was rarely used as a long term storage method, as it spoiled too quickly.
As with today, foods may also have been prepared using these methods because people enjoyed the flavour (as with smoking), or out of convenience (candying in particular was used for making sweets) instead of only to preserve them.
Sometimes large houses and castles would have underground "ice rooms", where food could be allowed to freeze and stored during cold winters, but keeping such rooms below freezing was very time intensive, making it a difficult proposition even for someone rich enough to own such a building. It didn't help that the best ice-making/ice-storage technology available at the time—the Persian yakhchal—was dependent on (of all things) underground irrigation aqueducts that didn't exist in most of Europe. Freezing as a common preservation technique in Northern Europe would have to wait until the invention of the refrigerator some centuries later.
Cooking
The vast majority of meals in Medieval Europe were cooked over an open fire, and many of them (particularly among lower classes) would have been one-pot dishes; the family cauldron would have been among the most expensive portable goods a household would own. Any meat that a working family got their hands on would have been used to flavor larger meals; this also ensured that all of the necessary fat was retained in the dish.
On the opposite end, the fire-roasted meats so beloved of the nobility would have had a distinctive smokiness to them from the fire, making them taste almost more like modern American barbecue than what we think of as roasts today. (They would not be as smoky, since barbecue deliberately reduces cooking temperature and extends cooking timenote and uses smoky hardwoods that probably would have been avoided in the medieval kitchen if possible,note but in the Middle Ages roasted meats would be noticeably smokier than what comes out of today's gas and electric ovens.) Moreover, while Medieval European houses often had raised waist-high hearths to allow cooking while standing instead of kneeling or squatting,note cooking stoves were not introduced until the 16th or 17th century, and were not universal until the 19th.note Cooking pans were therefore suspended over the open fire; even pan-cooked dishes would catch a bit of the smoke.note
Ovens were primarily used for baking bread, as well as cakes and pies. They were usually communal; a village would usually have just a few ovens, maybe even just one, and typically the local lord either taxed their use or owned them outright and charged a fee for access. In cities, ovens were usually attached to bakeries. Home ovens were a rare luxury.
Wherever they were situated and whatever their ownership, Medieval ovens were of a relatively simple design. Generally taking the form of an earth and/or masonry dome or box with an entryway, a wood fire would be started in the interior, allowed to burn down to coals, then the coals would be raked to the sides and food cooked in the middle. The oven therefore went from hot to cool over time (typically several hours), with different items being put in and taken out at different points in the cooling process. Bread, which needed the highest temperatures, was generally put in first, followed by pies, with delicate preparations like cakes bringing up the rear in higher-class kitchens. As a result, the bottom portion of a loaf of bread would commonly be nearly inedible and used as a "trencher" (effectively a semi-edible plate or bowl).note Pies during this time used a very strong crust known as "huff paste," a kind of hypertrophic hot-water crust made of very strong flours mixed with fat and water, and also nearly inedible in and of itself.
Recipes from this time period are nearly nonexistent, especially for non-nobility. There is a particular dearth of recipes in written records from about the 7th century through the 13th. That being said, a flood of recipes from the kitchens of the elite began to appear around the turn of the 14th century. Most significantly, three great cookbooks of haute cuisine appeared during that century: the French Le Viandier (c. 1300), the Liber de Coquina (also c. 1300, written in Latin and covering both French and Italian recipes), and the English The Forme of Cury (c. 1390). These were all about cooking for nobles and royals, by and for chefs attached to royal and noble households; The Forme of Cury in particular was specifically compiled by the heads of the royal kitchens of Richard II (a noted gastronome in his time).note
From these cookbooks and other sources, we've figured out that Medieval cookery was in many ways similar to modern Chinese food, in which sweet, sour, and savory taste notes would all be present in the dish. Mixtures of food would be according to the Medieval notion of "dietetics"; foods would be combined to reach a balance of "humors" (hot, cold, dry, and moist). For example, pears and turnips had similar humors and would be considered interchangeable in a dish for dietetic purposes. This did have limits; if the duke wanted a pear tart as a sweet for his table, he would probably be none too pleased with a cook giving him a turnip tart instead on the grounds that the pears and turnips had similar humors. This system of humors would also affect how food was cooked; beef was "hot and dry" and needed to be boiled, stewed, or braised, while pork was "cold and moist" and thus needed to be roasted (considering beef would be much tougher than pork at the time, taste may not have been entirely ignored).
Unavailable Food
Some authors are just too used to modern grocery stores, with foodstuffs from multiple countries.
Coffee
Coffee was unavailable to Medieval Europeans. It originated in Ethiopia sometime during the first millennium but was not widely consumed outside the region until the early 1400s when the beverage became popular in Yemen and Arabia. From there, coffee-drinking spread throughout the Middle East and eventually reached Europe by the late 1500s. A trader or Byzantine Orthodox cleric in the early Middle Ages might have found it in Ethiopia, but such contacts were rare and were largely cut off by the rise of the Muslim Caliphate (and the subsequent schism between the churches of Constantinople and Ethiopia). Italian merchants in Egypt, Syria, and Turkey did note coffee in the 15th century, but whether that "counts" as Medieval is borderline.
Tea
Much as coffee was restricted to the Horn of Africa and the Middle East during the Middle Ages, tea was confined to East Asia (and to a lesser extent Central Asia) during the Middle Ages. Even India didn't really have tea as a beverage—it was used as a medicinal herb there, if at all. Medieval Europeans thus would not have encountered tea except on travels to China—and while a surprising number of Europeans (likely several thousand) made that journey in the days of the Mongol Empire (Marco Polo merely being the most famous), they certainly don't seem to have brought any tea back home. They don't even seem to have understood what the fuss was about it, either; Polo—who spent most of his time among the Mongol elite, which didn't really go in for tea—only mentions tea once to discuss how the Chinese got annoyed at an official who raised the tax on tea. Tea would not arrive in Europe until the Portuguese brought it in the 16th century. Of course, some of what we'd recognize as herbal teas existed, but they weren't called that (the word "tea" derives from Chinese) and in any case they were mainly drunk as medicine.
Maize
Maize was not available, despite all those extant Medieval tax records referring to so many bushels of "corn"—in the Medieval period, that was a generic term for "whatever grains are grown locally". After Europeans settled in North America, they promptly dubbed the grain grown by the local tribes "Indian corn", and subsequent usage has abbreviated that term to "corn". It is mainly under American influence that "corn" is taken to only refer to maize; elsewhere, it often retains its older, broader meaning.
Potatoes and Yams
Potatoes and sweet potatoes are native to the Americas, yams are native to Africa and Asia. A fictional Mediterranean trader might be able to get his hands on a few yams, but the other two tubers will have to wait for trade with the Americas.
Tomatoes
Tomatoes are native to South America. They may have been introduced to Europe as early as 1493 by Columbus, but the oldest recorded evidence of them being used in European cuisine is from 1544, in Italy. (So depending on where we draw the line between Middle Ages and Renaissance, further info about them may be off-topic.) Even then, since some tomato varieties were toxicnote , most Europeans wrote them all off as unfit for eating, and instead grew them as ornamental plants. Tomatoes didn't catch on as food until the late 17th and early 18th century (depending on the region).
Turkey
Is there an American RenFaire that doesn't have at least one food vendor selling turkey legs? Sorry, the turkey is a New World native. The name is thanks to the bird taking a detour through the Middle East on its way to being introduced to England. The merchants who brought the birds were commonly called "Turkey merchants" because they came from areas controlled by the Ottoman Empire, and so the birds were dubbed "Turkey birds".
Other
Other common modern foodstuffs not available in Medieval Europe are "common" beans of the genus Phaseolus (as mentioned in "Legumes" above), chili peppers, vanilla, cacao/chocolate, bananasnote , pineapples note , blueberriesnote , and cranberriesnote .
