than to what we eat today. This was a period of great ingenuity and
invention in European cuisine. As for medieval cooking, they made much greater use of herbs than
we do today. Like spices, herbs were considered quasi-medicinal,
used to correct an individual’s humoral imbalance, but also to
correct certain dishes that were themselves humorally imbalanced.
Many of the culinary combinations have a kind of medicinal logic
to them.
There are dozens of sauces based on pounded herbs, bread crumbs,
and vinegar—sort of like a pesto or mint sauce. Many combined
herbs and spices or sweet and sour fl avors. In terms of culinary
techniques, pounding, straining, and coloring foods were the rage.
There was also a penchant for disguised foods, or foods that were
presented so they look like something else.
The earliest medieval cookbook, called Libellus de Arte Coquinaria,
dates from about the 12th century and has Latin recipe titles. The
original has been lost, but it’s known through a handful of copies
made toward the end of the 13th century in odd languages.
This book tells us that cooking was mostly done over a charcoal
fi re or on a grill. Food was often cooked in pots, cut up into smaller
bits, and pounded and sieved into a smooth puree. The recipes are
almost entirely for meat, chicken, and a few fi sh—but practically
none were for vegetables or fruit. However, most recipes do include
spices, which is pretty decent evidence that the trade networks have
opened up again and extend all the way to Scandinavia.
Chicken Pie
One should take a shell of dough and put into it a hen, cut into pieces;
and add bacon, diced the size of peas; pepper; cumin; and egg yolks
beaten with saffron. Then, take the shell and bake it in an oven.