Lecture 13: Carnival in the High Middle Ages
During the Crusades, Europeans conquered Jerusalem and
neighboring principalities, built castles there, and stayed for about
a century. They even plundered Constantinople in one crusade (a
Christian empire). At the same time, the Spanish knights, from their
tiny kingdoms in the north of Spain had their own kind of crusade,
the Reconquista, in which they pushed the Moors out, a process
that took several centuries but was mostly complete by the 13th
century. Both of these events are crucial to the dramatic change in
European cuisine.Medieval Cooking
In the Holy Land, in Spain, and also in formerly Muslim-ruled
Sicily, Europeans came in contact with a civilization far more
sophisticated and wealthy than their own. For the fi rst time, they
were in direct contact with Islamic civilization, the inheritors of
classical culture. Europeans began to learn about
Greek science, medicine, and
mathematics indirectly through
Arabic translations made into
Latin. They learned agricultural
techniques, philosophy, and Muslim
cooking. Specifi cally, they learned
about spices, which hadn’t come
to Europe in about 500 years. The
trade routes open again, and now
there are many more spices than
even the ancients knew—including
not only pepper and cloves, but also
spikenard and galangal. With spices come dried fruits and
nuts and sugar, which was almost
completely unknown in ancient times. Only the wealthy could
afford these things; they were exotic luxury items brought from
far away. Medieval cooking was much closer to Indian cuisineSpices were used abundantly
in medieval cooking.© iStockphoto/Thinkstock.