Lecture 14: International Gothic Cuisine
Having a thriving court culture and people able to imitate it is one
reason culinary arts thrive. Before, we certainly had a court culture
and a handful of nobles who could imitate it or were invited to
noble banquets themselves, but that was such a small percentage of
the society. Now, many more people can afford a roast on Sunday, a
few spices to liven up their food, and some decent wine. Ironically, the people providing these luxuries grow fabulously
wealthy. It’s a few regions that fl ourish, but they become obscenely
wealthy in the late Middle Ages because of a brisk trade in both
basic foods and luxury items. In these regions, late medieval cuisine
fl ourishes—as it also does in the wealthy capitals of emerging
nation-states like London and Paris.Medieval Cookbooks
The medieval cookbooks that have survived were prepared usually
for noble or royal households. Only a few were designed for
bourgeois families. Medieval elite cuisine is very international.
Rulers wanted to eat like their fellow rulers in other countries, so
we see the same kinds of recipes all across Europe. The most important medieval cookbook was The Viandier of
Taillevent, which is actually a collection of recipes probably
from as early as the 13th century that were gathered and adapted
by Guillaume Tirel, nicknamed Taillevent, who was chef to King
Charles V of France. This cookbook infl uenced several generations
of chefs who wanted to imitate the renowned culinary exploits
of the chef, who was reputed to be the most refi ned gourmand
in Europe. The second great cookbook of this period is called Le Ménagier de
Paris, which was written in the late 1300s for a wealthy bourgeois
household. It takes the form of a book of advice written by a mature
if not elderly man for his new young bride. The book is pretty
concrete proof that culinary techniques are trickling down the social
ladder—he borrows and adapts many recipes from Taillevent—and
are also being passed from generation to generation.