Food and Feasts in the Middle Ages PDF Download

Author: Melitta Weiss Adamson
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 0313084823
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 286

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Book Description
Students and other readers will learn about the common foodstuffs available, how and what they cooked, ate, and drank, what the regional cuisines were like, how the different classes entertained and celebrated, and what restrictions they followed for health and faith reasons. Fascinating information is provided, such as on imitation food, kitchen humor, and medical ideas. Many period recipes and quotations flesh out the narrative. The book draws on a variety of period sources, including as literature, account books, cookbooks, religious texts, archaeology, and art. Food was a status symbol then, and sumptuary laws defined what a person of a certain class could eat—the ingredients and preparation of a dish and how it was eaten depended on a person's status, and most information is available on the upper crust rather than the masses. Equalizing factors might have been religious strictures and such diseases as the bubonic plague, all of which are detailed here.

Author: Massimo Montanari
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231539088
Category : Cooking
Languages : en
Pages : 279

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Book Description
In his new history of food, acclaimed historian Massimo Montanari traces the development of medieval tastes—both culinary and cultural—from raw materials to market and captures their reflections in today's food trends. Tying the ingredients of our diet evolution to the growth of human civilization, he immerses readers in the passionate debates and bold inventions that transformed food from a simple staple to a potent factor in health and a symbol of social and ideological standing. Montanari returns to the prestigious Salerno school of medicine, the "mother of all medical schools," to plot the theory of food that took shape in the twelfth century. He reviews the influence of the Near Eastern spice routes, which introduced new flavors and cooking techniques to European kitchens, and reads Europe's earliest cookbooks, which took cues from old Roman practices that valued artifice and mixed flavors. Dishes were largely low-fat, and meats and fish were seasoned with vinegar, citrus juices, and wine. He highlights other dishes, habits, and battles that mirror contemporary culinary identity, including the refinement of pasta, polenta, bread, and other flour-based foods; the transition to more advanced cooking tools and formal dining implements; the controversy over cooking with oil, lard, or butter; dietary regimens; and the consumption and cultural meaning of water and wine. As people became more cognizant of their physicality, individuality, and place in the cosmos, Montanari shows, they adopted a new attitude toward food, investing as much in its pleasure and possibilities as in its acquisition.

Author: Lynne Elliott
Publisher: Crabtree Publishing Company
ISBN: 9780778713487
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 36

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Book Description
Provides an overview of food, hunting, and cooking in the Middle Ages.

Author: Hannele Klemettilä
Publisher: Reaktion Books
ISBN: 9781861899088
Category : Cooking
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
We don’t usually think of haute cuisine when we think of the Middle Ages. But while the poor did eat a lot of vegetables, porridge, and bread, the medieval palate was far more diverse than commonly assumed. Meat, including beef, mutton, deer, and rabbit, turned on spits over crackling fires, and the rich showed off their prosperity by serving peacock and wild boar at banquets. Fish was consumed in abundance, especially during religious periods such as Lent, and the air was redolent with exotic spices like cinnamon and pepper that came all the way from the Far East. In this richly illustrated history, Hannele Klemettilä corrects common misconceptions about the food of the Middle Ages, acquainting the reader not only with the food culture but also the customs and ideologies associated with eating in medieval times. Fish, meat, fruit, and vegetables traveled great distances to appear on dinner tables across Europe, and Klemettillä takes us into the medieval kitchens of Western Europe and Scandinavia to describe the methods and utensils used to prepare and preserve this well-traveled food. The Medieval Kitchen also contains more than sixty original recipes for enticing fare like roasted veal paupiettes with bacon and herbs, rose pudding, and spiced wine. Evoking the dining rooms and kitchens of Europe some six hundred years ago, The Medieval Kitchen will tempt anyone with a taste for the food, customs, and folklore of times long past.

Author: C. M. Woolgar
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191534285
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 368

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Book Description
Food and diet are central to understanding daily life in the middle ages. In the last two decades, the potential for the study of diet in medieval England has changed markedly: historians have addressed sources in new ways; material from a wide range of sites has been processed by zooarchaeologists and archaeobotanists; and scientific techniques, newly applied to the medieval period, are opening up possibilities for understanding the cumulative effects of diet on the skeleton. In a multi-disciplinary approach to the subject, this volume, written by leading experts in different fields, unites analysis of the historical, archaeological, and scientific record to provide an up-to-date synthesis. The volume covers the whole of the middle ages from the early Saxon period up to c .1540, and while the focus is on England wider European developments are not ignored. The first aim of the book is to establish how much more is now known about patterns of diet, nutrition, and the use of food in display and social competition; its second is to promote interchange between the methodological approaches of historians and archaeologists. The text brings together much original research, marrying historical and archaeological approaches with analysis from a range of archaeological disciplines, including archaeobotany, archaeozoology, osteoarchaeology, and isotopic studies.

Author: P. W. Hammond
Publisher: Alan Sutton Publishing
ISBN:
Category : Cooking
Languages : en
Pages : 204

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Book Description
Describes the extraordinary range of food which found its way on to the tables of medieval English society, its production and distribution.

Author: Margaux Baum
Publisher: The Rosen Publishing Group, Inc
ISBN: 1499464711
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 66

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Book Description
Many entries in the historical record and examples from popular culture show nobles, knights, kings, and peasants alike celebrating with food and drink. In this book, medieval agriculture, food preparation, and eating are explored in equal measure. With vivid examples from historical manuscripts, paintings, frescoes, and more, this book opens a window for readers into the culinary worlds and celebratory rituals of the people of the Middle Ages. From typical foods of the common people, to the most dazzling and lavish displays of consumption by kings and queens, this volume is sure to sate readers' appetites for knowledge about the era.

Author: Martha Carlin
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 0826419208
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 204

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Book Description
Eating and drinking are essential to life and therefore of great interest to the historian. As well as having a real fascination in their own right, both activities are an integral part of the both social and economic history. Yet food and drink, especially in the middle ages, have received less than their proper share of attention. The essays in this volume approach their subject from a variety of angles: from the reality of starvation and the reliance on 'fast food' of those without cooking facilities, to the consumption of an English lady's household and the career of a cook in the French royal household.

Author: Tehmina Bhote
Publisher: The Rosen Publishing Group, Inc
ISBN: 9780823939930
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 72

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Book Description
Examines the role of food during medieval times, discussing how it was prepared, shared, and used in society.

Author: Massimo Montanari
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350995363
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 257

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Book Description
Europe was formed in the Middle Ages. The merging of the traditions of Roman-Mediterranean societies with the customs of Northern Europe created new political, economic, social and religious structures and practices. Between 500 and 1300 CE, food in all its manifestations, from agriculture to symbol, became ever more complex and integral to Europe's culture and economy. The period saw the growth of culinary literature, the introduction of new spices and cuisines as a result of trade and war, the impact of the Black Death on food resources, the widening gap between what was eaten by the rich and what by the poor, as well as the influence of religion on food rituals. A Cultural History of Food in the Medieval Age presents an overview of the period with essays on food production, food systems, food security, safety and crises, food and politics, eating out, professional cooking, kitchens and service work, family and domesticity, body and soul, representations of food, and developments in food production and consumption globally.