Middle Ages Food

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Early Middle Ages Food was basic and the ingredients were home grown.  This all changed in 1066 with the Norman Conquest and between 1095 – 1270 when Europeans looked to the Eastern World during the crusades.
The Normans were influenced by French and also Scandinavian food; the eastern world introduced the crusaders to the spice which were added to different foods.
The first French Recipe books appeared in 1306,  The Little Treatise; in England the  first cookery book  was written in 1390 and was called The Forme of Cury . It  explained nearly 200 recipes 196 of the Royal cooks. These old recipes were written in totally different way to modern recipe books. There were no lists of ingredients; food and ingredient measurements were extremely basic and the  quantities were not often specified. Temperature control not specified and cooking times were vague.

An example
Middle Ages Food Recipe for Dressed Salmon

Take a piece of fresh Salmon, and wash it clean in a little Vinegar and water, and let it lie a while in it, then put it into a great Pipkin with a cover, and put to it some six spoonfuls of water and four of Vinegar, and as much of white-wine, a good deal of Salt, a handful of sweet herbs, a little white Sorrel, a few Cloves, a little stick of Cinamon, a little Mace; put all these in a Pipkin close, and set it in a Kettle of seething water, and there let it stew three hours. You may do Carps, Eeles, Trouts, & c. this way, and they Tast also to your mind.
NOTES

grown: cultivated at home (coltivatei)
spices: flavours (spezie)

Recipe: instruction (ricotta)

measurements: quantities (misure)

vague: not specifies (vaghi)

Sorrel = acetosa

Cloves = chiodi di garofano

Cinamon “ Cinnamon = canella

Mace= macis (parte interna della noce moscata)

seething : boiling (che bolle)
stew:cook (lascia cuocere)
Carps = carpe
Trouts = trote
&c.: etcetera

Test  “ taste: give flavour 

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