02: Food and Production: more Basics

Environment; climate

Population

Other factors: medical knowledge; religion; social factors

Annales School

Fernand Braudel (1902-85)

longue durée

George Duby (1919-96)

 

Sources: Textual; Documentary

Documentary: institutions

 

More on Food and Diet:   protein, fruits, vegetables

Meat: production, market, preservation

Pork:

  • Diet: forest (acorns); farmyard
  • Preservation: ham, sausage, bacon
  • Purpose on farm: food

 

Beef

Tuscan Chianina cattle

  • Expensive to raise on grain, grass
  • Purpose on farm: milk; draft animals; hence traditionally slaughtered when aged
  • Late medieval market: younger animals, including calves (veal)

 

Sheep

Add_ms_35313_f004r_labour

Ghent ca 1500. Rothschild Hours, British Library, Detail of a bas-de-page scene of peasants shearing sheep, Add MS 35313, f. 4r 

  • Ubiquitous
  • Purpose on farm: milk (cheese); wool; hence traditionally slaughtered when aged
  • Later medieval market: younger animals

Goats

mostly in southern Europe, mountainous regions

Poultry: eaten but more expensive, smaller than modern equivalents

  • Purpose on farm: eggs. Hens traditionally slaughtered when aged
  • Roosters; capons

Game: eaten more by nobles than by peasants by later Middle Ages

Fish: fast days

Image result for medieval herring

catching herring in Sweden

 

 

Herring vendor, Paris, ca 1500

Cris de Paris, vers 1500. Paris, BnF, Arsenal, Est. 264 Rés. Fol. 15, pl 13

  • Access varied enormously by region
  • Fresh water: fishponds
  • Salt: herring; stockfish;    baccalà (first recorded in Venice 1431)

 

Dairy:

  • Milk (rural): spoilage
  • Butter
  • Cheese

Eggs ubiquitous

Related image

Beverages:

  • Wine: increasing role for markets: specialization by region, fortified wines; more elite
  • Beer: less elite, drunk in areas with little or no wine; local regulation by city; often consumed socially
  • Cider etc: regional

 

Coffee, tea: coffee very late 16th c; tea 17th c

 

Legumes: fast days

No New World beans

South: Favas, lentils, chickpeas, black-eyed peas

North: field pea

Higher status in more affluent times (otherwise associated with austerity)

 

Vegetables

French castle garden, 15th century

French, 15th c

Herbs in an urban garden

9- JARDINS-HORT. -§ .. représentations d'une grande banalité, à savoir le fait que la même histoire, dans le même décor, interprétée avec les mêmes valeurs, est décrite de façon différente par des procédés conventionnels. L'évolution du langage iconographique détermine alors la représentation du jardin.

 

Some available from antiquity; others introduced ca 1200+

Squash, tomatoes, pepper, potatoes, many bean varieties: New World

Cohl crops:   cabbage   broccoli, cauliflower

16th c:  brussels sprouts, kohlrabi

Cucumbers

Asparagus

Eggplants

Parsnips, beets, turnips

Carrots: later Middle Ages

Onion, garlic

Lettuce, other greens

Spinach: from Muslim Spain

Fruits:

Citrus no limes or grapefruits; others came in via Spain

Tree fruits, berries

Strawberries alpines only

Grapes

Melon

 

 

An exemplary study:   Ramon Banegas-Lopez on meat eating  1300-1500

What meats did people eat most often in Europe?

How did that change?

How do we know?