A History of Food in 100 Recipes

And thus another great tome appears, listing colossal feasts in all their vulgar detail. Except this one was different. Chiquart was a party planner: he doesn’t just say ‘fetch 400 oxen and serve them with a parsley sauce’. He tells you how; he is big on logistics. While it’s true to say, on the minutiae of recipes, we’re not yet into the era of providing cooking times and temperatures, he does actually give quantities – 6 pounds of this herb, 8 pounds of that. Which is a revolution when you consider the vagaries of what went before. He was a more practical recipe writer than his predecessors and had an eye for the bigger picture.

Meanwhile, his boss the Duke of Savoy, also known as Amadeus VIII, was a serial schmoozer. He mixed in the highest social and religious circles and had married the daughter of the Duke of Burgundy, said to be the wealthiest and most powerful man in Europe. It was Chiquart’s job to feed Amadeus’s friends and contacts and feed them well, which he did. Indeed, so impressed was his employer that (as with previous master cooks across the world) he persuaded him to record his knowledge of cooking, and the planning of it, for posterity.

Chiquart dictated the work and it has lasted in its long, lugubrious, detailed and fabulously un-subbed entirety. There is, for example, a recipe for Parma tarts. It’s a big dish. The recipe itself consists of one long paragraph of 1,415 words. One can almost picture Chiquart, the ageing, self-glorifying and rather vain chef, reclining on his chaise-longue dictating the recipe to a cowering minion. ‘Again, Parma tarts,’ he starts with an air of nonchalance, ‘for the said Parma tarts which are ordered to be made, to give you understanding, take three or four large pigs and, if the feast should be larger than I think, let one take more.’

This is a recipe that you should definitely not try at home. The ingredients, in addition to the four large pigs, include 300 pigeons, 200 baby chickens, 100 capons and 600 small birds, although the object of the exercise is actually a very large quantity of small tarts filled with a spicy, herby mixture of the above animals and birds. The presentation of the dish ends with a flourish: ‘And when one serves it,’ declares Chiquart, ‘let on each tart be put a little banner with the arms of each lord who is served these Parma tarts.’

Before Chiquart gets stuck into delivering his party-planning advice, he devotes some time to flattering his boss. This must be one of the most oleaginous genuflections in history. He prostrates himself in front of his patron. ‘To you, the very high, very renowned, and very powerful prince and lord, Monseigneur Ayme, first duke of Savoy, honour and reverence, with the prompt desire to obey your commands, I offer my very humble and devoted respects,’ he begins, before uttering that he is ‘no more than the least of your humble subjects’. He continues: ‘I have a low standing and know and have learned too little because through ignorance and negligence I have never sufficiently improved my understanding.’ This, then, is the introduction to a work that was written onto 236 folio pages, including recipes totalling around 35,000 words – some were, as with his Parma tarts, long, overbearing, unwieldy and rambling.

As humble as he was to his master, he was surely harsh to those who worked for him in order to achieve such spectacular results. And his false modesty cannot disguise his formidable talent for organisation. A feast lasting for two days needs four months of planning, he says. Having detailed, at great length, exactly the dishes to be presented for a wedding party, he then considers what might happen if the event has to take place during a religious period – if, for example, there are limitations on what fish, meat or dairy products you can serve. He then goes through the entire menu substituting ingredients with those that would be acceptable. He provides detailed lists of exactly the number of utensils needed for catering a big do; he says how much firewood and charcoal might be needed, and he reminds the reader to make sure there’s plenty of money to pay for everything:

And so that the workers are not idle, and so that they do not lack for anything, there should be delivered funds in great abundance to the said kitchen masters to get salt, pot-vegetables and other necessary things which might be needed, which do not occur to me at present.

Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal Paris / Kharbine-Tapabor / Coll. Jean Vigne

Medieval banquets were large and sumptuous affairs, sometimes lasting for a couple of days.

He reminds cooks to invest in enough candles and how to prepare a meal in a kitchen other than your own. He was more than able to plan a Chiquart Amiczo pop-up supper club at the castle of a friend of the duke, for instance. He was mindful too of how visiting nobles brought their own servants. They were not just to be welcomed but afforded every bit of help: ‘quickly, amply, in great abundance and promptly [supply] everything for which he asks’.

As for the crockery and cutlery (part of the instructions that constitutes this chapter’s ‘recipe’), 4,000 plates of gold, silver, pewter and wood suggests there was quite a party planned, not to mention a record-breaking amount of washing up. Today’s party planners to the rich and famous don’t know they’re born …

18 (#ulink_cfb22fe9-b0c7-5d40-929c-ed5629669813)

Muscules in shelle (#ulink_cfb22fe9-b0c7-5d40-929c-ed5629669813)

(Mussels in white wine sauce) (#ulink_cfb22fe9-b0c7-5d40-929c-ed5629669813)

1440

AUTHOR: Unknown, FROM: Boke of Kokery

Take and pike faire musculis, And cast hem in a potte; and caste hem to, myced oynons, And a good quantite of peper and wyne, And a lite vynegre; And assone as thei bigynnet to gape, take hem from þe fire, and serue hit forthe with the same brot in a diss al hote.

The year 1440. Work begins on the Pazzi Chapel in Florence designed by the Italian architect Filippo Brunelleschi. German craftsman Johann Gutenberg of Mainz develops a method of printing using movable metal type. Itzcoatl, Aztec ruler of Tenochtitlan, dies and is succeeded by Montezuma I. In England, Eton College is founded by Henry VI and a Boke of Kokery is published with a recipe for custard.

Actually there are two recipes for custard in this boke, and yes, whoever wrote it – and the author is not known – was into a kind of free-spelling vibe. After all, this was a time when spelling had yet to be standardised and as long as one was consistent – give or take the odd word within an actual document – that was OK. Owning a book was impressive enough, so any strange spelling was small beer.

Most chefs still cooked from memory and that cookery books were so rare indicates that recipes must have been a jealously guarded secret. This particular Boke of Kokery includes 182 of them. They’re all handwritten of course – the first printed book in English didn’t appear until 1473 – and the script takes quite a bit of getting used to. When you look at it, the language seems pretty obscure. In addition to the freestyle spelling of otherwise familiar English words, there are colloquial forms of French: the word ‘let’ is used in place of lait for ‘milk’, for instance, and ‘fryit’ for froid, meaning ‘cold’. But when read out loud, the sentences start to make sense. You can almost hear the strange accent they must have been uttered in. A recipe for green sauce – ‘sauce verte’ – instructs you to take some herbs and ‘grinde hem smale; And take faire brede, and stepe it in vinegre, and draw it thoug a stregnour’. Recite the words in an affected, effete voice and you can almost picture the fellow wafting a handkerchief and demanding that you draw the mixture through a strainer.

(MS 4016 f.5 verso)

Cookery books were rare in 1440 as most chefs cooked from memory but the Boke of Kokery contains 182 handwritten recipes, including one for custard.

This doesn’t, however, prepare you for the shock of what the author of the book regarded as custard. If you’re imagining something thick, warm, yellow and sweet to pour over your apple crumble, think again. Custard in 1440 was a different beast. Far from being a sauce, it was an open pie filled with pieces of meat or fruit. But it was covered with something we might recognise as custard – a sweet and spicy mixture made with egg and milk. As the piece of bread, known as ‘sop’, gave its name to the pottage it went into, so custard gave its name to the sauce that covered it.

One recipe for custard begins: ‘Take Vele and smyte hit in litull peces, and wass it clene.’ The rinsed and chopped-up veal is then boiled with herbs, including parsley and sage, and wine is added. The mixture is then left to cool and strained egg whites and yolks are added to thicken the broth. The mixture is then poured into a pastry case (that’s right, a coffin (#ulink_1e582ca9-efcc-55da-b225-e0bba19a0a87)) along with chopped dates and prunes and powdered ginger scattered on top.

A recipe for ‘custard lumbarde’ (Lombardy custard), meanwhile, more resembles a fruity custard tart, again baked in a large pie. It’s made with cream, egg yolk, herbs and dates. Almond cream and sugar are then poured on top before serving. This type of dish was also known as ‘crustarde’, which, given that it refers to pastry, might suggest where the word ‘crust’ comes from.

If these custard recipes do little for you, then one for another concoction is no less offputting, beginning as it does: ‘Take some garbage …’ This was not an instruction to the servants to put the bins out, however, but a reference to giblets or offal. No doubt the word ‘garbage’ then developed as a response to those who felt these parts of the animal should be discarded.

Critics of the Boke on Kokery have said that it works more as a reference book for servants, indicating which ingredients they should have ready for the kitchen and how to chop particular kinds of meat. There is also a section advising kitchen staff on storing food properly, although this is less to do with preserving it and more with putting it somewhere where it wouldn’t be stolen. After all, meat, herbs and spices were still the domain of the rich.

But since most servants would not have had the benefit of an education, it seems unlikely that they would have been able to read such instructions. Furthermore, given the luxury that possession of this book would have involved, the tome was probably a cherished volume kept well away from the splashes and mess of a kitchen. But wherever it was stored, and there were no oily stains or flour marks on the copy I saw, what the book does have is an excellent recipe for mussels, hence their being championed here.

What a pleasure it is to see them cooked unadulterated, without lashings of cream, but prepared simply and quickly. Aside from the addition of vinegar and the lack of garlic, you can’t go wrong. The author should also be congratulated for the last line of the recipe. After all, how many times have you eaten in a restaurant and felt irritated because you were not given ‘a diss al hote’. Serving hot food on hot dishes is vital and for that reason alone, the Boke of Kokery deserves its place in history.

19 (#ulink_dc26250a-e2cc-5da1-9b13-64c0ee991868)

Lese fryes (#ulink_dc26250a-e2cc-5da1-9b13-64c0ee991868)

(Cheese tart) (#ulink_dc26250a-e2cc-5da1-9b13-64c0ee991868)

circa 1450

AUTHOR: Unknown, FROM: Harleian Manuscript 4016, British Museum

Take nessh chese, and pare it clene, and grinde hit in a morter small, and drawe yolkes and white of egges thorgh streynour, and cast there-to, and grinde hem togidre; then cast thereto Sugur, butter and salt, and put al togidre in a coffin of faire past, And lete bake ynowe, and serue it forthe.

Don’t get too hung up on what might or might not constitute ‘nessh’ cheese – your idea of a nice cheese possibly being rather different to mine. The author of this recipe for a cheese tart is in fact instructing you to use a ‘mild’ cheese. So, if attempting it today, you might try Gouda, for example. And while I’m at it, you’ll then need to ‘pare it clene’ (take off any rind or mouldy bits), ‘grinde hem togidre’ (whizz the ingredients up in a blender), ‘then cast … al togidre in a coffyn of faire paast’ (pour it into a pre-baked pastry case (#ulink_1e582ca9-efcc-55da-b225-e0bba19a0a87)) and bake ‘ynowe’ (enough) or at any rate for 35 minutes in an oven preheated to 200°C (400°F).

Straightforward and delicious, this recipe comes from a fifteenth-century manuscript that rests today in the British Museum. It is one of a number of recipes from manuscripts owned at various points by Elizabeth I and the Earl of Oxford, collected together and published for the first time in 1888 as Two Fifteenth-Century Cookery-Books. Although it appears that the editor of the book, one Thomas Austin, did not quite have the stomach for what he was transcribing. ‘Many of the recipes which are given here would astonish a modern cook,’ he wrote. ‘Our forefathers, possibly from having stronger stomachs, fortified by outdoor life, evidently liked their dishes strongly seasoned and piquant.’

Austin clearly recoiled from the endless tossing of large quantities of pepper, ginger, cloves, garlic, cinnamon and vinegar into almost everything. Not to mention lashings of wine and ale. ‘Such ingredients,’ he wrote, ‘appear constantly where we should little expect them.’ Then again he was living in the Victorian age when, the extravagance of flavour was frowned upon.

The cheese tart recipe, however, would have seemed less outrageous and it is one of many that uses milk or a derivative of it. (It is worth noting, however, that nothing is employed more constantly than almond milk – made by steeping ground almonds in hot water then straining – which was used in cooking everything from salmon to pork.)

Milk was a common ingredient for most during the medieval period, with your average peasant keeping a couple of cows on common land. Healthy, flavoursome and versatile, it would have helped to bridge the hunger gap as stores from the previous year’s harvest diminished and the first crops of the new year were still to appear. Of course the downside of milk is that it goes off very quickly, particularly in the warmer months. So milk’s separation, on heating, into solid curds, which could provide a staple part of a poor man’s diet, and whey – a refreshing drink – gave it valuable longevity. The curds themselves could then be turned into a simple cheese by being wrapped in a cloth and then hung up to allow any remaining liquid to drain away.

But by the fifteenth century, cheese-making had become considerably more advanced, right across Europe. While the cheese mentioned in early English manuscripts isn’t brand specific, we do know that there was a wide range. English pasture was excellent and the cheeses were delicious and highly varied – there was even one a bit like Parmesan.

This we know because of one man: a cheese-obsessed physician from Italy called Pantaleone da Confienza. Pantaleone travelled around Europe tasting and thinking about cheese and then he wrote a book about it. The reason we know that he took his mission seriously lies in the book’s name. He didn’t just call it ‘A Guide to Cheese’. Summa Lacticiniorum means ‘Compendium of Milk Products’ – not a very sexy title, but it harks back to another Summa book, the heavy-weight Summa Theologica (‘Compendium of Theology’) by Thomas Aquinas.

Many people reckon that Aquinas’s book is one of the most influential pieces of Western literature, a classic in the history of philosophy. Even during Pantaleone’s time it was regarded as the seminal work on the subject. Many just called it Summa. But then, 200 years later, came another Summa, except this one wasn’t about the existence of God, or man’s purpose; it was about cheese.

Now I’ll leave it to others to discuss which is more important, eternal law or where to find a nice Cheddar, but Summa Lacticiniorum was undoubtedly ground-breaking in its own way. Until its publication in 1477 there had been recipe books, a growing number of them – some more useful than others, as we have discovered. Cooking methods were described, ingredients were championed in passing, but no one had ever written a whole book about one single foodstuff.

No one, that is, until Pantaleone travelled across Europe on a serious cheesy mission. As ever, like all the early writers on food, he had a patron. His day job was as a professor of medicine at universities in Turin and Pavia, but he also advised the noble Savoy family on health matters. And the head of the family, the Duke of Savoy of that time, was Ludovico. He loved his cheese and he loved it so much that he suggested his health adviser should write a book about it, the first book in the world dedicated to cheese. (Commissioning employees to pen books on food was in the family, as it happens, because Ludovico’s father was Amadeus VIII, who, as we saw on here (#ua1291cdc-1806-57e5-a326-2df9a94f6a93), had encouraged his chef Chiquart Amiczo to write Europe’s first cookbook.)

Ludovico loved cheese almost as much as he loved siring children – he had nineteen of them (by the same wife) – and he dispatched Pantaleone to study the subject at a time when cheese had fallen from favour. The prevailing view during the Renaissance was that it was unhealthy. So perhaps the book was Ludovico’s way of arguing for his passion (although sadly the book wasn’t published in his lifetime as he died in 1465). He trusted Pantaleone implicitly to do the job and in his favour the latter had a good reputation as a man to be taken seriously on matters of health. Not only was he a professor of medicine, but he had also, while travelling around with his boss in 1464, apparently found a cure for a friend of the King of France, a General Nicolas Tigland, who had been declared incurable by doctors. History does not record what he suffered from, or how Pantaleone cured him, but his reputation soared as a result. Maybe he got him eating cheese.

In the course of his research, Pantaleone visited markets and cheese producers; he questioned those he met about methods of cheese-making, thought long and hard about flavour and texture, and in his book presents a strong case in favour of his subject. The prevailing view may have been that cheese wasn’t good for you but, he claimed, he had met ‘kings, dukes, counts, marquises, barons, soldiers, nobles and merchants’ all of whom regularly consumed and loved cheese.

His book begins with a description of the different types of milk used to make cheese, reflecting on the different ages and breeds of animals used – whether cows, goats or sheep – and the variety of places and climates that cheese is made in. He explains the different shapes it comes in, that you can buy cheese with holes in, for instance, and that some have crusty edges. And he goes on to detail all the cheeses he has discovered. The list is impressive: there are cheeses from France and Switzerland, there are Flemish cheeses and British varieties – the latter discovered not by crossing the Channel, but in a market in Antwerp. They are, he says, as good as the best to be found in Italy. The German types of cheese he has less time for, however – they are mediocris saporis (of unexceptional flavour). Of those he champions in his home country, which include Robiola from Piedmont and a variety from the Aosta Valley, he particularly likes Piacenza Parma, a Parmesan-style cheese.

Panteleone explains how cheese can be good for your health, which type would suit your age, how you should eat it and, interestingly, which cheese you should eat to match your temperament. There is much more going for cheese than just taste, he argues, and it is eminently practical: ‘Cheese is eaten after lunch, or gluttony, to remove the greasiness which remains in the teeth after chewing meat fat, or to remove any taste in the mouth after other foods.’ He glories in its qualities as a palate cleanser and bemoans that so many people spurn it. ‘I grieve at the thought of living in an era when I, a great eater of cheese, should refrain,’ he writes.

To his great consolation he discovered that cheese-making was flourishing across Europe. Producers were pooling their efforts and creating co-operatives. The product was clearly developing well from its ancient origins.