The poem treats a great variety of dishes under the headings of potages, broths, roasted meats, baked meats, sauces and 'petecure', including the earliest references to several dishes, including haggis and humble pie.
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Pearl barley is similar to wheat in its caloric, protein, vitamin and mineral content, though some varieties are higher in lysine.Barley basics, from the Montana State University It is used mainly in soups, stews, and potages. It is the primary ingredient of the Italian dish orzotto and one of the main ingredients of the Jewish dish Cholent.
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German- speaking areas had a particular fondness for krapfen: fried pastries and dough with various sweet and savory fillings. Marzipan in many forms was well known in Italy and southern France by the 1340s and is assumed to be of Arab origin.Adamson (2004), p. 89. Anglo-Norman cookbooks are full of recipes for sweet and savory custards, potages, sauces and tarts with strawberries, cherries, apples and plums.
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The Accomplisht Cook is still considered to be one of "the most extensive English treatment of potages, broths, and soups", with about 20 percent of the volume devoted to them. In addition to the large collection of recipes, the work contains a memoir of the author. When a 1678 edition of the book was discovered and put up for sale in 2007, auctioneer Charles Hanson said "No more than 200 of these books were ever printed in the period".
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The Norman invasion brought new additions to the diet, introducing rabbits, fallow deer and pheasants in the 12th century. They may also have introduced some freshwater fish, notably pike. The Norman invasion marked the beginning of both the English and French presence in the country which continued as a unique Hiberno-Norman culture developed in the Norman settled areas and towns. The Norman cuisine characteristically consisted of spicy meat and fowl along with potages and broths, roasts and sauces.
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A meal would ideally begin with easily digestible fruit, such as apples. It would then be followed by vegetables such as lettuce, cabbage, purslane, herbs, moist fruits, light meats, such as chicken or goat kid, with potages and broths. After that came the "heavy" meats, such as pork and beef, as well as vegetables and nuts, including pears and chestnuts, both considered difficult to digest. It was popular, and recommended by medical expertise, to finish the meal with aged cheese and various digestives.
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In the late 18th century, the practice arose of removing the empty soup tureens and replacing them with additional grosses entrées or entrées de broche; these replacement dishes were commonly called "relevés"; they were last of the entrées consumed at the meal, though they often appear on menus right after the potages. Taken together, all these bulky dishes were called "substantial entrées" (fortes entrées). The most numerous of the entrées at any meal were the "ordinary entrées" (entrées ordinaires), consumed between the bouilli and the relevés.
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It was common for a community to have shared ownership of an oven to ensure that the bread baking essential to everyone was made communal rather than private. There were also portable ovens designed to be filled with food and then buried in hot coals, and even larger ones on wheels that were used to sell pies in the streets of medieval towns. But for most people, almost all cooking was done in simple stewpots, since this was the most efficient use of firewood and did not waste precious cooking juices, making potages and stews the most common dishes.Adamson (2004), pp. 55–56, 96.
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Harvesting cabbage; Tacuinum Sanitatis, 15th century While grains were the primary constituent of most meals, vegetables such as cabbage, chard, onions, garlic and carrots were common foodstuffs. Many of these were eaten daily by peasants and workers and were less prestigious than meat. Cookbooks, which appeared in the late Middle Ages and were intended mostly for those who could afford such luxuries, contained only a small number of recipes using vegetables as the main ingredient. The lack of recipes for many basic vegetable dishes, such as potages, has been interpreted not to mean that they were absent from the meals of the nobility, but rather that they were considered so basic that they did not require recording.Scully (1995), p. 71.
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Le Ménagier de Paris (; often abbreviated as Le Ménagier; ) is a French medieval guidebook from 1393 on a woman's proper behaviour in marriage and running a household. It includes sexual advice, recipes,Plouvier, Liliane, "La Gastronomie dans le Viandier de Taillevent et le Ménagier de Paris"; Sabban, Françoise, "Le Savoir-cuire ou l'art des potages dans le Ménagier de Paris et le Viandier de Tailleventin"; and Saly, Antoinette, "Les Oiseaux dans l'alimentation d'après le Viandier de Taillevent et le Ménagier de Paris," in and gardening tips. Written in the (fictional) voice of an elderly husband addressing his younger wife, the text offers a rare insight into late medieval ideas of gender, household, and marriage. Important for its language and for its combination of prose and poetry, the book's central theme is wifely obedience.
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In the mid-18th century, entrées were increasingly divided into new categories based on the content and preparation of the dish. "Hors d'œuvres", which, in the late 17th century, were served at several points during the meal, were considered a type of entrée in the 18th century, but by the 19th century, they had become a distinct stage of the meal. Large, whole joints of meat (usually beef or veal) and very large fowl (turkey and geese) were categorized as grandes or grosses entrées. When roasted, these same joints and fowl were called "spit-roasted entrées" (entrées de broche); they were always served with a sauce to distinguish them from true roasts. When boiled, a joint of beef was called the "le bouilli"; this was generally the first of the entrées consumed in the meal, after the potages and hors d’œuvres.
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The astronomical cost and high prestige of spices, and thereby the reputation of the host, would have been effectively undone if wasted on cheap and poorly handled foods.Scully (1995), pp. 84–86 The common method of grinding and mashing ingredients into pastes and the many potages and sauces has been used as an argument that most adults within the medieval nobility lost their teeth at an early age, and hence were forced to eat nothing but porridge, soup and ground-up meat. The image of nobles gumming their way through multi-course meals of nothing but mush has lived side by side with the contradictory apparition of the "mob of uncouth louts (disguised as noble lords) who, when not actually hurling huge joints of greasy meat at one another across the banquet hall, are engaged in tearing at them with a perfectly healthy complement of incisors, canines, bicuspids and molars".
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