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#medieval pottage
thejoyofseax · 9 months
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Sigginstown Pottage
One of the most basic dishes of the medieval period - and in any culture, pretty much - is the pottage. This is basically "stuff cooked in a pot with water", which is a very broad definition. This particular "recipe" is one that I think is straightforward enough, uses common enough ingredients, and is palatable enough that it was almost certainly made in pre-Norman Ireland (by statistical inevitability, if nothing else). I've given it the name of "Sigginstown Pottage" because I first made it at Sigginstown Castle, and it's useful to have a name by which to refer to it.
1 smoked pale ham, chopped into 1cm cubes 2 onions, chopped (or some celery, also chopped) 2 leeks, roughly chopped 6 carrots, roughly chopped c. 500g pearl barley, bulgur wheat, or other likely whole grain Water to cover
Put everything above into a pot, and simmer until the meat and grains are cooked. Taste and season with some black pepper if needed. Serve hot.
Some observations: Onion is the more "authentic" between it and celery, but both were available. I've been going easy on onions lately due to food sensitivities. Leeks are absolutely a period Irish food, and possibly close to a staple; they're mentioned a fair bit in texts.
The pale ham (I don't know if this is known outside Ireland; it's a small chunk of cured ham, which is pretty salty) provides enough salt that you shouldn't need to add any more. The smoking is pretty solidly attested in period by the number of bones we see with holes for hooks.
You'll see some people claiming that carrots only arrived in Ireland with the Normans, but there are carrot seeds in the archaeobotanic remnants from Viking Dublin, and there's an old Irish word, meacon, which denotes tap-rooted vegetables like parsnips and carrots, but is usually used for carrots. So I'm pretty confident in including these.
The end result is a very solid, stick-to-the-ribs kind of stew; good eating for colder weather or when you've been doing physical work. I've only ever cooked it in cast iron, and it turns out that if you leave the leftovers in the pot overnight, the combination of whole grains and iron results in a horrifically grey stuff, which still tastes fine, but looks absolutely awful. So eat it hot, and don't leave leftovers.
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milkywayan · 2 years
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tfw you see some stupid post that paints medieval peasants eating just plain grey porridge and acting as if cheese, butter or meat was too exotic or expensive for them, and have to use all your inner strength to not just reblog it with an angry rant and throwing hands with people. so i will just post the angry rant here
no, medieval people did not only eat grey porridge with no herbs or spices, they had a great variety of vegetables we dont even have anymore, grains and dairy products, not to mention fruits and meats, all seasonal and changing with the time of the year. no, medieval food was not just tasteless, maybe this will surprise some of you but you can make tasty food without excessive spice use, and can use a variety of good tasting herbs. if you'd ever tried to cook some medieval recipes you would know that. medieval people needed a lot of energy for their work, if they would only eat fucking porridge all of the time they would get scurvy and die before they could even built a civilisation. they had something called 'pottage' which was called that because it was cooked in one pot. you could leave the pot on the fire and go about your day, doing stuff and come back to a cooked meal. they put in what was available that time of the year, together with grains, peas, herbs, meat etc etc. again, if you would try to make it, like i have with my reenactment friends, it can actually be really good and diverse.
dont confuse medieval peasants with poor people in victorian england. dont think that TV shows what it was really like. dont think that dirty grey dressed people covered in filth were how the people looked like.
they made use of everything. too poor to buy proper meat? buy a sheeps head and cook it. they ate nettle and other plants we consider weeds now. they foraged and made use of what they found. hell, there are medieval cook books!
most rural people had animals, they had chickens (eggs), goats (milk and dairy), cows (milk and dairy), sheep (milk and dairy) and pigs (meat machine), and after butchering they used ALL THE PARTS of the animal. you know how much meat you can get out of a pig, even the smaller medieval breeds? the answer is a lot
if you had the space you always had a vegetable garden. there are ways to make sure you have something growing there every time of the year. as i said they had a variety of vegetables (edit: yes onions are vegetables, for those who dont seem to know) we dont have anymore due to how farming evolved. you smoked pork in the chimney, stored apples in the dry places in your house, had a grain chest. people could go to the market to buy fish and meat, both fresh and dried/smoked. they had ale, beer and wine, that was not a luxury that was a staple part of their diet.
this post ended once again up being longer than i planned, but please for the love of the gods, just actually educate yourself on this stuff and dont just say stupid wrong shit, takk
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homunculus-argument · 8 months
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The more you look into it, the funnier the whole myth of The Grim And Depressing Dark Ages is, in the extent in which it covers everything. Like no matter what area of medieval life you look at, the common misconception of it is something bleak, drab, colourless, joyless and smelling like shit. Like at best, an average peasant's life was repetitive, boring, joyless and smells like shit, and at worst it was terrifying, hopeless chaos that smells like blood and rotting plague corpses. I mean okay it was like that sometimes, but not all the time. They had enjoyments in life. Like consider food.
Medieval peasants' food wasn't just grey wet gruel for every meal and hard bread if you were lucky. One major staple food that was commonly eaten by peasants across Europe was pottage. I think every time and culture has some variation of the "just throw whatever we've got at hand in there and boil/fry/cook that shit" sort of meal, and for medieval peasants, that was pottage. And as the name would imply, it's made by throwing the aforementioned whatever-you-have-at-hand ingredients into a pot and then boiling that shit. And that's what's for dinner every day unless it's a special occasion.
And yeah eating the same damn boiled mush every damn day probably doesn't sound much less depressing than just eating bland gruel, but that's the thing, the pottage wasn't the same thing all the time, every time. The ingredients varied by whatever was available at any given time, by harvests, by what herbs are in season and what produce happens to be in the most ample supply. Different ratios and combinations of the same ingredients, fresh or dried or otherwise preserved, changing from season to season.
Freaking imagine being a medieval peasant whose favourite food in the entire world is spring pottage with meadowsweet mead, best thing you can think of. You've heard talk of finer meals, roast boar with wine sauce that they cook for kings, but you're pretty damn sure that it can't better than the pottage you get on the first weeks of May. The one meal that you'd have every day year round if you could, but you can't, so it's the highlight of your year. The thing you look forward to for months at a time. You're sure that is what is served every day in Heaven, and not only are you 100% down to physically fight somebody about it, you absolutely have. You broke your nose, it never quite healed right, and you regret nothing.
And then spring finally comes, and you've been eagerly keeping an eye on how all the right ingredients start to reach their right time, and not only have you been looking forward to May ever since the snows started melting because that specific Best Goddamn Pottage is the only thing you can seem to think about, everyone in your household has been looking forward to it as well - because it's the only thing you seem to talk about, too, and they're sick of hearing about it.
And this year it tastes like shit.
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fatehbaz · 4 months
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Christmas pudding [...] [is] a boiled mass of suet - a raw, hard animal fat [...] often replaced with a vegetarian alternative - as well as flour and dried fruits that is often soaked in alcohol and set alight. [...] [I]t is a legacy of the British Empire with ingredients from around the globe it once dominated [...].
Christmas pudding is a relatively recent concoction of two older, at least medieval, dishes. [...] “Figgy pudding,” immortalized in the “We Wish You a Merry Christmas” carol, appeared in the written record by the 14th century. [...] During the 18th century, the two ["plum pottage" and "figgy pudding"] crossed to become the more familiar plum pudding – a steamed pudding packed with the ingredients of the rapidly growing British Empire of rule and trade. The key was less a new form of cookery than the availability of once-luxury ingredients, including French brandy, raisins from the Mediterranean, and citrus from the Caribbean.
Few things had become more affordable than cane sugar which, owing to the labors of millions of enslaved Africans, could be found in the poorest and remotest of British households by mid-century. Cheap sugar, combined with wider availability of other sweet ingredients like citrus and dried fruits, made plum pudding an iconically British celebratory treat, albeit not yet exclusively associated with Christmas.
Such was its popularity that English satirist James Gillray made it the centerpiece of one of his famous cartoons, depicting Napoleon Bonaparte and the British prime minister carving the world in pudding form.
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In line with other modern Christmas celebrations, the Victorians took the plum pudding and redefined it [...], making it the “Christmas pudding.” In his 1843 internationally celebrated “A Christmas Carol,” Charles Dickens venerated the dish as the idealized center of any family’s Christmas feast [...].
Three years later, Queen Victoria’s chef published her favored recipe, making Christmas pudding, like the Christmas tree, the aspiration of families across Britain.
Christmas pudding owed much of its lasting appeal to its socioeconomic accessibility. Victoria’s recipe, which became a classic, included candied citrus peel, nutmeg, cinnamon, lemons, cloves, brandy and a small mountain of raisins and currants – all affordable treats for the middle class. Those with less means could either opt for lesser amounts or substitutions [...]. Eliza Acton, a leading cookbook author of the day who helped to rebrand plum pudding as Christmas pudding, offered a particularly frugal recipe that relied on potatoes and carrots. [...] The high alcohol content gave the puddings a shelf life of a year or more, allowing them to be sent even to the empire’s frontiers during Victoria’s reign [...].
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In the 1920s, the British Women’s Patriotic League heavily promoted it – calling it “Empire Pudding” in a global marketing campaign. They praised it as emblem of the empire that should be made from the ingredients of Britain’s colonies and possessions: dried fruits from Australia and South Africa, cinnamon from Ceylon, spices from India and Jamaican rum in place of French brandy.
Press coverage of London’s 1926 Empire Day celebrations featured the empire’s representatives pouring the ingredients into a ceremonial mixing bowl and collectively stirring it.
The following year, the Empire Marketing Board received King George V’s permission to promote the royal recipe, which had all the appropriate empire-sourced ingredients. Such promotional recipes and the mass production of puddings from iconic grocery stores like [Sains-bury's] in the 1920s combined to place Christmas puddings on the tables [...].
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All text above by: Troy Bickham. "How the Christmas pudding, with ingredients taken from the colonies, became an iconic British food." The Conversation. 8 December 2023. [Bold emphasis and some paragraph breaks/contractions added by me. Image and caption shown unaltered as they appear published by Bickham along with the article's text.]
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the-mediaeval-monk · 4 months
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Let's build a medieval monastery! (Again!)
my last poll is getting reblogged again, so I figured I'd make another one, but this time with more options!
The options with * next to them are based on real medieval stories to some extent.
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ohhxdile · 7 months
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Mysterious Man ☆ OS
∞ ₒ ˚ Pairing: Geralt of Rivia x reader
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Words: 793
Summary: Typical night for you working in a Tavern that is also an Inn. But tonight is different, there is a strange man in the corner of the room
Warnings: reader pov, use of medieval words, reader as an accent
(A/N: oh my god! i didn't expect my first fanfic to get attention, idk how to thank you all 💕😭)
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I worked in this tavern for over years now. I’ve experienced many festivals, towns people's departure, new faces, mariage and even rivalry. We could call this quite the “experience”
But today was different, while a few drunk men were singing in the middle of the tavern, ripping their vocal cords and pouring ale on the floor. Messy customers that we didn’t really enjoy to serve, but they consumed the most. Something else was different. A blond-white haired man was sat at the corner of the tavern, a long black piece of linen covered his whole body, I couldn’t quite make out his apparence. 
The owner approached me while I was rearranging the barrels “The Witcher wants his pottage with boef” I stood up with a quirked eyebrow questioning him, he pointed quickly to the white-haired man. “Fine, sure” I sigh and put down the barrels I was occupied with, taking the wooden tray in my hand with the pottage and boeuf.
I walked to him and served him “Here is the pottage and boef, Mister asked” I took the empty vessel asking him if he wanted more to drink, he nodded and thanked me. I got to work and poured another drink for him.
Night was settling in, people were leaving, some bought a hall to sleep in. People were getting kicked out forcefully, typical day for a tavern that also works as an Inn.
My hands were sticky with all the type of ale and meals. I cleaned my hands while the owner cleaned a few vessels and plates. “Tonight was good” I smiled at him, when I turned my head, the empty barrels took my attention “Ah ya’ I forgot to refill them, Would ya please get the Pale Lager in the Undercroft?” I nodded and took in hand the empty Pale Lager and got working. I rummaged through all the cask, they were a lot of them, I quickly found the right one and filled in the empty cask. 
It was getting pretty cold in the tavern and I shivered a bit. Someone didn’t leave and It was the “Witcher” I quickly glanced at him and approached him “You’re leaving soon the village?” He raised his head at me and chuckled “I need to stay here for quite a while, people are asking me to solve a town problem.” His rough voice was like neumes to my ears, but soon after something bothered me in his sentence “a town problem?” I take a hold of his empty tankard and ask him “What? I never heard about a problem here before?” His eyebrows raised itself just like mines and we stared at each other.
Continuously we talk to one another, I understand what he means by “problem” there is a thief that is fliching money from ladies by making them buy deadly roses, what a complete disaster. I understood now why he would stay here for a while. “This is quite the story ya’ have” I chuckled to him and he shrugged off, raising his shoulders slightly. “It is my duty as a Witcher” The strange man was interesting, more than any menne I’ve meet along my years of working, he started ruffling through his piece of linen and gave me a sack of gold, I stared at him for approval and he made a sign with his hand. I opened the bag and counted the coins.
He had the perfect amount for the ale, pottage and boef he ate. I was pretty satisfied and thanked him. “My pleasure, the food here is gracious and the ale is smooth to the gullet” I blushed a bit, happy that he was satisfied. I took the bag of gold, content and walked to the owner giving him the coins.
Before leaving the Witcher came close to me, I looked up at him and he smiled, silence settled between us. I didn’t know what to say, but I was a tad busy with wipping the tables that I haven’t realised his eyes travelled around my figure. “Thank you again” I shrugged off his comment and said It was my pleasure. “I still haven’t asked your name” He mentionned and yes, I realised I never introduced myself to the stranger and I told him my name. 
He said my name, and the way It rolled on his tongue was mischievous I liked it. “My name is Geralt” I smiled hopping he wouldn’t see it since my head is lowered to the table in front of me. Suddenly dead silence and I lifted my head.
 Geralt was gone, he left the Inn with a souvenir and a warm welcome, and I was left with many questions in my mind and hoping that he would come back.
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meanderingmedievalist · 5 months
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Are you really living up to your medieval pottage cottagecore fantasies without a good cookbook of monastery soups?
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bleedforever · 1 year
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medieval pottage comments i’ve been thinking about for years
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necrosystem · 3 months
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I'm so super serious. Having a pot of Forever Soup just going continuously has done wonders for my mental health.
CW: in depth food discussion.
I know it wouldn't work for everyone for a lot of reasons. But I'm able to keep my pot of soup fed and continually cooking chicken, potatoes, carrots, celery, onion, corn and sometimes peas/green beans from a mixed veggie addition. I usually only have to top it up with water and additional food, but add some broth every few days, if that.
Just knowing that no matter how bad I feel, no matter how tired, I always have a hot nutritious meal waiting for me whenever I want it is just so secure feeling.
And? I eat so many vegetables now. I add power greens (chard, kale, and spinach) to the bowl of hot broth and it's got this wonderful crunch.
Because of forever soup I'm able to simply prepare a few ingredients at a time and add them to the soup where they cook while I'm sleeping, watching TV, reading, etc.
It used to be fairly common in the medieval times, called pottage. They added whatever they could get their hands on from foraging and the farm, but I just use the same several basics and change it up a tad every once in a while.
It has to be kept hot. I keep mine in my big crockpot that runs really hot. It boils on low and that's keeping it nice and safe. But if it ever gets cool it has to be tossed.
I made that mistake once, thinking it surely hasn't gotten too cool for too long. But it gave me a bit of an upset stomach. It was still warm to the touch, so it probably would have been fine if I had put it in bowls and stored it in the fridge rather than reheat it.
Also never add noodles or rice. They soak up all the broth and turn to mush. Happened once recently and we had to restart the soup.
I'm not expert on soup, nor am I advising anyone to try this because I don't know you or what equipment you're using etc. I'm just raving about my soup.
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Hey,
Do you know what Babey's pregnancy cravings will be? Quail eggs? Iced milk? Lemon cakes? Candied chestnuts? Roast venison (if meat stops making her feel sick towards her third trimester and she actually starts to crave it)?
Capons stuffed with mushrooms, mashed neeps, and salad? Trout and salmon baked in lemon juice with a side of devilled eggs spiced with saffron? Fruit tarts and scones spread thick with honey and raspberry conserve? CREAM CAKES?
Onion soup topped with the finest aged cheese the Vale could produce? Buttermilk braised hare? A selection of the finest sugared delicacies? Rabbit or pigeon pie? Custard topped with sweet cream? Braised lamb with garlic? GARLIC BREAD and soft white bread in general?
Meat from a kid goat glazed in a honey and tumeric mixture served with mashed turnips? Orange juice, whose oranges were shipped in from Dorne to the Arbour specifically for the Princess? Whole roasted pheasant and duck served in a salad of glazed cabbage and small lettuce? Lamb chops spiced with black pepper and nutmeg, served with mashed carrots sweetened with syrup?
Yum, YUM, YUM 😋
The options are deliciously endless when you're rich in a medieval world. I didn't include potatoes or tomatoes cause they weren't around in medieval times.
Thanks!
P.S. If you can't already tell, I love meat. 🍖 🥩 🍖. Lmao, if you ever chose to follow a few suggestions from this, just remember this type of food is exclusively for the noble classes, and an ordinary person would never be able to afford this in medieval times. They'd just eat pottage. The Crown will end up spending a load of money on Babey's food.
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I have to admit, I have… not thought about it yet, haha! This, though…. This has given me all the possible ideas, nonnie. OMG, thank you so much! To be honest, I was probably going to go with sweets, just because they’re pretty easy to identify. BUT, now I have this heckin’ great list to make weird and arguably reprehensible combos with! THANK YOOOO, AAAAAAAAAAH!
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briarcrawford · 11 months
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Recipes: A Secret Marketing Tool
Lord of the Rings, The Hunger Games, and Harry Potter all have very specific food mentioned, and for good reason. Not only does it activate three of the senses for your readers (taste, smell, and sight), but it is can also be a secret marketing tool!
If someone likes your story enough, they may make fan recipes for it. A person who follows the blog of that cook or baker may get curious of the source of the recipe, and pick up your book. That means it is just yet another way fans can help spread the word about your stories.
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World-building and Plotting
Not only can your food help with marketing, but it can also help with world-building and plotting! For example, it is a cliche that the evil kingdom is put somewhere creepy like a volcano, a rocky wasteland, a frozen northern climate, or even somewhere with endless night. I get it, they have to live somewhere as scary as they are, right? But what do they eat? If they are somewhere without an inch of growable soil in sight, where do they grow food? Is it all imported? If so, what do they have wealthy enough to export in exchange?
Once you figure out how they get their food, think about that evil king/lord in charge of that evil kingdom. Often, he wants to kill everyone, but if he does, who will farm the lands?
Tracking where food comes from and how can transform your story and make it seem more real.
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The Food Can Be More Than Stereotypes
In second-world fantasy stories, characters often all eat the same things. Peasants eat bread and cheese, and royals have massive chunks of meat. You can do more than that! For example, medieval peasants ate fish, bread, honey, ale, pottage, fruits, veggies, dairy, nuts, forage foods, and some meats. There are a lot of things that can come out of those ingredients that are incredibly tasty meals. Here is one video that chats about what peasants would have eaten.
The rich in medieval times had even more access to ingredients, and had whole recipe books. For more information on this, one documentary I suggest is Clarissa and the Kings Cookbook. It follows a woman making recipes from a medieval-era cook book. As well as that, here is a great youtube video on the subject.
If you are questioning what ingredients your characters could be eating, this Food Timeline website will greatly help you out.
You can have your characters eat gingerbread, venison pie , clarrey, and so much more!
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Make Sure Your Starved Character Paces Themselves
I don’t have to tell you that food is important, but if your character goes days without eating then suddenly finds food and eats non-stop, it could be harmful to them.
While I was doing solo survival outings for testing, I was very restricted on what and how much I was allowed to eat when I returned. We(myself and the other students) were told that if you go too long without eating, your stomach shrinks.
We were told that if you suddenly ate too much after starving, it could make you throw up, or could make you very ill and possibly kill you. This is called “Refeeding syndrome.”
“Refeeding syndrome can develop when someone who is malnourished begins to eat again. The syndrome occurs because of the reintroduction of glucose, or sugar. As the body digests and metabolizes food again, this can cause sudden shifts in the balance of electrolytes and fluids. These shifts can cause severe complications, and the syndrome can be fatal. It can take as few as 5 successive days of malnourishment for a person to be at risk of refeeding syndrome.” From this article
So, your starved character has to be fed very moderately.
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latinokaeya · 9 months
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tiktok shouldn’t be used as a news source etc etc whatever listen. yesterday i watched a video abt some dude talking abt What vegetables exactly did medieval european peasants eat since most of the popular ones used in modern european cuisine came from the americas or asia or whatever right (his answer was they had certain species of leafy greens + they mainly ate meat bread cheese n smth called pottage anyways) but i think the wildest example he gave that actually made me pause was that apparently they had plantain to eat as well. i was like there’s no way. there’s no way europe had plantain before fucking. potatoes
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milkywayan · 9 months
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made some green pea pottage, following a 14th century recipe from the book 'curye on inglysch'
though i left out the saffron and added a green, sour apple, because i love the taste of onion and apple together
very good
and yes i am using my medieval bowl and spoon because i cant wait for the big reenactment event in three weeks pssstt
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thejoyofseax · 9 months
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Féile na nÚll Options
My kitchen crew are currently discussing which of the three possible cuisines we're going to go with for Féile na nÚll. So far, we're not even close to a decision. Here's (mostly) some cut-and-pasting from the Discord conversation.
If we go with Arabic, I have found fantastic looking recipes for an apple and saffron stew (from the Kanz), an apple pudding, and something that I think should probably be described as an apple chutney, both from al-Warraq. We can build that out into a pretty solid menu, and it covers our vegetarian and coeliac requirements pretty easily.
If we go with English, we get pies. And it's kind of easy to make a good havest-feeling spread of stuff when you have pies. At that time of year, we should have apples and also blackberries, pears, and plenty of other fruit, and as much in the way of meat and fish for savouries as we like. We will need to work out a gluten-free pie crust, but I'm hopeful
Irish gives us cheese and flavoured butters as a major component, and we can use cabbage, kale, garlic, and plenty of berries. We could also hit the pottage-with-purple-berries, which is at this stage becoming more of a comedy bit than a specific dish. Irish also allows for large roasts of pork, which goes well with the apple theme. Not, that is, that medieval England wouldn't have had roast pork, but they were legendarily obsessed with roast beef.
More, I guess, after we decide!
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pillow-princeps · 8 months
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Sometimes for breakfast I like to have oatmeal with tuna and black pepper and pretend I'm a medieval peasant eating pottages
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the-mediaeval-monk · 1 year
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Let's build a medieval monastery!
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