Binding Agents

Because the cooking pot was used for a broad range of preparations, the cook made use of an equally broad range of thickeners. Bread - sliced, ground, moistened and sieved - is most commonly called upon in the recipes to bind liquid ingredients more or less together. Depending upon the color that was desired for the finished dish, the bread could be toasted lightly or darkly, or even burnt.

Starch (amidon), too, could be used: a recipe tells us that starch is made from soaking wheat, then grinding it, soaking it again, straining it, and finally drying it into a powder. Recipe for Amydon.

Starch was used only rarely as a thickener, and flour, dairy products, or roux, the combination of fat and flour, not at all.

Egg yolks, ground liver, breast meat of fowl, and ground almonds were similarly relied upon to thicken broths, and less commonly, sauces.

To produce the many sauces that accompanied roast meat, tart liquids were usually combined with powdered spices and thickened by way of reduction or concentration, bread crumbs, and or rice flour. See Medieval Sauces