Medieval Menus
from http://www.medievalcookery.com/menus.html

The food served at banquets was quite different in quantity, and in some respects in nature, from everyday meals, which for most people was apt to start with (or, for the poor, consist of) vegetable pottages (soups or stews). For a banquet, vegetables, if any—in England, they rarely appear on feast menus—were vastly outnumbered by a parade of roasts or fish of all kinds, and more elaborate dishes. Even the pottages were usually ones considered as special treats, such as frumenty (a wheat or barley pottage) with venison, or a blancmange of chicken or fish in spiced almond milk, usually also containing rice.

What is most striking to the modern eye about the menus for important banquets is the number of dishes served. An extreme example is the banquet celebrating George Neville's installation as Archbishop of York in 1465, which had a first course containing seventeen dishes, a second with twenty, and a third with twenty-three—not counting the "subtleties," discussed below. Three was the normal number of courses for the high (head) table at an English banquet, two for lesser guests. At the coronation feast of Richard III, there were three courses for high table, two for the lords and ladies, and one for commoners—who included the Lord Mayor of London!

Usually the dishes given to those not at high table were a selection of those in the three-course menu, including the most basic dishes. A feature of the (fictional) thirteenth-century banquet of Walter of Bibbesworth (Hieatt and Butler, Curye on Inglysche, pp. 2–3) is that there was enough venison and frumenty for the "whole household," clearly suggesting that not everyone got a taste of all the goodies that followed.

Manuscript 279 (see Banquet Bills of Fare) in the British Library's Harleian collection gives two-course menus for "the lower part of the hall" for the banquets celebrating the installation of John Stafford, Bishop of Wells, and the wedding of the Earl of Devonshire (Austin, pp. 63–64). In the first case, the two-course menu is a selection of seventeen of the forty-seven dishes on the three-course menu, but the wedding banquet has less overlap, substituting several dishes not found on the three-course menu. These are not all humbler dishes: they include Caudel Ferry, a dish of sweetened wine thickened with eggs, resembling a modern zabaglione, and doucetys, custard tarts.

Method and Order of Food Serving

Trays of covered or uncovered serving dishes, some of enormous size and weight, were carried in by porters or footmen from the kitchen, which was, of necessity, a great deal distant from the banqueting hall (this can be seen in period productions set in castles or estate manor houses). After the aperitif course, such as the sweet wine Grenache, came the pottages; these are meat or vegetable soups and stews. Dinners & feasts usually started with foods that were considered easily digestible, such as light meats, warm & moist foods such as soups and broths, moist fruits (especially peaches), and greens such as lettuce, cabbage, and "herbs." Spices were thought to warm the stomach, and were therefore an excellent stomach opener. Cheese was eaten both before and during the meal, as an aid to digestion and to help a "weak stomach." Foods that were more difficult to digest, such as beef & fatty pork and heavy fruits, like pears & chestnuts, were consumed later in the meal.

Medieval Catholic ritual required certain days to be fish days with no meats. On these fish days, salted fishes and fish pastries followed the pottages, otherwise, on meat days, boiled or roasted fowl and meat followed. These were not the exotic fowls and meats, like peacock and wild boar, but the commonplace ones like hen and calf. When meat was eaten, it was normally followed with cheese, which physicians recommended for proper digestion. When fish was served, it was followed with nuts, for essentially the same reason. These meat or fish dishes were interspersed with "made dishes," such as pies, fricasses, vegetable puree or 'porrays,' savory or sweet jellies, custards and tarts.

The "delicacy" meats, often roasted wild fowl, meat or fish, followed the commonplace and were accompanied by a variety of other side dishes. In large feasts, very rich and exotic foods were served in smaller portions only to highly distinguished guests after the more filling and common dishes had been served to the entire hall. This practice would continue as the feast progressed, ending with the finest of delicacies being served to just the table of the king or nobleman in charge of the affair.

The final course consisted of dishes that were sweet or rich, like tarts and mince, and spices were again used here as a digestive aid to end the meal. Wine, as a custom, was drunk just before retiring, and so the evening would usually end with a snack of sweet fruits & cakes, & spiced wines.

While some menus extant from the period contain variations on this order of service, like the menu for a banquet given by Walter of Bibbesworth that served pottages after the substantial meats, this is the generally accepted grand scheme of the expected order and is also set forth in two guides used in the period: Modus Cenandi and Liber Cure Cocorumhat. While each course might have many dishes in it, it is equally true that each course might have only one or two dishes in it. In all service orders, the final course is consistently the sweet and rich, wafer, fruit and cheese categories that we know as dessert (e.g., cheesecake, fruit-filled cannelons, mince meat pasty).

Beverages

Beverages were almost as varied by type as they might be today and were a combination of ales and various wines. The banquet was begun with aperitif (opener), and the sweet wine Grenache has survived in some medieval records as being common. Ales would be served with the lighter courses, like the small fish and pottages, while richer wines would be served with the substantial meat courses. The final course would return to sweet wines that were spiced and sweetened.

Menus

In General, courses were served in this order:

1. "Appetizers," such as fruit, soups and stews
2. "Main course," roasted foods and cooked vegetables, in this order: boar's head, venison, and stuffed pig before fowl; whole large-footed birds such as swan before smaller fowl such as duck; sweet dishes before sour; hot foods before cold; and moist foods before dry.
3. "Dessert," baked food, both savory and sweet, small birds

Middle Class City-Dweller

• First Course – capons with herbs, a cominy, "daguenet" peas, loach in yellow sauce, venison in soup
• Second Course – the best roast you can get, meat-jelly, blancmangier "parti", little cream tarts well sugared
• Third Course – capon pies, cold sage soup, stuffed shoulders of mutton, pike in broth, venison with boar's tail, crayfish

Fish Day

• First Course – oysters in gravy, pike and smoked herring, fried stockfish and whiting
• Second Course – porpoise in galantine, with conger eels and fresh salmon gilded and roasted and gurnard, with tarts and flampoint (an egg and cheese pastry)
• Third Course – rosee (rose-colored dish) as pottage and cream of almonds, with sturgeon and whelks, great eels and lampreys, dariol (custard tart), lechefres of fruit (fruit tarts), with Nirsebeke (type of fritter)

McLean, Will, and Jeffrey L. Singman. Daily Life in Chaucer's England. Westport: Greenwood Press, 1995. p. 164

Fish Day II

• First course – lampreys baked in vinegar, pepper, ginger, and cinnamon; minnows or eels in pie; baked herrings with sugar; pike in galantyne; poached mulwell or gurnard
• Second course – conger eel, doree, salmon in syrup; roasted turbot, halibut, sea bass, mullet, trout, bream, eels, and lampreys
• Third course – sturgeon; salmon in rich sauces; sea bream, perch in aspic, fried herring, and seafood (whelks, mussels, and shrimp)

Mortimer, Ian. The Time Traveler's Guide to Medieval England. New York City: Touchstone, 2008. p. 183

Moderately fancy

• First Course – boar's head larded, broth of Almain as pottage, baked capons and chevettes (small pies), pheasants, and bitterns
• Second Course – swans, curlews, pigs, roast veal, and tarts; with blandesire (white pottage) and murrey (a dish colored with mulberries)
• Third Course – coney, partridge, and woodcock, roast plover and larks, with fritters, pot-wise and sack-wise (meat molded into pots and sacks), urchins (sausages that looked like hedgehogs), and Egredoun (sweet and sour dish)

McLean, Will, and Jeffrey L. Singman. Daily Life in Chaucer's England. Westport: Greenwood Press, 1995. p. 163

Moderately fancy

• First Course – brawn with mustard, meat pottage (containing beef or mutton, wine, herbs, and spices), another meat pottage (containing chicken or boiled pork), stewed pheasant or swan, meat fritters (made with animal entrails)

Mortimer, Ian. The Time Traveler's Guide to Medieval England. New York City: Touchstone, 2008. p. 181

Fancy

• Pre-meal – a pint of Grenache (wine), hot eschaudés, roast apple with white sugar plums upon them, roasted figs, sorrel and watercress, and rosemary
• Soup – a soup of six trout, six tenches, white herring, freshwater eels (salted twenty-four hours), and three whiting (soaked twelve hours); almonds, ginger, saffron, cinnamon powder, and sweatmeats
• Saltwater fish – soles, gurnets, congers, turbots, and salmon
• Freshwater fish – pike with roe, carp from the Marne, bream
• Side-dishes – lampreys à la bœe, orange-apples (one per guest) , porpoise with sauce, mackerel, soles, bream; shad à la cameline with verjuice, rice and fried almonds upon them; sugar and apples
• Dessert – stewed fruit with white and vermilion sugar plums; figs, grapes, dates, and filberts

Lacroix, Paul. Manners, Customs, and Dress during the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period. New York: Skyhorse Publishing, Inc., 2013. p. 170-171

Wedding Feast

• Soup – capons with white sauce, ornamented with pomegranate and crimson sweetmeats
• Roasts – quarter of roe deer, goslings, young chickens, and sauce of orange, cameline, and verjuice
• Side-dishes – jellies of crayfish and loach; young rabbits and pork
• Dessert – froumentée and venison

Lacroix, Paul. Manners, Customs, and Dress during the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period. New York: Skyhorse Publishing, Inc., 2013. p. 172

Fancy

• First Course – civet or hare and a quarter of stag which had been the night in salt; a stuffed chicken, and a loin of veal which were covered in a German sauce, with gilt-sugar plums and pomegranate seeds
• Second Course – a roe deer, a pig, a sturgeon cooked in parsley and vinegar, and covered with powdered ginger
• Third Course – a kid, two goslings, twelve chickens, twelve pigeons, six young rabbits, two herons, a leveret, a fat stuffed capon, four chickens covered in egg yolk and sprinkled with powder dolce, a wild boar, some wafers (darioles), and stars
• Fourth Course – a jelly part white and part red (representing the host's crest); cream with powder douce, covered with fennel seeds preserved in sugar; a white cream, cheese in slices, and strawberries; and plums stewed in rosewater
• Fifth Course – vogue wines, and preserves and pastries, worked into the shapes of stags and swans, which had the crests of the guests suspended from their necks
• Pie – there was one enormous pie surmounted by smaller pies to form a crown; the largest pies were silvered around the edges and gilt on the top; each contained a whole roe deer, a gosling, three capons, six chickens, ten pigeons, one young rabbit, a minced loin of veal, two pounds of fat, and twenty-six hardboiled eggs covered in saffron and flavored with cloves
• Gilt castle subtlety

Lacroix, Paul. Manners, Customs, and Dress during the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period. New York: Skyhorse Publishing, Inc., 2013. p. 174

Menus from Le Ménagier de Paris, 14th century, J. Hinson (trans.)

I. DISNER A JOUR DE CHAR, SERVI DE TRENTE ET UN M�S A SIX ASSIETTES. (translated below)

Première assiette. Garnache et tostées, pastés de veel, pastés de pinparneaux, boudins et saucisses.
Seconde assiette. Civé de lièvres et les costellettes, pois coulés, saleure et grosse char, une soringue d'anguilles et autre poisson.
Tierce assiette. Rost : connins, perdris, chappons, etc., lux, bars, carpes, et un potage escartelé.
Quarte assiette. Oiseaulx de rivière à la dodine, ris engoulé, bourrée à la sausse chaude et anguilles renversées.
Quinte assiette. Pastés d'aloés , ruissolles, lait lardé, flaonnés succrés.
Sixième assiette. Poires et dragées, neffles et nois pelées. Ypocras et le mestier.

I. Meat-day Dinner, Thirty-one dishes in Six Platters.

First platter. Grenache wine and toast-rounds, veal pies, pompano pies, black-puddings and sausages.
Second platter. Hare stew and ribs, strained peas, salted and coarse meat, smoked eels and other fish.
Third platter. Roast: coneys, partridge, capons, etc., eel-pout, brill, and a soup of chopped meats.
Fourth platter. Water-fowl a la dodine, smothered rice, and a mold of eels with hot sauce.
Fifth platter. Shad pies, rissoles, sugared milk, sugared flans.
Sixth platter. Pears and sugared almonds, medlars and shelled nuts. Hippocras and wafers.

Another example from a late 14th century Parisian menu (Le Menagier de Paris):

FIRST COURSE
Miniature pastries filled either with cod liver or beef marrow
A cameline meat "brewet" (pieces of meat in a thin cinnamon sauce)
Beef marrow fritters
Eels in a thick spicy puree
Loach (type of fish) in a cold green sauce flavored with spices and sage
Large cuts of roast or boiled meat
Saltwater fish

SECOND COURSE
"The best roast that may be had"
Freshwater fish
Broth with bacon
A meat tile (pieces of chicken or veal, simmered, sautéed, served in a spiced sauce of pounded crayfish tails, almonds and toasted bread and garnished with whole crayfish tails)
Capon pasties and crisps
Bream and eel pasties
Blang Mang ('Blanc Mang' was a sweet dish combining milk, rice, almonds, chopped meat and sugar. The name 'blanc mang' comes from the French for 'white food'. The dish would would eventually evolve into blancmange, the sweet wobbly pudding much loved by the English.)

THIRD COURSE
Frumenty (sweet wheat dish served w/ meat)
Venison
Lampreys with hot sauce
Fritters
Roast bream and darioles
Sturgeon
Jellies

Manor houses from the country would add game birds. After the meal would come the sweets and confections, then maybe some spiced wine or even whole spices, which were thought to aid in digestion.

Fish Dinners

XXII. Another Fish Dinner [Source: Menagier de Paris, J. Hinson (trans.)]

First Service:

Strained peas, herring, thick soup, salted eels, oysters, a salmi of pike and carp

Second Service:

Freshwater fish
Smoked eels
Rich pasties
Portioned fricassee
An arbalester
Pies
Fritters

Third Service:

Roast seafood ?
Smothered rice
Tarts
Fried bread slices
Meat tarts
Salmon and bream pies
A hotpot

Fourth Service:

Chopped vegetables
Thin pancakes
Little sausages
Endive
Fried loach
Browned vegetables
Congers and turbot with sugar
Lombardy tarts
Jellied eels

Menu for the banquet given for the English king in 1397, shortly after King Richard II's marriage to Isabella of France in 1396.

Taken From: Curye on Inglysch: English Culinary Manuscripts of the Fourteenth Century, edited by Constance B. Hieatt and Sharon Butler Early English Text Society, Oxford University Press, London, 1985. English translation (c) Garay. From MS Cosin V. III. ll (C) p.39

From Liber cure cocorum, ca. 1430

See also Menus from Two Fifteenth-Century Cookery-Books

Humbert II (1312 – 1355)

A special example appears with the last independent ruler to bear the title of "Dauphin" in the region known as the Dauphiné; after Humbert II sold that possession to the king of France, his title became that of the oldest royal French prince. Humbert II (1312 – 1355) was not good with finances and before he, in effect, sold off his realm, he tried to limit expenses, in part by carefully laying out the meals for his household (around 1336-1337). The result goes on for several pages, but Le Grand d'Aussy sums it up in his eighteenth century history of food:

For his Sunday and Thursday dinner, the Dauphin wants to be served two pasties, each made of a hen and two chickens.

On Monday and Wednesday, he wants a puree of peas or of broad beans, with two pounds of salted pork; then good tripes, cooked in water. For the second service, two portions (rotulos) of beef and mutton, boiled and served with a warm pepper sauce; and, as a roast, six capons, or six fat hens.

On Tuesday, instead of soup, he asks for rice with cabbage, beets. turnips and leeks, with a pound of salted pork; half a portion of boiled beef, served with mustard; twelve chickens, or six hens, cut in half; and, for the second service, a portion of fresh pork.

As for supper, he has it consist of a half-portion of roast beef; beef feet, prepared in vinegar with parsley; and grilled beef tongues, with cameline sauce.

His dessert is made up of cheese and fruit.

The Dauphin's feasting, on meatless days, resembles those of meat days. These are, for Friday, two soups, or puree, either of peas, or of cabbage; of fish, if any are found; twenty-four fried eggs, with a good sauce; Lorraine pasties; then some fried food.

For Saturday, two soups with a puree of broad beans and almonds, seasoned with onion juice and olive oil; fish, if there is any; twelve poached eggs, with a good sauce; tarts of greens, and eight hard-boiled eggs.

The Dauphin of course got the best quality of wine, which happened to be (though not yet known as such) côtes du Rhône.

The Dauphin's knights and barons got essentially the same food, but in smaller quantities. Only he got certain specialties, like the tripes. He also got two types of bread, one the finer pain de bouche, the other small one-pound rolls meant to be dipped (probably in soup).

Le Grand explains that Lorraine pasties "consisted of a fish stuffing, which was enclosed in a pastry kneaded with butter, sugar, and eggs. They were then fried in butter. There were meat versions; and these were stuffed with a hash of capon white meat." Along with the cameline and pepper sauce, these may be some of the more extravagant items noted here. Note that the special treat in these meals was... tripe.

Otherwise, such a menu would have been unworthy of the time of a chef like Taillevent.