20 Medieval Dishes That Prove Old Food Wasn’t Bland

A modern blancmange will almost certainly conjure up the image of a creamy pudding, but in the Middle Ages, the word meant something entirely different. The Forme of Cury, a cookbook compiled at the court of King Richard II, outlines a recipe for “blans mangier,” finely chopped capon boiled with rice, sugar, and almond milk until it becomes a smooth white paste. White ginger was added, since saffron or cinnamon would ruin its color.

Cameline Sauce was one of the most popular sauces in medieval France, appearing in Le Viandier, the cookbook by Guillaume Tirel. No camel was involved; the name refers to its camel-hair brown color. The cooks would grind cinnamon, ginger, cloves, and nutmeg with breadcrumbs, then thin the paste with red wine and verjuice, the juice of unripe grapes, or vinegar, before pouring it over roast venison or beef.

Another dish in The Forme of Cury was pommedorry. Minced beef or pork was blended with pepper, raisins and currants. It was then formed into balls, boiled, skewered on a spit, coated in a batter of egg yolks and saffron, and roasted until the surface glistened like gold. Pommedorry means “golden apples,” but they weren’t made of fruit. They were named after their shape and color.

Medieval feasts often closed with hippocras, a spiced wine mentioned in The Forme of Cury. Sugar or honey was mixed with the wine, as well as cinnamon, ginger, cloves, nutmeg, long pepper, and galangal, an aromatic root native to Southeast Asia. This was strained several times through a funnel-shaped felt cloth called the “Sleeve of Hippocrates” and served as a digestive aid.

Another example of medieval trade can be seen in Mawmenee from The Forme of Cury, which is based on the ninth-century Arab dish ma’muniyya. Mawmenee is composed of shredded capon, sweet Greek wine, sugar, fried pine nuts, dates, ginger, and cinnamon. The vibrant red color was achieved by adding red sandalwood powder, a tasteless and odorless imported wood flour used solely as a dye.

The recipe for Sauce Madame from The Forme of Cury is meant for dressing a whole roasted goose at King Richard II’s table. It is prepared by stuffing the goose with quinces, pears, garlic, grapes, sage, parsley, hyssop, and savory, sewing it up, and roasting it on a spit. The sauce is made by boiling the stuffing and roasting juices with red wine, galangal, and powder douce, a combination of ground cinnamon, ginger and sugar.

Tart de Bry is Recipe 174 in The Forme of Cury. Cooks made a pastry crust, filled it with autumnal cheese, raw egg yolks, powdered ginger, sugar, saffron, and salt, and baked it until it was browned and stiff. The result was a cheesy, creamy tart perfumed with ginger and saffron.

Verde sawse didn’t need spice-traders’ ships. Both The Forme of Cury and Le Viandier give the recipe for the raw green sauce: mint, parsley, sage, and sorrel beaten in a mortar with garlic, breadcrumbs, and red wine vinegar. Served green, it cuts the fattiness of boiled mutton, pork, or fish.

Galyntyne sauce required galangal, a spice that few modern cooks know: a rhizome from Southeast Asia, distinct from ginger. The Forme of Cury has cooks pulverize the crust of stale bread with ginger, cinnamon, galangal, and salt, temper the mixture with vinegar, then strain it and pour the cold sauce over roasted meat or fish.

Peeres in Confyt shows that even winter pears might make a welcome addition to a medieval feast. According to the recipe, Warden pears (hardy enough to endure a long boil) are poached whole in red wine and sweet Greek wine, to which honey or sugar and ginger have been added. Red sandalwood powder gives them a beautiful red color. They are then served in a thick, velvety sauce.

By the Middle Ages, cooks already had a pretty good handle on marinating meat. Consider Recipe 54 from The Forme of Cury. Cooks prick a pork loin and soak it in a mixture of red wine, garlic, black pepper, coriander, and caraway seeds. Then they roast it on a spit, reducing the marinade and pan juices to glaze the meat. Caraway and coriander lend an earthy-citrus flavor.

Limonia illustrates how Norman and Arab foodways meet in one recipe from Arab-influenced, Norman-ruled southern Italy. According to the Liber de Coquina, a medieval cookery book from southern Italy, chicken fried in lard with chopped onion was stewed with almond milk and stock and, before being served, seasoned with white ginger and the juice of lemons or bitter oranges.

Caboches in Potage was far more appealing than the stereotype of dull, boiled medieval cabbage. In the Forme of Cury, cabbage, leeks, and onions were simmered in a rich meat broth with salt, powder douce, and a touch of saffron that gave the whole concoction a luminous gold color. This was good for the wealthy, because peasants couldn’t afford saffron. Poorer people made their potage with garlic, onions, and herbs.

Civé de Veau, named after the Old French word for onion, cive, relied heavily on onion. In Le Viandier, we find veal or chicken browned in lard, cooked in a sauce of fried onions, red wine, and broth, and thickened with toasted bread crumbs, then flavored with ginger, cinnamon, cloves, and verjuice (the sour juice of unripe grapes). It’s hardly the banquet fare of fairy tales, but with all that browning and thickening, it wasn’t a quick weeknight dish either.

The word mortrews comes from the way cooks filled a mortar with the meat and pounded it to a paste. The Forme of Cury gives a recipe for poached pork or capon, pounded fine and mixed with breadcrumbs, egg yolks, broth, ginger, cinnamon, pepper, and saffron, cooked until thick, then garnished with whole cloves. The result was a dense, golden pâté you could scoop with a spoon, rather than a soup.

Mustard in the medieval period could be sweet as well as hot. Both Le Ménagier de Paris and fourteenth-century Italian cookbooks describe a preparation in which whole mustard seed was ground up with red wine or wine vinegar, along with honey, ginger, cinnamon, and cloves. Sometimes this preparation was made into little balls and dried for preservation; more often it was left moist and used to season roasts.

In Frytour of Erbes, bitter garden herbs were transformed into a sweet, crunchy treat. In The Forme of Cury, cooks mix minced green garden herbs into a simple flour-and-water yeast batter, drop spoonfuls into boiling oil or melted lard, and then fry until they turn crunchy. When served while still warm and drenched in honey, they provided a lovely marriage of robust green herbs and sugar.

Tostee was made by taking a slice of plain, toasted bread and soaking it in spiced wine syrup. In Recipe 96 in The Forme of Cury, crisp white bread was drenched with a syrup of red wine, honey, ginger powder, black pepper, and salt, garnished with pieces of fresh ginger. Sweet, boozy, and very, very peppery. Nothing like an egg-and-milk soak.

Despite sounding like bread due to its name, Payne Ragoun is actually a type of hard candy. According to the Forme of Cury, it consists of clarified sugar and honey, boiled until thickened into a firm syrup, rolled with toasted pine nuts and a large amount of powdered ginger, then poured onto a board to cool. Once hardened, the candy is broken or cut into pieces to serve at the conclusion of an elite feast.

The name Egurdouce speaks for itself: egur means sour, douce is sweet, both from Old French. In Recipe 21 in The Forme of Cury, we find directions to fry rabbit in fat, along with currants and parboiled onions, then put everything in a pan with red wine and red wine vinegar; add sugar, ginger, cinnamon, black pepper, and salt to taste, making a glossy, dark stew. This juxtaposition was intentional.

This content was created with the help of AI.