FOOD IN MEDIEVAL GERMANY

Diet and Nutrition 


In medieval German literature the diet of the nobility is described as consisting of game, fish, and white bread; that of the peasants as dark bread, porridge, turnips, and sidemeat, i.e. the cheap cuts of pork. In these texts aristocrats drink wine, while peasants drink water, milk, cider, or beer. This rather simplistic view of the medieval diet does not yet take into account the bourgeoisie, which was becoming a significant cultural force in the later Middle Ages. Although the quantity of meat eaten in castles was higher than that in towns or in the countryside, only a small percentage of it was game. Domestic animals such as pigs, cattle, sheep, goats, and chickens were a much bigger source of meat. In addition, all classes depended heavily on grain and fruit. In Germany, oats and barley were preferred over millet. Studies of fecal waste have shown that cherries, plums, sloes, damsons, apples, pears, medlars, hazel- and walnuts, other types of berries, rose hips, and elderberries were the most popular fruit.

Food-stuffs such as fruit and vegetables were normally eaten when in season; foods that had been preserved through marinating (kraut), salting (fish), smoking (meat), and drying (fruit, electuary), or fresh fruit (apples), were stored for the winter in cellars and larders. Whenever possible, animals such as fish and chickens were kept alive until they were needed in the kitchen. Small animals no longer a part of German cuisine included squirrels, hedgehogs, beavers, starlings, sparrows, and jays. Cooks, especially those of more modest households, used all the parts of an animal (meat, blood, head, inner organs) and turned them into purees, pies, and sausages. Finely chopped or mashed, foodstuffs were colored and/or filled in molds in the shape of mushrooms, fish, crayfish, eggs, and birds. Leftovers, too, were used to prepare new dishes. Herbs such as mint, sage, rue, leeks, onions, parsley, fennel, dill, caraway, lovage, mustard, watercress, juniper berries, celery, and horseradish were used fresh in the summer and dried in the winter. Most spices had to be imported and were therefore very expensive.

The most affordable were pepper and ginger, followed by cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, and saffron, which was approximately seven times more expensive than pepper. Other luxury goods were almonds, rice, and sugar, which were also in high esteem as foods for the sick and convalescent. Fasting laws prohibited the consumption of meat, fowl, lard, eggs, and dairy products on every Friday and Saturday, all church holidays, during Lent, and before saints' holidays, which amounted to more than a third of the days of the Christian calendar. Those who could not afford fish had to live on hemp, lentils, beans, and bread. The main meals of the day were eaten at sunrise, noon, and sundown and usually consisted of several courses. Most of the tableware was made of wood, metal, and pottery. Glass was still rare, and the cutlery included a knife and spoon, but no fork. According to medieval medicine, the right quantity, composition, and sequence of dishes was essential for maintaining or restoring the balance of the four humors (hot, cold, wet, dry) in the human body.

German physicians such as Konrad von Eichstätt and Arnold von Bamberg wrote dietetic treatises (Regimen sanitatis literature) in which they described the humoral qualities of individual food-stuffs, and occasioanlly provided culinary recipes. This dietetic information later found its way into medieval German cookbooks. New in the diet of fifteenth-century Germany are salads prepared from raw vegetables, pasta, and a variety of imported foods such as capers, figs, dates, lemons, limes, oranges, pomegranates, pine nuts, and carob beans. Wine, initially drunk by the nobility and on special occasions, had now become a drink consumed by everybody who could afford it, regardless of status.

Cookbooks 

The Répertoire des manuscrits médiévaux contenant des recettes culinaires lists forty-five late-medieval codices containing culinary recipes in High and Low German. The collections range from miscellaneous recipes to extensive cookbooks of 200 to 300 recipes. Most of the culinary manuscripts were written in the 15th century, and often appear in composite codices together with such standard treatises as Regimen sanitatis, or Regimen duodecim mensium, (a book of horse remedies and a book on grafting respectively).

The oldest German cookbook is contained in the Universitätsbibliothek in Munich (no. 2° Cod. ms. 731) and is known as Daz buoch von guoter spîse (The Book of Good Food). It was entered into the codex between 1345 and 1354 at the request of Michael de Leone, notary to the Bishop of Würzburg, and compiled from two different sources. Part I consists of a rhymed prologue, fiftyfive culinary recipes, and two recipe-parodies; Part II, of forty-four recipes. Two cookbooks in the tradition of the Buoch von guoter spîse are in Vienna (Nationalbibiothek, Cod. Vind. 2897, Wiener Kochbuch, "The Viennese Cookbook", and Cod. Vind. 4995, Mondseer Kochbuch). Unlike modern cookbooks, which give precise cooking instructions and usually divide the recipes into appetizers, soups, side dishes, salads, fish, meat, fowl, desserts, and breads, their medieval counterparts provide hardly any quantities and often list the recipes in little or no apparent order. The Buoch von guoter spîse starts with a sweet dish, followed by deer liver, two chicken dishes, and a sweet rice dish. Small groupings of recipes, which share a certain ingredient, shape, or consistency, are sometimes discernable. In Part II of the Buoch a distinction is made between dishes for fast and feast days.

Most of the medieval cookbooks reflect an aristocratic or monastic cuisine, which later became accessible to a larger bourgeois audience through early printed editions such as the Kuchenmeysterey published in Passau ca. 1486. The ingredients most frequently mentioned in German cookbooks are pepper, saffron, apples, almonds and almond milk, honey, sugar, rice, fish, pork, bacon, chicken, butter, lard, vinegar, milk, water, wine, bread, eggs, cheese, flour, and salt. Popular dishes included purees, puddings, pies, blanc manger, casseroles, fritters, roasts, flat cakes, sauces, and special presentations (Schaugerichte). Only two German cookbooks provide the names of aristocratic cooks: the Kochbuch Meister Eberhards, and the Kochbuch Meister Hannsens. Eberhard's Germanlanguage treatise consists of twenty-four culinary recipes and a dietetic list of foodstuffs based on Konrad von Eichstätt's Sanitatis Conservator; Hannsen's collection  includes 289 recipes, of which twelve are for colors, dyes, and miscellaneous remedies. Culinary recipes can also be found in the vast dietetic literature of the Middle Ages.

BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Diet and Nutrition

Adamson, Melitta Weiss. Medieval Dietetics: Food and Drink in "Regimen Sanitatis" Literature from 800 to 1400. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1995.
Elsas, M.J. Umrieiner Geschichte der Preise und Löhne in Deutschland. Vom ausgehenden Mittelalter bis zum Beginn des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts. Leyden: Sijthoff's, 1936.
Janssen, Walter. "Essen und Trinken im frühen und hohen Mittelalter. Aus archäologischer Sicht." In feestbundel voor prof. dr. J.G.N.Renaud. Zutphen: De Walburg Pers, 1981, pp. 324–331.
Jones, George Fenwick. "The Function of Food in Mediaeval German Literature." Speculum 35 (1960): 78–86.
Kühnel, Harry, ed. "Nahrung." In Alltag im Spätmittelalter. Graz: Edition Kaleidoskop, 1984, pp. 196–236.
Wiegelmann, Günter. "Ethnologische Nahrungsforschung in Deutschland." Ethnologia Europaea 5 (1971): 99–108.

Cookbooks

Feyl, Anita. Das Kochbuch Meister Eberhards. Ein Beitrag zur altdeutschen Fachliteratur. Ph. D. diss. Freiburg im Breisgau, 1963.
Hajek, Hans. Daz buoch von guoter spîse. Aus der Würzburg-Münchener Handschrift neu herausgegeben. Berlin: Schmidt, 1958.
Lambert, Carole, ed. Du manuscrit à la table. Essais sur la cuisine au Moyen Age et Répertoire des manuscrits médiévaux contenant des recettes culinaires. Paris: Champion-Slatkine and Montreal: Les Presses de l'Université de Montréal, 1992.
Wiswe, Hans. Kulturgeschichte der Kochkunst. Kochbücher und Rezepte aus zwei Jahrtausenden mit einem lexikalischen Anhang zur Fachsprache von Eva Hepp. Munich: Moos, 1970.

By Melitta Weiss Adamson in the book 'Medieval Germany - An Encyclopedia' Editor John M. Jeep (Miami University), Garland Publishing Inc. New York & London, 2001, p. 151-152 & 160-167. Digitized, adapted and illustrated to be posted by Leopoldo Costa.