William Stearns Davis

Now it is as certain as that God reigns in heaven, that if one desires a wedding and a tournament, although the first thought must be of raiment, the second must be of food and drink. When Conon bids Adela make ready for the festivities, straightway that prudent dame sends for the butler and the cellarer and takes account of everything stowed away in the great vaults under the castle. Then she orders the chief huntsman muster all his beaters and course the forests, not for sport, but for victuals. At the same time nets are set out in the Claire; purveyors with their carts are ordered up from Pontdebois, and a messenger is even sent to Troyes to bring back a tun of rare Grecian wine. All available maids from the village are requisitioned to make great pasties, and a master cook is imported from Paris to prepare special cakes and pastries. In short, it is no light thing even for the huge St. Aliquis household to prepare to feed several thousands without aid of those miracles which caused five loaves and two fishes to suffice in the days of our Blessed Lord.

For the baron's feast the great fireplace in the bailey cookhouse is insufficient. They build fires in the open out in the tilt yard or garden and all day perspiring varlets stand feeding on great logs over which roast long spits of chickens and geese, or boil caldrons of meat. In the cookhouse, where the finer dishes must be prepared, the master cook has a true arsenal of utensils—pots, trivets, mortar and pestle, a table for mincing herbs, pothooks, caldrons, frying pans and gridirons, saucepans, platters, a pepper mill, dressing board, scummer, ladle, and many things else. There is no lack of help in the kitchen. Half a dozen loutish boys gladly work there all day long (receiving, incidentally, many of the cook's hard knocks) in return for being allowed to lick the pans and gnaw the scraps, so cheap is human labor.

COOKS

From a manuscript in the Bodleian Library at Oxford (Wright).

On ordinary days we would marvel at the quantity of boiled meat served at St. Aliquis. About the only way to preserve meat is to salt it (the vats of the castle are full of salted meat kept against winter or a siege), and this flesh must ordinarily be boiled. The result is that a great copper meat pot seems always in action, with a boy pumping the bellows to make the caldron bubble. But fowls and fresh meat are often boiled as well. Butcher's meat, however, is less welcome at feasts than is game. An ideal dish is a stag, roasted whole in the great fireplace, crisped and larded, then cut up into quarters and served on very large plates. Upon such dishes is poured a hot, steaming pepper sauce. Therefore a stag will be served at the wedding banquet besides many other kinds of choice game.

Since there are no iceboxes, unsalted meat must be eaten soon after being killed, although your feudal epicure is not squeamish. Beef and mutton are often killed, cut up, and cooked almost on the spot. There is a story of a butcher who, coming late to a town, got a lodging at the priest's house, and to pay for his quarters killed the sheep which they ate for supper. But pork is probably the commonest meat. Conon has great droves of hogs fattening out in his oak forests, which supply abundant crops of acorns. Pigs seem to penetrate almost everywhere save into messire's and madame's chamber. They are the general scavengers and apparently replace plumbing and sewerage systems. They infest castle courts and the streets of towns. In 1131 the Crown Prince of France was killed in Paris by a pig which ran between the legs of his horse as he rode from the Hotel de Ville to the Church of St. Gervais. People will tell you that pork promotes leprosy, but, nevertheless, they devour it. Pork, too, is the main substance of those great sausages and black puddings in which everybody delights, especially on Easter, when you break your Lenten fast with as much heavy food as possible. Veal, too, is desirable, as is the flesh of kids; but lamb is by no means so much in favor.

Almost all kinds of birds are counted edible. Herons, cranes, storks, cormorants, and such fowl as can be taken by hawks are in preference, but crows are considered very fair eating. The flock of stately swans by the mouth of the Rapide has just been depleted, for these elegant birds are kept for the kitchen rather than for ornament. As for small fowl—thrushes, starlings, blackbirds, quail, partridges, and cuckoos—the varlets can bring in as many as possible with their crossbows and snares. Young rabbits, likewise, are welcome, but older rabbits are too tough save for the diet of the least-considered villeins. Everybody knows the saying, "An old hare and an old goose are food for the devil!"

There is plenty of poultry around St. Aliquis. Most Christians hold that birds are of aquatic origin, hence, like fish, can be eaten on fast days, although the Church opposes this opinion, and is slowly overcoming it. Chickens have been fattened for the feast by shutting them up in dark coops and gorging them. Droves of geese have been coming in from the fields, great honking armies, crowding the narrow way, hissing and biting, but all propelled steadily ahead by the cracking whips of the small goosegirls. Ducks are more commonly preferred in their wild stage; but out in the exercise ground several peacocks have been preening themselves, and at least two of these are now sacrificed to make a gala dish to serve the highest seigneurs, for peacocks are counted especial "food for the brave." Indeed, there is the old proverb that "thieves have as much taste for falsehood as a hungry man for a cooked peacock."[29]

Fish is hardly in great request. One is likely to have too much of it on the numerous fast days. Still, out of the Claire they draw excellent barbel and eels; there are carp in a near-by pond, and splendid trout in the brooks that feed the Rapide. The lads bring in many. If you go to Paris you can eat salt herring taken in the North Sea. All through the spring, furthermore, the St. Aliquis folk have had their fill of frogs' legs from the castle moat and the numerous bogs, and Conon has a "snail bed" to provide snails for garnishings and salads during Lent and on Fridays.

One cannot stay at the castle long and not discover the vast importance of soup. One partakes thereof at least twice per day: "dried peas and bacon water," watercress soup, cabbage soup, cheese soup, and "poor man's soup" (made up of odds and ends collected on short warning), and fish soups for Lent. All the better soups are spiced with marjoram, sage, and sweet basil, if not with the favorite condiment, pepper. But what are soups compared with meat pies? Whenever the castle cook is in doubt how to please their lordships he decides upon a noble pasty. Much thought has been concentrated upon this subject. There are little poems to be memorized by illiterate cooks explaining this triumph of their mystery—e.g., that they should use "three young partridges large and fat, not forgetting six quail put on their side"; add to these thrushes, some bacon, some sour grapes, and a little salt. Then if all is made aright, the crust nicely rolled of pure flour, and the "oven of proper heat with the bottom quite free from ashes," when all is baked enough "you will have a dish to feast on"! Other pasties can be made of chickens, venison, salmon, eels, pigeons, geese, and other kinds of meat. Probably, in fact, more energy goes into making the pasties than into any other one form of culinary effort.

The St. Aliquis folk are not at all vegetarians, but they cannot eat meat forever, and the poorer peasants seldom touch flesh save on important feast days. The cooks have at their disposal onions and garlic, cabbages and beets, carrots and artichokes, lentils and both long and broad beans, peas, turnips, lettuce, parsley, water cress—in short, nearly all the vegetables of a different age save the all-important potato. Turnips are in favor, and figure in far more dietaries than they will do later. Cabbages, too, are in request: there are Roman white cabbages, huge Easter cabbages, and especially the Senlis cabbages, renowned for their excellent odor. Cucumbers are supposed to cause fever, but Herman raises some in the garden for the salads.

As always, bread is the staff of life. Naturally, the villeins have to use flour that is very coarse and made of barley, rye, or oats—producing black bread, before which noble folk shudder. It is one of the signs of messire's prosperity that all his household are ordinarily fed on white bread. In the castle ovens they make a great variety of loaves—huge "pope's" or "knight's" loaves, smaller "squire's" loaves, and little "varlet's" loaves, or rolls. There is a soft bread made of milk and butter, a dog bread, and two-color bread of alternate layers of wheat and rye. Then there are the table loaves, sizable pieces of bread to be spread around the tables, from which courteous cavaliers will cut all the crust with their knives and pass the remainder to the ladies, their companions, to soak up in their soup. The servants have less select common bread, although it is still wheaten. Finally, there are twice-baked breads, or crackers. These are often used in monasteries, also in the provisioning of castles against a siege.

Fancy jellies, pastries, and sweet dishes are coming into vogue, although they have not reached the perfection to be attained by later French cookery; but for the St. Aliquis feast they are able to prepare great molded structures of lions and suns, made of white chicken and pink jelly. The quantity of spices used is simply enormous. To enjoy food thus charged, especially with pepper, is an acquired taste, which developed following the First Crusade. The cooks, too, use a liberal supply of mustard, and a favorite sauce is made from strong garlic. Fresh and pickled olives are sent up from Provence, likewise a good deal of olive oil; but the oil used in common cooking is often extracted from walnuts or even from poppies. Another favorite flavoring is with rose water. All through June you can see great basins of water filled with rose petals steeping in the sun. The liquor thus obtained will add zest to sauces for the next twelve months. There is also a certain whitish substance known as "sugar." It comes from the Levant, in small irregular lumps. Its flavoring qualities are delightful, but it is too expensive to use in cookery. A small quantity is passed about among Conon's higher guests, to be eaten as a confection. The ordinary sweetening is still that of the Greeks and Romans, honey, supplied from the well-kept hives of the bees belonging to the monastery.

Cheeses hardly figure in feasts, but for everyday diet they are important. On feast days they often replace meat. Their varieties are legion—white, green, large, small, etc. Some places produce famous cheeses exported all over France, and in Paris one can hear the street venders shrilly chanting:

As for eggs and butter, they are gifts of the kindly saints, to carry men through Lent and fast days. Theologians have said that hens were aquatic creatures, like other birds; that hence good Christians could eat their eggs freely. But butter (by some unaccountable notion) if eaten during times of abstinence, must be freshly churned. It must not be salted, nor used for cooking purposes.

Passing next to beverages, be it said that the St. Aliquis denizens are fairly abstemious folk. All of them sometimes get tipsy, even Adela and Alienor, but only seldom. Conon's servants help him to bed once or twice per year. Down in the villages there are disgraceful guzzlings among the peasants, especially on saints' days. But the beverages are not very alcoholic—one must absorb a great deal to be really upset. The region grows its own wine for ordinary consumption, and a little thereof is shipped to Paris and even to Flanders and England, along with the more famous vintages of Gascony, Saintonge, Macon, Rheims, the Marne, and the Orleanais. The most desirable French wine is that of St. Pourcain, in Auvergne, and the baron has a carefully cherished tun of the same in his cellars. Poems, indeed, exist in praise of this St. Pourcain wine, "which you drink for the good of your health." On occasions of great state, however, imported wines will be produced, mainly because they are unusual and expensive. The St. Aliquis feasters are consequently offered heady Cyprian and Lesbian from the Levant, also Aquilian from Spain, and not a little Rhenish from the German lands, less distant.

In the autumn when the apples and pears are falling, the peasants will make cider and perry, and get outrageously drunk when these beverages grow hard; but outside of Normandy such drink seldom appeals to castle folk. There are also in common use many substitute wines, really infusions of wormwood, hyssop, and rosemary, and taken mostly to clear the system; although "nectar" made of spices, Asiatic aromatics, and honey is really in request.

The great competitor of wine is beer. In northern France we are in the dividing zone between the land of the winepress and the land of the brewhouse. Everybody drinks beer and makes beer. The castle has a great brewhouse; likewise the monastery. Beer is made of barley, and only late in the Middle Ages will hops be added to add to the zest. Really fine beer is god-ale (from the German "good" and "ale") or "double beer." Common beer is "small beer." Since the Crusaders have returned from the East, spiced beer has been growing in favor—charged with juniper, resin, gentian, cinnamon, and the like, until the original taste has been wholly destroyed.

The St. Aliquis folk do not, however disdain buttermilk. This they like to ferment, boil up with onions and garlic, then cool in a closed vessel. The product is serat, the enjoyment of which is surely difficult for a stranger.

Another form of beverage is not quite unknown. Some physicians prescribe water of gold and allege it "prolongs health, dissipates superfluous matters, revives the spirits, and promotes youth." Also it "greatly assists the cure of colic, dropsy, paralysis, and ague." Of a surety, it aids the patient temporarily to forget his troubles. Yet this is hardly more than a costly medicine. Many years later it will become more common; but its name will be changed to "brandy."

The usages even of a great dinner depend largely on the customs of everyday life. One cannot understand the splendors of the marriage feast of Sire Olivier and Alienor without knowing what goes on regularly in the hall of St. Aliquis.

When the day is started we have seen how everybody arises to a very light breakfast of bread and wine, although sometimes, as in the epic of Doon of Mayence, when the work promises to be arduous, the baron's squire may bring him a favorite pasty because "eating early in the morning brings health and gives one greater courage and spirit." Dinner also, we have discovered, can begin as early as nine in the morning, and a good part of the day's business comes after this heavy meal. Sometimes when dinner is late you do not serve your guests any regular supper, but when they go to bed have the attendants bring cakes and fruits and wine. If you entertain guests, however, always it is proper to try to make them eat and drink as much as possible. There is a story of an overhospitable Count of Guines who not merely constrained any knight passing through his dominions to a feast, but kept quantities of white wine always on hand, so that if his visitors asked to have their red wine diluted with water, they might be hoodwinked by seeing a white liquid mixed in their goblets. In this way he once rendered the whole suite of a bishop gloriously intoxicated!

The ingenious Bartolomes of Granvilla has laid down the following requisites for an ideal banquet: (1) a suitable hour, not too early nor too late; (2) a pleasant place; (3) a gracious and liberal host; (4) plenty to eat, so one may choose one's dishes; (5) the same as to things to drink; (6) willing servants; (7) agreeable company; (8) pleasant music; (9) plenty of light; (10) good cooking; (11) a seasonable conclusion; (12) quiet and repose afterward. A marriage feast and a tourney can hardly provide this twelfth desideratum, but they ought, with proper management, to supply everything else.

The tables for the notables are laid and served by two classes of attendants; first by Conon's three squires, aided on this grand occasion by several young nobles who have actually received knighthood; second, by the older professional servitors of villein stock. The first class of attendants are resplendent in bliauts of colored silk with fur trimmings. Most of the dishes will be passed to them by the soberly clad villeins, then to be presented on bended knee by noble hands to noble guests. The whole process is under Sire Eustace, the old seneschal, who orders about his platoons of attendants with as much precision as he might command the men at arms for defense of the castle.

It is part of a squire's education to learn to wait on table. One may have to do this for some superior all one's life, unless one be king or emperor! Conon's squires have been taught to stand at perfect ease; not to roll their eyes or stare blankly; not to laugh save when guests are laughing; to keep their finger nails clean and hands well washed. If they sit at table themselves they are models of propriety. They do not gobble down their food, but put a little from every plate into the basket of collected leavings for the poor; they do not chatter, nor fill their mouths too full, nor chew on both sides of the mouth at once, nor laugh or talk with a mouthful, nor make a noise by overeating, nor handle cats or dogs during mealtime, nor wipe their knives on the tablecloth, nor pick their teeth publicly, nor wipe their noses with their fingers, nor (last but not least) spit across the table or beyond it.[30]

The tables are nearly always long and narrow. In the great hall they are fixed and of heavy oak planks, but there are plenty of light tables of boards to be set on horses, if the seneschal suddenly says, "The weather is fine; Messire will dine in the garden." The favored guests are provided with cushions, and, of course, in the hall the baron and his immediate friends and family sit on the long master-seat on the dais, facing the company, and with the baron's own chair under a canopy. This canopy is the sign of high seigneurial privilege. One will be set for Conon even when he sits in the garden; and he will never surrender his place save when he entertains a superior, like his suzerain the duke, or when, as at present, all other claims fade before those of a bridal couple.

Indoors or outdoors, it is no mean art to lay the tables. Enormous tablecloths have to be spread out smoothly, and set with napkins neatly doubled; also at each place a suitable drinking vessel, and a knife and spoon. These articles, gold or silver, are carefully handed out by the seneschal. They represent a good fraction of the portable wealth of the castle and must be laboriously counted before and after use. The knives are sharp steel for serious business. The drinking cups are often of bizarre forms—lions, birds, and dragons, while for the humbler folk there are huge cups of wood and also large "jacks" of leather. At every place, too, there must be a good-sized cake of fine white flour, and between every two places there is a large porringer (pewter or silver) to be shared by each pair of guests.

Feast day or fast day, it is the loud blast on trumpets which sends the mighty and the humble bustling toward the garden or the hall. Of course, at a wedding feast there is some little formality, but ordinarily in the St. Aliquis household the good-natured jostling and scampering is prodigious. Men and women live close to nature and are always conscious of rousing appetites. On ordinary days when you entered the baron's hall, you would take your turn at the lavatory close to the entrance. Here would be several little washstands with pitchers and basins, and everybody would fall in line in order of precedence: first, any visiting clergy; then visiting knights; then the seigneur's family, etc. The hand washing presents a great chance for flirtation among the young: Olivier and Alienor had great delight "passing the towel" to each other during their betrothal. But now at a great festival, when you enter the special banqueting tent you are met by two handsome varlets. The first holds a water jug and a small basin. Water is dexterously poured over your fingers, and as promptly wiped off by the second varlet, and each guest patiently waits until the persons ahead have enjoyed this courtesy. So they enter the tent, and the magnates make for the seats of honor.

The placing of the company has been a matter of serious deliberation between Messire Conon and the sage Sire Eustace. Of course, to-day the bride and groom take the canopy. At Olivier's right must be the officiating bishop. At the bishop's right must be the suzerain Duke of Quelqueparte, and at Olivier's left must be the bride and the Count and Countess of Perseigne. All that is standardized. But how locate the dozen other counts and barons who, with their dames, have honored the bridal? Will the old rival Foretvert stomach it now if he is seated farther from the canopy than the Count of Maric, who is richer and of a more ancient house? Bloody feuds have started from failure to seat guests properly. It is a matter for supreme diplomacy. So far as possible, a lady is placed beside each cavalier. The two will use the same dish and the same goblet during the entire feast—obviously another case where one is compelled to test one's brains while selecting partners.

So the feast begins after grace by the bishop. An endless procession commences between the cookhouse and the banqueting place—boys running with great dishes which they commit to the more official servitors to pass to the guests. It is a solemn moment, followed by cheering, when into the bridal tent, with clash of cymbals and bray of trumpet, Sire Eustace in a bright scarlet bliaut enters, waving his white wand and followed by all the squires and upper servants, each carrying shoulder high a huge dish of some viand. A great haunch of the stag is set on the table. The baron's carver cuts ample slices, while two jongleurs blow at their flutes. He holds the meat "by two fingers and a thumb" (no fork), plying a great knife as a surgeon might his scalpel. Equal skill is demanded of the cup-bearers when they fill the flagons, not spilling a drop. Even the bride and groom are now hungry and ready for the venison.

The banqueters have little need of plates. They take the loaves lying ready, hack them into thick slices, place the pieces of meat upon the same, then cut up the meat while it is resting on the bread. These "trenchers" (tranchoirs) will not ordinarily be eaten at the feast; they go into the great alms basket for the poor, along With the meat scraps. However, the higher guests to-day enjoy a luxury. Silver plates are placed under their bread trenchers. For most guests, however, the bare tablecloth is bottom enough for these substitutes for the porcelain of another day. Whatever does not go into the alms basket will be devoured by the baron's dogs, who attend every meal by prescriptive right. Indeed, early in the feast the Duke of Quelqueparte benevolently tosses a slice of venison to a fine boarhound.

Time fails to repeat all the good things which Conon and Adela set before their guests. The idea is to tempt the appetite to utter satiety by forcing first one dish upon the feasters, and then another. There is not really a good sequence of courses. Most of the dishes are heavy; and inasmuch as vegetables are in great demand on common occasions, the average banquet seems one succession of varieties of meat. The noble folk in the bridal pavilion have at least a chance to eat their fill of these comestibles:

First course: Slices of stag, boar's head larded with herb sauce, beef, mutton, legs of pork, swan, roasted rabbit, pastry tarts.

Second course: Pottage of "drope and rose" mallard, pheasant and roast capon, pasties of small birds.

Third course: Rabbits in gravy heavily spiced with onion and saffron; roasted teal, woodcock and snipe; patties filled with yolk of eggs, cheese, and cinnamon, and pork pies.

No salads, no ices, no confectionery; nevertheless, some of the dishes are superb—notably the swan, which is brought once more on with music, prinked out as if he were alive and swimming, his beak gilt, his body silvered, resting on a mass of green pastry to represent a grass field, and with little banners around the dish, which is placed on a carpet of silk when they lay it on the table. The cooks might also serve a peacock with outspread plumage. Instead, toward the close of the repast, two squires tug in an enormous pasty. Amid an expectant hush Conon rises and slashes the pasty open with a dagger. Instantly out flutter a score of little birds which begin to dash about the tent; but immediately the baron's falconers stand grinning at the entrance. They unhood a second score of hawks which in a twinkling pounce after the wretched birds and kill them, to the shouts and delight of the feasters, right above the tables. Inevitably there is confusion, rustling by the ladies and merry scrambling, before the squawking hawks can be caught, hooded, and taken away. In fact, from the beginning the feast is extremely noisy. Everybody talks at once. The appearance of the stag has started innumerable hunting stories. The duke has to tell his loyal lieges how he slew a bear. Two of the baron's dogs get to fighting and almost upset the chair of a countess. Everything is very merry.

If an elaborate dinner had been required on a so-called fast day, the cooks could still have met the occasion and yet have kept within the commands of the Church; although not merely would there have been much fish, but also more vegetables. The guests could have been served with roast apples garnished with sorrel and rosemary; then might have come a rich soup made of trout, herring, eels salted twenty-four hours, and salt whiting soaked twelve hours, almonds, ginger, saffron, and cinnamon powder. If possible to bring them up from the ocean, there would have been soles, congers, turbots, and salmon—and in any case these can be had salted—the rivers in turn supply pike (preferably with roe), carp, and bream. For side dishes there can be lampreys, porpoise, mackerel, and shad served with juice of crab apples, rice, and fried almonds. Finally might come stewed or ripe fruits—figs, dates, grapes, and filberts; the whole washed down with spiced wine (hippocras). To the minds of men of a later age this fast-day dinner might seem only a little less gorging than the orthodox feast upon meats.

But elaborate as is this wedding banquet, at last everybody has had his fill. The concluding baked pears, the peeled walnuts, dates, and figs have been passed. The noble dames have chewed their unfamiliar sugar plums. A last cup of spiced wine is handed around, but nobody has drunk too much to become worse than merrily talkative. Before rising the guests have all very properly "thought of the poor," called in the servitors and piled all the loose food upon great platters to be kept for the needy. To-day, in fact, all the indigent in the region are eating voraciously at the outer tables, but on the morrow of a festival day you will see a great collection of halt, sickly, and shiftless hanging around the barbican in just expectation that Conon and Adela will order a distribution.[31]

At last the bishop returns thanks; basins, pitchers, and towels are again carried around. Then the guests rise, some to mingle with the less exalted visitors outside, some to repose under the shade trees, some to listen to the jongleurs who are now tuning their instruments, and many (especially the younger) to get ready for the thing we have seen they liked almost the best—extremely vigorous dancing.

Outside of the state pavilion the service has naturally been less ceremonious and the fare less sumptuous, but all of the countryside has been welcome to wander into the castle gardens and to partake. Greasy, unkempt villeins have been elbowing up to the long tables, snatching joints of meat, bawling to the servitors to refill their leather flagons, and throwing bits of cheese and bread around in an outrageously wasteful manner. Thousands of persons, apparently many of whom will be happy if they can have black bread all through the winter, are trying to-day to avenge past hunger by devouring and drinking just as much as possible. Sire Eustace is continually calling; "Another tun of wine! Another vat of beer! Another quarter of beer!" These viands for the multitude are not select, but there are bread, flesh, and drink without stinting. Fortunate it is that Conon has not two marriageable sisters, or there would be naught left to eat on the seigneury!

As the shadows lengthen everybody seems satisfied. The villeins and petty nobles lay down their flagons. Groups of friends, if sufficiently sober, begin to sing songs in a round, each member improvising a doggerel verse, and the group thundering out the chorus. But many of the guests do not retain wits enough for recreations. While their noble hosts are dancing, the others throw themselves on the grass in companies to watch or listen to the jongleurs: then as the wedding dances finish, Olivier and Alienor come out of the great tent to take their seats on flower-wreathed chairs before the principal minstrels, and by their presence give some decorum to what threatens to become a disgracefully confused and coarse form of reveling.

For a great feast the jongleurs seem, in fact, almost as indispensable as the cooks. We have now to ask the nature of North French minstrelsy.[32]