Medieval Food

Publish date: 2022-03-23

Medieval Food explores the cuisine and cooking found in the Middle Ages. The articles listed here show that people ate and drank a wide variety of foods and beverages, and dietary habits across medieval world could be significantly different.

Medieval Food Articles

Feasting And The Culture of Anglo-Saxon Food, by Gerald P. Dyson

For feast days and other notable occasions, sweeter bread or cakes could have been made with finer flour as well as milk, honey, eggs, butter, and fruit.

You Are What You Eat: Hildegard of Bingen’s Viriditas, by Allison Jaines Elledge

Hildegard categorized foods according to whether they were harmful or helpful, including whether foods were best eaten raw or cooked or eaten on an empty or full stomach.

Dining at King’s College in the 15th century, by François Soyer

Every week the Steward of the Hall – a College officer chosen from among the fellows and changing every week – entered into these ledgers the monetary value of the food that had been consumed by the fellows and scholars, including both what had to be bought in the market and what was taken from the college stores.

Fruit of the Womb: Prenatal Food in Renaissance Italy, by Heather Rutler

The overall dietary recommendations here seem to be heavy on the domestic meats over game meats, young animals over older ones, and minimal exposure to most fruits and vegetables and avoidance of fish.

Ritual feasting in Iron Age Ireland, by Finbar McCormick

Freemen were obliged to provide food, shelter and entertainment for a lord and his retinue for a specified amount of time during the year. The length of stay was usually three days and three nights.

Contributions of Medieval Food Manuals to Spain‘s Culinary Heritage, by Carolyn Nadeau

This article examines and compares the contributions of five Medieval Muslim and Christian recipe manuscripts to Spain‘s culinary history.

Wine, the Physician, and the Drinker Late Medieval Medical Views on Wine’s Uses, Pleasures, and Problems, by Azelina Jaboulet-Vercherre

The present study examines and explains the disparate and often conflicting opinions that late medieval writers expressed about wine, the role it plays in the preservation and restoration of health, as well as in the quest for pleasure.

From Wine to Beer: Changing Patterns of Alcoholic Consumption, and Living Standards, in Later Medieval Flanders, 1300 – 1550, by John Munro

Food and Cooking during the Mamluk Era: Social and Political Implications, by Amalia Levanoni

Some Basic Aspects of Medieval Cuisine, by Paul Freedman

Food and the Middle Ages, by C.M. Woolgar

Fast Food in Medieval Europe, by Vickie L. Ziegler

Medieval Women’s Guides to Food During Pregnancy: Origins, Texts, and Traditions, by Melitta Weiss-Amer

Fast, Feast, and Flesh: The Religious Significance of Food to Medieval Women, by Caroline Walker Bynum

Food, Status and Religion in England in the Middle Ages: An Archaeozoological Perspective, by Annie Grant

‘Real Eating:’ A Medieval Spanish Jewish View of Gastronomic Authenticity, by Jonathan Brumberg-Kraus

They dined on crane: bird consumption, wild fowling and status in medieval England, by Umberto Albarella and Richard Thomas