The Myths and Miseries of Medieval Dining
If you rely upon Hollywood to educate you on the dining habits of those in period you would come away thinking that they ate a diet heavy in meats and fats, nearly devoid of vegetable matter, they were slobs, had no table manners whatsoever and treated the poorer classes like swine.
This is what it was really like.
Let's start with table manners. Most believe that people ate with their hands. And this is true. Forks were not invented until the 1500’s in Italy, even then they really were not used by the populace at large until the late 17th century so only the wealthy and the nobles had them. So of course everyone else used their hands. They also used knives and spoons.
There was an ettiquette to using your hands to eat. You used only your fingertips to dip meat or bread into a shared bowl of sauce or gravy, being very careful not to dip your fingers into the bowl and it was poor manners indeed to double dip (dip a second time after you have bitten off a portion of the food you had dipped). Items were sometimes skewered on an eating knife and transferred to the mouth.
An ewerer was a person who carried a bowl and a pitcher of scented water around during a meal. He would approach each guest, pour water over their hands and give the guest a towel to dry them. This allowed the diners to eat without their hands getting overly messy and staining their clothes or the linens.
If a roast was being served a carver, who was often a member of the nobility, would carve the meat into small bite size pieces and serve it to the guests rather than serving the large hulking portions portrayed in movies and such.
In many popular portrayals, nobles are seen throwing meat bones and scraps to ther dogs during a meal or tossing leftovers in trough-like containers for the poor or commoners to eat... this is just another Hollywood myth. For heavens sakes, someone had to clean up afterward and outside of normal spillage they absolutely did not toss food down for the dogs and poor or no, no one is going to eat all sorts of mixed up food from a trough. Yuck! Not only is that gross it is plain unsanitary.
However, there is always a grain of truth in every lie. The bread bowls called Trenchers were often given to the poor to eat after nobles or the wealthy had eaten their soup or stew from them.
Further Myths about medeval table manners...
Diners in the the middle ages did not blow their soup. (No toothpaste equals foul breath and who wants to smell that across the table.)
Diners did not scratch their head over the table. (Louse falling into the gravy is not a good thing.)
Diners did not lick the platter clean nor did they wipe their hands on the table linen nor did they drink from a shared cup with food in their mouths or pick their nose at the table. Someone needs to tell the folks in Hollywood this.
Not only do myths abound about the manners of medeval diners but about the food and cooks as well.
First thing's first, period food was neither bland nor was it heavily spiced. There is a misconception that food was highly spiced in order to cover the taste and smell of rotting food. Come on folks... spiced or no, eating spoiled food can make you very sick. It can even kill you and although folks of period may not have had a huge understanding of medicine they knew that eating rotten food was a very bad idea. Cooks of the period were very thrifty and frugal but were not reckless.
As to the idea of bland food, medieval chefs did serve plain roasted meats, but they also served many meat dishes that featured thick, gooey sauces very heavily flavored with ingredients like ginger, sugar, vinegar, wine, raisins, mace, cloves, cumin, cardamom, cinnamon, pepper, and honey. Medieval food, in fact, was not unlike Indian food of today: sweet and acidic flavors combined, spices used by the handful. If anything, the concentrated, bold flavors would overwhelm the modern palate.
Some reasons for this seeming excess were very simple. The more money you had the more access you had to new and different spices. Especially when feeding company, this was something you wanted to show off. Also, it was just a matter of culinary curiosity. Everyone wants to try something new and different. Sometimes the dishes turned out well other times you drank alot of wine behind them and got the flux... just like going to a lousy restuarant today.
Cooks were much better showmen than we moderns give them credit for being. Especially at feast times. Peacocks were cooked, then returned to their skin to be ceremoniously presented in their original plumage. Animals were stuffed inside other animals like culinary matrioshka dolls—a pig stuffed with a rooster, which would itself be stuffed with roasted pine nuts and sugar. A recipe called "glazed pilgrim" consisted of a pike boiled at the head, fried in the middle, and roasted at the tail; this was then served alongside a roast eel. Food coloring was used liberally: red (sandalwood), yellow (saffron), green (mint or parsley juice), black (burnt bread crumbs). At the end of each course a "sotelty" (subtely) was served. This was similar to an amuse-bouche, a "sotelty" was an ornamental offering, usually made from dough or marzipan, which showed off the chef's skill. Often, they resonated with the political theme of the occasion.
Of course, feasts of the period were huge. At the marriage feast of Henry III's daughter in 1251, they gorged on 1,300 deer; 7,000 hens; 170 boars; 60,000 herring; and 68,500 loaves of bread. Feasters at the enthronement party for England's Archbishop of Neville in 1465 consumed 1,000 sheep; 2,000 pigs; 2,000 geese; 4,000 rabbits; and 12 porpoises and seals.
But the myth here comes in the idea that these feasts were served in set courses. With that much food set courses would take days for the diners to get through. Grand meals were eaten much the way North Americans eat Chinese food today, with many dishes served simultaneously.
As an example, at the coronation of Richard III in 1483 there were three courses, each of which included at least 15 different dishes. The third course, which was never eaten because the feast ran late, included three meat, two fish, five bird, and two fruit dishes.
Granted, much of what we know of the culinary habits of medevals comes from the writings and artwork that depicted the rich and their eating habits so we can never truely know everything about the eating habits of everyone during period but it is safe to say that most were neither borish or ill mannerd as a rule and the cooks, just as today, did their absolute best to show off their culinary talents every chance they got. No matter what Hollywood says.