Reviving the food actually eaten by past generations is nearly impossible. The ingredients, equipment and method are different and the standard of living changing forever - along with our notion of palatable food. This is especially true about medieval cuisine.
To begin with, recipes in the late medieval cookbooks we know of were meant to feed the nobility. Outside fairy tales and even inside, the poor lived on gruel and roots. They would fish, they might hunt, they could eat fruit and honey. Milk was available but dairy products often a luxury. If nothing else, the Church ruled them out for more than half of the year. Unfortunately, little information exists on the consistency of rich (or poor) man's food during the earlier period, save general facts. References occur indirectly, sometimes through legend, and without details. One good example is the story of King Alfred's cakes.
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| Alfred, the king of West Saxons - 14th century manuscript |
Alfred the Great was sheltered by a peasant while hiding in the Somerset Fields. It was the beginning of 878 and the king had just escaped from the Vikings who attacked his stronghold at Chippenham. Not recognizing him, the woman told Alfred to watch over the cakes she was baking. His mind was too full of thoughts and the cakes were eventually burned. The woman scolded him but, oddly enough, the king accepted the scolding without complaint. According to newer translations, it was bread the peasant was making - not cakes. The story was told and retold after his death and recorded in the Life of St. Neot a hundred years later. The episode probably never took place but the legend and its making are open to discussion. Historians generally interpret the woman's scolding as the people's resentment of Alfred's failure to look after the kingdom.
What did 9th century peasant's bread (or cakes), smell, taste and feel like? Here is a question.
I believe that a great difference between medieval baked goods and ours lies in texture and texture depends on a number of things: ovens, types of flour, rising agents. Bread in earlier times was often unleavened, made of wholegrain flours, and cooked directly on the hearth. It could be flat like bannock. 'Cakes' (the original term for cookies) would be heavy and dense, especially during Lent when butter and eggs were forbidden. On the other hand, Somerset Levels were basically moorland in Alfred's time. Inhabitants were not expected to afford the ingredients for cookies, even if heavy and dense, so the dough in the legend was probably bread dough. It also probably didn't contain any sweeteners. The king himself is thought to have followed a special diet for health reasons although nothing suggests that woman baked cake or anything else in order to treat him. Cookies were also originally made from (leftover) bread dough, a habit that still goes on in rural places all over Europe.
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