Gluttonous Middle Ages. Dinners for Kings and Snacks for Servants

Ekaterina Mishanenko - historian and reenactor, researcher of medieval everyday life and customs, author of popular science books about the Middle Ages. What do we know about medieval cuisine? Imagination paints vivid pictures: entire roasted bodies of boars and deer... are served in castles, colorful lords and ladies sit in gothic halls, and red wine, as blood, spills from their cups onto the tablecloth. Conversely, succumbing to the influence of stereotypes and costumed historical dramas, we often imagine the life of the common people as a series of rather sad scenes. Poor peasants chew on dry cakes or moldy bread, beggars crowd around the church, begging for at least a crust from the fat prelate, and pitiful scullions in the castle kitchen turn the spit with a deer, barely surviving from hunger... But what was the culture of cooking and eating like in the Middle Ages? After reading the book, you will learn: -Was medieval cuisine rough and monotonous; -Did spices really used to mask the taste of spoiled meat; -Is it true that sugar and salt were fabulously expensive; -Can delicious dishes be prepared today using medieval recipes? The last point can be checked independently - in the book you will find adapted recipes directly from the Middle Ages from historical cooking reenactors.