The Medieval Christmas
Sinterklaas is over, the holy man has left the country. While the kids mourn, the adults can't wait to go on a Christmas tree hunt.
(Or go upstairs open a box with an artificial tree, just like we do since my mother is allergic to pine trees, sorry guys!)
The decorations are a collaborative effort, some families are still using real candles. Not advisable with dogs and children. The celebration of Christmas is always done in an extravagant way with a tree covered in pure splendor, tables filled with culinary treats and architecturally impressive wine racks.
In our Christmas Cake edit, I explained why we celebrate Christmas the way we do. In short, Queen Victoria thought it would be a good idea to be a little bit like a Victorian Kardashian and go all out and share it with everyone thus influencing the whole of society and ultimately the whole of the Western World.
King's Banquet
Let's take England's King John who served himself a generous Christmas meal, to truly honor Christ in an appropriate way. It was said that it included 400 heads of pork, 3000 pieces of fowl, 15000 herring, 10000 eels, 100 pounds of almonds, two pounds of spices, 66 pounds of pepper, and 27 hogsheads of wine.
How extravagant it may be, there is always 99% for the 1%. Meaning the peasantry. How did they celebrate Christmas? Surely they wouldn't have the means to get a roasted peacock on the table. In this week's edit, we will look at Medieval Christmas.
The Medieval Christmas
The Christmas holiday started from the 24th to the 6th of January. A much-needed break for the peasantry as they worked their bottoms off throughout the year. The climate in the winter also meant that the agricultural activity slowed down.
Pesky lords
The landlord saw this of course as the only opportunity to give them a holiday, how generous. Or not? Because every Christmas the landlord didn't give out any present he expected to receive them from the people on his land, the true Christmas spirit. The gift usually was something like eggs, a loaf of bread or even a valuable rooster.
As Christmas is a Christian tradition, everybody tried to breathe the spirit of Christ by being charitable. Therefore the lords often invited the peasants in their manor. The less lucky ones had to do it at their own home. This was the moment to take the "fancy" food out like cured meats, salted beef and mutton either slow-roasted or prepared like a stew.
It was also the ideal moment to open the kitchen cabinet and bring out the spices. Generously but sparingly, spices like ginger and pepper were used. Even exotic fruits like raisins were favorited among the lower classes. But they were limited by the Sumptuary Laws. This law states that consumption of luxury products were not allowed for the lower classes, under the rule of Edward III
The following was forbidden:
"outrageous and excessive multitude of meats and dishes which the great men of the Kingdom had used, and still used, in their castles."
Edward III also tried to ban the consumption of more than one piece of fish or meat a day, luckily I wasn't alive at that period.
Mexican Turkey
The modern Christmas table always has a centerpiece; a turkey, a rack of lamb, a big piece of fish or a stand-out vegetarian dish. But the turkey is "relatively" new to Europe as it is not a native species, the turkey only arrived in the 16th century via Mexico. Prior to the arrival of our good old gobbler, other birds were often used like the peacock. Occasionally left intact. other times baked into a pie.
Bird talk
Birds are important. Clear and simple. They serve an important function at the Christmas dinner table. The larger the bird, the wealthier you were. That is why the wealthier families used a peacock or even a swan, while the poorer families used a heron.
There were many different sauces to pair with the birds, from complex to basic sauces. One of those sauces was "sauce madame". The sauce was made by stuffing the goose with hers, quinces, pears, garlic and grapes. Then the birds were sewn and roasted for long period. After the roasting, the stuffing was combined with wine and spices and made into a sauce.
Up in its hackle
Another bizarre technique was the presentation of the peacock as if he was alive. Appropriately called "served up in its hackle"
“Take a peacock, break his neck and cut his throat, and flay him, the skin and feathers together, and the head still to the skin of the neck, and keep the skin and the feathers whole together; draw him as a hen, and keep the bone to the neck whole, and roast him. And set the bone of the neck above the broach, as he was wont to sit alive, and bow the legs to the body, as he was wont to sit alive; and when he is roasted enough, take him off, and let him cool; and then wind the skin with the feathers and the tail about the body, and serve him forth as he were alive”
(Wilson, 125).
The peacock was of course aesthetically pleasing with its multitude of colors. The peacock resembled more than just beauty it was often used as a symbol of immortality. So the upper class believed that they would gain immortality by eating a peacock. So did it work? Personally, I have never met someone who is immortal, have you?
The Icon
The pinnacle of Medieval Christmas is the gingerbread cookie. Ostentatious in it's purest form with ingredients like saffron, sandalwood and formed in exquisite shapes to be finished off with pure gold leaf. The funny thing, there is no ginger in gingerbread. Either the writer of the recipe forgot to add ginger or it wasn't simply available is not clear.
The cookie was usually given as a gift within the elite circles. Shakespeare was a fan, as he wrote:
"An I had but one penny in the world, thou shouldst have it to buy gingerbread. "
Gingerbread was so valuable that in its early years it was accepted as a currency. One could pay his feudal lord with gingerbread. Nuremberg was one of the crossroads of all the trade in Europe, there you could pay your city taxes with gingerbread. You could even bribe a duke with a piece of gingerbread.
“Those who wished to ingratiate himself with a family often depends in no small degree, on the quality and quantity of presents which he makes in gingerbread.”
(The Complete Biscuit and Gingerbread Baker’s Assistant, 1854)
Just imagine what a gingerbread inflation would look like.
Fair
In a time of famine, war, plagues and inequality. This cookie was quite the middle finger to the middle and lower classes. By using ingredients that even today we would consider expensive. Inequality is a distinctive feature of Medieval Christmas. One gets to devour a big bird, others get none. One ate a currency in cookie form, the others gifted his currency to his lord.
You are what you eat.. I guess