What gives the idea of medieval food and feasts such an appeal?

i hate poeple who keep bragging how middle ages weren't bad at all and all that bullshit, but i think you are confusing middle ages for a grimdark fantasy setting

Huge piles of food, lots of meat, and also there's a sort of idea of the middle ages as being rough-and-tumble, predating fancy etiquette or even utensils, so it's an idea of a really visceral enjoyment, just grabbing a pork shank by the bone, ripping right into it with your teeth, laughing with food in your mouth at someone's joke, guzzling tankards of ale and wine by the gobletful, a steaming clay plate full of baked onions comes in along with a pyramid of quail on a tray, etcetera. It's just this idea of not just having an excess of good food but also being able to enjoy it unrestrained, like you always wanted to.

Who's gonna kill a servant because they suck at cooking? What the fuck?

to all you fucks complaining how terrible food was go watch Jas Towsend and son, its a bit later in time but still, food is a vital part of the human experience if anything you got fucking creative with how to make it taste good with what you had back then leading to some really interesting and damn fine dishes.

>i hate poeple who keep bragging how middle ages weren't bad at all and all that bullshit
I think medieval society was pretty great *for the level of technology they had*, desu. For the most part they seem to have managed to avoid the worst despotic abuses, like peasants only had to work for their lord 15 days out of the year or something like that for most of France's medieval period, and that was their entire taxes.

Like yeah, okay, it probably sucked pretty bad in many ways to be a peasant back then, but it's hard to imagine how things could have sucked much less for an ordinary guy in the 12th century. The Church helped a lot I think, both through the Peace and Truce of God and just because monks for all their shit did also keep learning alive and do their best to set bones, make herbal poultices and shit like that.

You had salt, you had local herbs, may even have garlic and onion, if you were rich you may also have pepper and you could get a shit-ton of various food.
What else do you need?

There's a ton of spices and flavourings that were available to people in medieval europe that people don't know about and some that they do know about but don't think about, like mustard seed.

Little bit of imagination and willingness to stuff animals inside of other animals?

>durr
the middle ages lacked all the spices that we consider good, cyanne, pretty much anything from south east asia. The most you had where herbs.

It's not like you can't do a great feast without using that.
Or what exactly do you need, hot dogs with freedom fries?
I think they used to do that, like putting a quail inside a pheasant, and all that kind of stuff.

No, they didn't. Mustard seeds has been around since Roman times and played heavily in flavouring. Your dismissal of herbs is striking as there is an amazing amount of things that can be done with herbs, as well as the wide variety of onions and other plants that can be used to impart flavour.

In addition, you're ignoring how good meat and bread can be on it's own. A solid roast joint with bread can be enjoyable in itself; add in somethings like, say mustard, apple sauce, etc all available to medieval cooks and that alone would be wonderful. You also forget pastries, pies, puddings and how good combinations of things like bacon, leek, mushrooms can be without any spices or herbs. There's a very rich and delicious heritage to medieval cooking that gets ignored.

Or what you personally consider good, right?

>implying implications

Guess that plants like Balm, Caraway, Chives, Coriander, Cumin, Dill, Garlic, Horseradish, Hyssop, Juniper, Lovage, Marjoram, Mint, Mustard, Oregano, Parsley, Rosemary, Saffron Crocus, Sesame, Tarragon, Thyme and Turmeric don't exist in whatever shithole you're from.

So cinnamon isn't good?

You have read the Forme of Cury, right?

>I think they used to do that, like putting a quail inside a pheasant, and all that kind of stuff.

I'm like 80% sure this stuff was mentioned in the Satyricon with Trimalchio's dinner.

I'd imagine the meats back then may have also been distinctively different than what we had now. They'd probably be gamier, possibly leaner depending on the environmental conditions, and significantly more flavorful than some of the overly processed meats most people only know now.

>overly processed meats most people only know now
curing/salting meat is not some new thing user.

I feel like Redwall was doing this years before that.

>They'd probably be gamier, possibly leaner depending on the environmental conditions, and significantly more flavorful than some of the overly processed meats most people only know now.

Another important thing to note is that the size of livestock in the Middle Ages was a fraction of what we've got now while the size of wild game has remained virtually unchanged.

The French kitchen as we know it today is basically directly lifted from medieval and early modern peasant dishes. The French, whatever you may say against them, simply knew how to make something good out of the herbs and ingredients they had at hand.

>significantly more flavorful than some of the overly processed meats most people only know now.

I'm not so sure about that. A lot of meat's flavor comes from the fat, and modern meats are usually fattier than what was available in the Middle Ages. Leaner meats usually have a less strong flavor which you have to compensate for with other ingredients.

Because of the lack of refrigeration meat in this time period was notoriously "flavorful". To such an extent that it was extremely common to use large quantities of herbs to mask the taste of the meat itself.

This is actually the explicit purpose of horseradish sauce.

I guess thats why he said they were gamier.

Not to be - I don't know what kind of "fag" it would be. Probably hippyfag or something, but a lot of people overlook the fact that in more industrialized countries like America we've bred out most of the flavor from our livestock in favor of raw bulk. It's fattier, true, but there's also less flavor in the fat. And the preservation processes isn't just "add salt and cure", throughout the animal's life and death it's treated with many chemicals and hormones. Maybe some eurofags have it nicer, but a lot of Americans eating meat in more rural countries will note how different the flavor is.

At least American meat is still mostly meat unlike lets say American cheese.

>inb4 muh microcheeseries

>Implying anyone, especially Americana, consider American Cheese to be actual cheese.

>American cheese
It's "American Cheese Product", get it right. and it is a warcrime

>What gives the idea of medieval food and feasts such an appeal?
These feasts were... well, feasts. They were far above what the average peasant ate or even saw in his life. A medieval feast is comparable to a meal you eat in a Three Star restaurant in the more expensive parts of Paris.

But the appeal is that it's a very festive meal made of organic, natural foods. It's a foodie's dream: free-roam meat and eggs, no preservatives, no high fructose corn syrup, no added sugar or preservatives (other than maybe salt) etc.

There's also the fact that a feast is usually eaten in celebration of something. It's a social event as much as it's a meal, which makes it feel cozy.

>At least American meat is still mostly meat
It's still pumped full of high fructose corn syrup. That's illegal in most EU countries (which is why a lot of us opposed TTIP: it would allow American produced foodstuffs to be legally sold in Europe), but of course our beloved governments have left a wide loophole they're unwilling to close. In Europe, we now eat meat with added sugar. You heard it right, sugar... in meat.

Sure the first thing I think about when I want to have a grand feast is if its "organic and natural and had no sugar".
Fucking hippies.

Not even a hippy or a vegan or whatever, but you can't argue that a medieval feast looks way more appetizing than a happy meal. Hell, even comparing a (properly) homemade hamburger to a bigmac should be enough to prov emy point. The human mind simply has an uncanny sense for detecting what's real and what's fake, and finds what's real more appetizing.

>live in europe most of my life
>move to US
>quality of American produce and meat is leagues beyond what you get in Europe and also it's cheaper
Yeah European agriculture can get fucked America is winning.

You're making a false equivalence argument about food right now.

>The human mind simply has an uncanny sense for detecting what's real and what's fake, and finds what's real more appetizing.
It's just a meme, there is no "uncanny sense", it's all just chemistry. You can make it better, and you can make it worse, depends on how it's done. Your comparsion is not really correct, even though that I don't deny that medieval feasts look delicious. But I also don't deny that some future synthetic food would be delicious too.

The best steaks don't require anything more than a hot fire and some salt.

The best recipes are often the simplest, and while there are plenty of modern techniques and ingredients to construct new and inventive dishes, you should never underestimate the ability and ingenuity of past chefs working with what they had, when even cavemen had all they needed to create truly delicious food.

But, I don't want to downplay how extravagant some medieval dishes were. Pies with live birds inside them, stews that required a month of preparation, and animals stuffed inside of animals stuffed inside of animals stuffed inside of animals stuffed inside of animals. Medieval chefs were freaks.

No, it's really not.

>mfw I had a grilled entrecôte with only salt and pepper earlier today

90% of the time, when cooking euro-style meat dishes, you don't really need anything outside of the ingredients listed here. other than black pepper, which was probably just neglected from the list.

even though it was produced during WWII, when food had to be rationed.

if american cheese is a warcrime, so is marmite and vegemite.

if you start bitching about GMOs, you can go fuck yourself.

you do not want corn that hasn't been genetically modified. it's like fucking acorn on a stalk.

I agree with you that marmite and vegemite are warcrimes. Lots of things are warcrimes.

There are good and bad uses of many of the industrial processes that give us modern agriculture. Some are pretty damn good and keep us safe and well fed, others fucking suck shit and kill the flavor of good food for the sake of a few extra months of shelf life or some whiny prick not getting food poisoning once and suing.

a lot of the time, food poisoning comes from mishandling food (like not using proper handwashing techniques) than from the way it's raised.

>You also forget pastries, pies, puddings and how good combinations of things like bacon, leek, mushrooms can be without any spices or herbs.
This in particular. I'm telling you, deboned pheasants, leeks, mushrooms and garlic in a pie, all heavily larded with bacon for that sauce, you won't care whether you can buy black pepper.

>implying there's any doubt whatever that marmite and vegemite are crimes against humanity

As a matter of fact, wealthy Medieval people actually ate MORE spices than we use today, in ways we'd never think of doing. Ginger and cinnamon on roast meat, for example. Spice has always been one of the most valuable substances in the world, so people who could get spice would use it in everything.

Yea I remember flipping through channels one day and seeing a documentary of people cooking Medieval food. They made this pie that needed the dough to be kneaded for like 6 hours or something.

>Ginger and cinnamon on roast meat,
Funny, my wife cooks like that all the time. Randomly, not because she's an expert or anything.

More variety of meats and vegetables than America, where we only have 3 meats and everything (including the meat) is made from corn. What do pheasant, qual, rook, goat, pigeon, wild boar, etc taste like? I'll probably never know.

>pheasant, qual, rook, goat, pigeon, wild boar
>tfw you've eaten all of those

Also, it's spelled quail. Just sayin'.
>themoreyouknow.png

I always thought food served at feasts would be more appealing because all the other food eaten during that time would be fairly mundane (as well as miniscule by comparison to what would normally be your standard pub meal today).

>missing i
I know but my fat american fingers don't type so well

If your local grocery store doesn't sell turkey wings/thighs/legs, I feel sorry for you.

Turkeys are literally just superior chickens.

WHAT

Turkey is the worst foul. It's taste is so subpar compared to chicken, and especially duck. Snow Geese is better than Turkey.

As a poor student I eat white rice and chicken, or noodles, or other simple and tasteless foods. But once or twice a year my mom wants to treat me with medieval food. We have several books with medieval and historical recepies. Some of them are more "toned down", like porrage or beanbread. But there's also stuff like baked honey-butter root vegetables. Or meatstew with an explosion of taste, like cinnamon, salt, blackpepper, all the freshgrown spices, tucked in a little spicebag. Sure, the spices makes it rich-ppl food, but it's still medieval. Both looks and tastes amazing.

So basically.. it looks appealing because it actually IS sometimes.

if you're interested in even older historical food, check out passthegarum.co.uk for some ancient Roman stuff.

to me its the authenticity of it
its a traditional hearty meal,

anyone here from the south US area or mediteranean?
how does smoked meats and open fire roast compare to medieval feasts?

Turns out simple is usually pretty good. Bread, rice, roast meat, butter, milk, cheese. Yum.

kindly euthanize yourself

Found the guy who is only familiar with factory turkey.

>What gives the idea of medieval food and feasts such an appeal?
Medieval feasting has an theatrical, larger than life quality which is very appealing.

You guys are the worst kind of people, theres a reason chicken is the most popular bird. Indie fags. Turkey sucks, I'd always rather eat a ham on Thanksgiving.

my uncle's a hunter so I eat veal and boar all the time, that being said I've never had qual, rook, goat or pigeon, or at least I don't remember having any of them
wild boar is surprisingly delicate and kinda sweet, sort of between pig and veal
I've only had a rabbit once, but I thought it was really great, like something between chicken and veal
Goose is also a god tier meat for me, definitely more so than duck. it has a very characteristic taste I haven't seen anywhere else
turkey tastes very similar to chicken though

I mean, because it's a bloody feast.

The appeal of pre-industrial peasant food is simplicity, natural ingredients, a lack of added sugars or preservatives, and an earthy mix of flavors that feels lovingly constructed. The limit on meats, butter, sugar and the like makes it feel healthier, too, even when it isn't (which it is as long as you're going to go out and do some actual work during your day job, if your job utilizes a desk that you didn't build yourself and/or a suit as part of the dress code it probably isn't labor).

I don't know why people think this kind of cooking is a thing of the past, though. Most of my food would be at home on a table from a thousand years ago.

That's because chickens, by virtue of size and temperament, are easier to farm on less land and less food in a shorter time with less space. They are more efficient, not higher quality.

It also helps that chicken tastes like fucking nothing on its own, so unlike turkey you can make it good with little to no effort. It's like if tofu came off an animal.

Your inability to bring the natural flavor out of chicken speaks to your own jaded taste-buds and poor experience. I don't even dislike turkey, but to say chicken is bad is to fly in the face of human decency.

We compare the best the Middle Ages had to offer to food that's made or ordered based on our own time, equipment, and budgetary constraints. Of course the best of the best is going to compare favorably to ordinary meals.

>Spice has always been one of the most valuable substances in the world, so people who could get spice would use it in everything.
It was much more valuable before the invention of the refrigerator.

>Turkeys are literally just superior chickens.
Son! This guy is right, duck and goose are the best poultry for flavor. Turkey is okay for flavor but so dry and nasty flesh.

I have no problem with GMOs, but you cannot compare the meat I get in the UK from my butchers to the meat I ate in the US during my few years living over there. I'm not talking fast food, I'm talking pretty high quality shops and such. The meat lacked texture and flavour regardless of where I sourced it from and I lived in three different parts of the US when I went over there. The only good meat I had in the US was venison and their beef mince.

It was certainly cheaper though.

a rural farmer fag here, its true. I find store bought meat typically inedible. I was raised on beef from my familys farm all my life and you can taste the difference. Doesn't help most 'beef' isnt from beef animals unless its higher grades. Most ground beef is just dairy cows that were too burnt out to be milked anymore. That said, grassfed beef with a little care and loving can be super tender and flavorful. The other thing to keep in mind is that the breeds we use nowadays are pretty modern whereas most of the meat animals then would be heritage breeds which would have different qualities in the marbling and overall fat content of their carcass but, were also able to pull double or triple duty as dairy and draft animals.

>tfw Franklin wanted the turkey to become America's national bird
>tfw France and America could've been bros
I cry night and day

pigeon at least from Canada tastes a hell of a lot like a beefy chicken.

People don't usually imagine themselves eating the kind of things that serfs ate, they imagine feast days presented by lords with meat and wine all spiced to perfection.
Many people in western civilization today have plenty to eat, but it is often food that has been selected (through breeding or GMOs) for bulk rather than flavor. That's great for feeding large populations, not so great for the romantic image of a sumptuous, mouthwatering feast.

a good free-roaming chicken has more taste and texture to the meat
still not even close to the goose master race

But most modern cuisines (especially France's nouvelle cuisine) is based on peasant meals. Modern day delicacies such as bouillabaise and escargot were in that "whatever keeps us alive" category not too long ago. Under regular, non-famine circumstances, peasants weren't on the verge of starvation all day erry day.

I dunno, though. If you actually read some medieval recipes, most of them haven't aged well. A lot of them combine sweet and savory ingredients in ways that would make even an American retch.

Romanticism.

/thread

>Under regular, non-famine circumstances, peasants weren't on the verge of starvation all day erry day.

Not only this, but Westerners seem to enjoy eating foods that would be considered "famine foods" back in the day.

Like kale, who the fuck eats kale?

I mean, that's what rich people ate. The crap parts of the food.

Peasant dishes are the best.

>Kale
But that's a staple food over here ;_;

>A lot of them combine sweet and savory ingredients in ways that would make even an American retch.

Meat and sweet dried fruits go together pretty well, user. It's just that ye olde kitchen, like any kitchen, takes time to get used to as its has to make do without the usual ingrediences of corn syrup and MSG.

>He doesn't like sweet and savory
>He doesn't like chicken stuffed with apple
>He doesn't know pork and honey is a GOAT combination
Even today the Mexicans eat chicken with chocolate. You heard that right: chicken with chocolate.
foodnetwork.com/recipes/ingrid-hoffmann/chocolate-chicken-mole-recipe.html
And let's not forget how the Chinese put add sweet-and-sour to fucking everything.

We still eat food that is both sweet and savory.

>best steaks
>best

nah son, your opinion shouldn't be presented as a fact. Especially not when others consider lemonpepper rubbed meats to be the best.

All I know is that fish and chips came from the peasantry, and damn do I love me some catfish with malt vinegar and chips.

And has it right. Lemonpepper is a godsend.

And a little reminder - some sugar is a common ingredient of various marinades.

I'm not advocating pouring corn syrup on meat, either. I'm saying that medieval people had some kind of phobia of savory dishes and would drown the most improbable things in honey or fruit juice. I get that salt and savory spices were probably expensive, but come on, who ever thought blandissory was a good idea?

>All I know is that fish and chips came from the peasantry
I'm not sure whether that's true or not, but french fries actually started out as a high class meal. The first reference we have to its existence comes from Franklin requesting it from his French chef.
>Inb4 that highly dubious Flemish peasant origin story

And the fried fish part likely came from the Jews.