Vegetable Recipes

Vegetables were widely grown and consumed in the Middle Ages. Archaeological evidence suggests that meat was not usually part of the daily diet, so they must have had ways to prepare vegetables in different ways to avoid boredom. Let's look at a few.

The Middle Ages did have salads, collections of uncooked plants eaten for the flavor, but they did not have tomatoes and the types of lettuce we usually see in modern salads.

Purslane was a common ingredient, and is packed with vitamins and minerals. To this they might add primrose, mint, parsley, fennel, garlic, leeks, and the aromatics rosemary and sage, and top it with violet blossoms and rose petals.

Artichokes would be soaked in cold water that had been boiled with pepper, cinnamon, and ginger. The artichokes would then be baked with butter and vinegar and served with a sprinkling of sugar.

A recipe called "compost" was for root vegetables, and is found in the Forme of Cury, the cookbook from the kitchens of Richard II. It includes parsley roots, parsnips, carrots, radishes, turnips, a small cabbage, and a pear. A modern description of their preparation goes like this: 

Peel vegetables and chop them into bite-sized pieces. Parboil them until just tender, adding pears about halfway through cooking time. Remove from water, place on towel, sprinkle with salt, and allow to cool. Then put vegetables in large bowl and add pepper, saffron, and vinegar. Refrigerate for several hours. Then put wine and honey into a saucepan, bring to a boil, and then simmer for several minutes, removing any scum that forms on the surface. Let cool and add currants and remaining spices. Mix well and pour over vegetables. Serve cold. [link]

The illustration above is of compost from this page.

Here's a 14th century French recipe for a vegetable tart in translation [note: "bray" mans grind]:

To Make a Tart, take four handfuls of beets, two handfuls of parsley, an handful of chervil, a sprig of fennel and two handfuls of spinach, and pick them over and wash them in cold water, then cut them up very small; then bray with two sorts of cheese, to wit a hard and a medium, and then add eggs thereto, yolks and whites, and bray them in with the cheese; then put the herbs into the mortar and bray all together and also put therein some fine powder. Or instead of this have ready brayed in the mortar two heads of ginger and onto this bray your cheese, eggs and herbs and then cast old cheese scraped and grated onto the herbs and take it to the oven and then have you tart make and eat it hot. [link]

An excellent website that covers medieval cookery and links to other cookery sites can be found here. The recipes are translated and updated to make them easier to follow. Although I said we would talk about grains after today, the aforementioned website has a section on "Oddities" which I would like to share next.