Showing posts with label beer. Show all posts
Showing posts with label beer. Show all posts

Sunday, August 20, 2023

Medieval Grains

We cannot underestimate the ubiquity of grain in the medieval diet. This was, of course, not a medieval discovery: different grains had been used for thousands of years (at least 75,000, according to this) and adapted to the climate and culture of the consumers. Grain was used three ways: turned into bread, drunk as beer, and eaten as pottage.

Finding out what grains medieval England had access to comes from a surprising source: extant thatched roofs, some of which have "roots" going back to the 14th and 15th centuries. The stalks used for thatching—in many cases preserved by fireplace soot—show the presence of bread wheat, rivet wheat, rye, barley, and oats. It was important to cultivate different varieties of grain because their different ripening times and grain yields ensured a steadier supply than cultivating a monoculture.

Bread wheat was the most common wheat grown. Rivet wheat is not grown so much today (although it is considered ideal for pasta), but it made higher quality straw for thatching. Different varieties of wheat were not differentiated in manorial harvest records, however, the word frumentum ("crops" or "grains") being used for any grains meant for consumption. But rather than discuss bread again, or beer, let's talk about pottage.

Pottage, also spelled potage (the word is from Old French pottage, meaning food cooked in a pot), is a thick soup or stew made by boiling grains and whatever vegetables were at hand. If available, meat could be added, but the base was grains in liquid boiled until it became a thick sludge or slurry (those are not culinary terms, but they seem appropriate to me based on my imagining the pottage process).

The boiling would take several hours, and in fact the pottage could be kept on the fire for days, adding liquid and ingredients over time to keep the meal going indefinitely. Upper classes could afford to add meat, but without meat this was a staple peasant dish from the 9th through 17th centuries. The constant boiling ensured it was not only safe to eat but made it easier to eat, the grains being reduced to a porridge-y consistency.

Richard II's cookbook The Forme of Cury had a few pottage recipes, including meat of course, but peasants could alter it with egg yolks, with bread crumbs, or with spices. Frumenty was made by boiling wheat grains until they burst, allowing the mixture to cool, then boiling with broth and milk or almond milk; it could be thickened with egg yolks and have sugar and spices added. Different types of pottage had names like egerdouce, brewet, the thinner ronnyng, and (what I think would be my favorite) mortrews.

The word "pottage" these days may bring to mind the story of Jacob and Esau and the "mess of pottage" given to the hungry Esau in exchange for his birthright. A "mess of pottage" is now used to denote a short term bargain that is detrimental in the long term. Technically, it was a red lentil stew. Interestingly, the knowledgeable Dioscorides warns that lentils were hard to digest and caused nightmares, sentiments that were repeated by medieval authors like the 14th century Pietro de Crescenzi.

Pietro de Crescenzi might have been wrong about lentils, but he has a place in history as the first "modern" agronomist, and it is in that context that I will tell you about him tomorrow.

Wednesday, April 10, 2019

Local Government, Part 2

A modern Aleconner [link]
We know that, in medieval London, an alderman held an assembly called a Wardmote every other year, at which attendance by every male in the ward over a certain age (with some exceptions) was required. The purpose of these meetings was manifold.

One major occurrence was to administer the "Oath of Frankpledge"; this was an oath that imposed upon each attendee an obligation to civic duty. (Knights and some others were exempt, since they owed allegiance to different authority.) The oath:

You shall swear, that you shall be good and true unto the King of England and to his heirs, Kings, and the King's peace shall you keep; and to the officers of the City you shall be obedient, and at all times that should be needful, you shall be ready to help the officers in arresting misdoers, and those disobedient to the King's peace, as well denizens as strangers.  And you shall be ready, at the warnings of the Constables and Beadles, to make the watches and other charges for the safeguard of the peace, and all the points in this Wardmote shown, according to your power, you shall well and lawfully keep. And if you know any evil coven within the Ward of the City, you shall withstand the same or unto your Alderman make it known. So God you help, and the Saints.
Regarding the line "as well denizens as strangers": A "citizen" was a native; a "denizen" was a foreigner residing locally; a "stranger" was someone present without a fixed local address. The potentially disruptive behavior of strangers (who of course had no oath of obligation to the municipality) was a constant concern. Since visitors had to stay somewhere, innkeepers were made responsible for the actions of their temporary tenants. In 1384, in London, innkeepers were required to answer for the customers' actions if the customers stayed longer than a single day and night. A guest whose behavior required the attention of the authorities could cost the innkeeper a fine of £100.

After the oath came the elections. Various positions needed to be filled by the male citizens. The Beadle [Old English bydel: "a person who makes a proclamation] was responsible for disseminating information orally in a society without Twitter or newspapers. He was the first "social medium." Also elected for a two-year term were aleconners, whose enviable job was to test bread, ale, and beer for quality. Scavengers had the less enviable task of finding and removing trash from public spaces.

These practices helped to maintain order in a large city such as London, by dividing it up into Wards of a more manageable size and putting responsibility into the hands of people who were neighbors of those they policed and served. Although written laws and contracts were used at this time, the verbal contract of the frankpledge served to bind the men to their obligations. The frankpledge quoted above comes from the Liber Albus, the White Book. We should talk about that next.

Thursday, December 27, 2012

The St. Scholastica Day Riot

[DailyMedieval is on semi-hiatus for the holidays, and I am re-cycling some older posts.]

The St. Scholastica Day Riot was one of the most famous altercations in the history of Oxford, England.
Perhaps the most famous instance of Town vs. Gown took place on February 10, 1355, in Oxford. Two students (Roger de Chesterfield & Walter Spryngeheuse) complained about the ale at the Swyndlestock Tavern (located at the southwest corner of the intersection called Carfax). The argument led to the students flinging their drinks in the face of the tavern keeper and beating him. When the mayor of Oxford asked the university chancellor to punish the students (all students fell under the jurisdiction of the university, not the town), and the chancellor refused, a mob of students decided to attack the mayor and town. The town called for help from the surrounding countryside, and attacked the university. The resulting riot lasted two days and killed (supposedly) 63 students and 30 townspeople. [from DailyMedieval, May 18, 2012]
Appealing to the Crown did not help the town. The king held the university in high esteem, apparently, and supported its right to its own governance. The town was not allowed to prosecute students or staff of the university.

For the town's part in the conflict, its penance was for the mayor and council members to march bare-headed through the streets annually on February 10th. Moreover, each year the town was to pay a fine of 1 penny for each scholar killed. The fine of 5 shillings and threepence was paid annually until 1825. The Swindlestock Tavern itself had not existed for over a hundred years by that time. On the 600th anniversary of the Riot, a ceremony was held in which the mayor was given an honorary degree and the Vice-Chancellor of Oxford was made an Honorary Freeman of Oxford, putting (they hoped) the Town vs. Gown rivalry to rest once and for all.

Monday, July 9, 2012

What Ales You

Beer/ale has been brewed since the days of the Roman Empire. I suppose we should say that ale has been brewed that long, and beer came later. Originally made with barley, and then later with different grains, it was only around 1500 that the practice of adding hops to the mixture became popular. Although the word beer is almost as old as ale, the Middle Ages used the different words to distinguish between the much more common ale without hops and beer, made with hops.*

Mashing up grain, letting it sit in water with yeast, then letting it ferment was easy to do and produced a drink that provided calories, hydration, and not a debilitating amount of alcohol. Spices were sometimes added for variety. At a time when water was not always potable or easy to come by, turning it into a tastier drink was a desirable goal, easily accomplished by many households. And brewing would have been an ongoing process: hops provide preservative qualities that ale would lack. Given, however, that ale was drunk on a daily basis by almost everyone, frequent brewing would have been planned, and the more the better, because selling excess was a great way to make some extra cash.

Because ale (and later beer) was such an essential commodity, regulations for controlling prices, amount, and quality abound. Records of fees levied reveal the large number of women involved in the process. In fact, it is fair to say that brewing was a woman-dominated career in the Middle Ages at least until the Black Death, and for most of the rest of that century. Every village and hamlet probably had women who provided most of the ale to those who did not brew their own.

The introduction of hops changed the industry as well as the drink. Hopped beer could last longer, and it was therefore efficient to brew it in mass quantities. The equipment needed for this required a larger outlay of capital, which the cottage-industry alewife could not afford. Also, brewing in large quantities was more labor intensive and could not easily be squeezed into the day by the woman who had other domestic chores to attend to. The brewing of hopped beer became a town-centered industry dominated by men; where women were involved in the new model, it was as distributors.

If this post has whetted your appetite for historical ale and beer knowledge, consider this or this.

*Search the Internet for when hops started being used and you will find a wide variety of answers. Trivia: The Middle Ages Brewing Company (in Syracuse, NY) website says "Come and see ... British style 'real ale' brewery." Do you suppose they really leave out the hops?