Tell me about the history of Western food.

Many major Western foods have not yet been introduced to Europe in medieval times, such as potatoes, sweet potatoes, corn, tomatoes, etc. In ancient times, there were not even beans, except for the staple food of wheat and barley. Apart from no changes (but cooking methods also vary greatly from ancient to modern times), the dietary structure of Europeans is very different from ancient times to modern times.

During the Hundred Years War, people ate bread, cheese, cured fat meat, stews, poultry, and eggs. The feudal lords also ate wild boar, deer and other game, as well as sweets. Baked dough in the shape of a castle, desserts made of off-white pig intestines made of batter, honey and fruit, and more.

The bread at that time~~~ would not taste very good. In ancient Europe, because there was not enough feed, livestock that were not kept as breeding stock were often killed to make bacon during the winter. Without cinnamon, cloves, cardamom, pepper and other spices, the taste of bacon is also terrible. One of the great advantages of bacon is that you don’t need to carry salt when you go out. You can just cut off a small piece and cook it with other vegetables when eating. This also shows that The reason why bacon is so unbearably salty. . So the Portuguese, the Spanish, the Dutch, the British... were all exploring the Spice Route.

Spices, gold, silk, these are the things that Western countries in the Middle Ages dreamed of. The former occupies an even more important position. The huge profits gained from every ship loaded with spices from the East drove people to brave the stormy seas and travel across the oceans. The unlucky ones became ghosts in foreign countries, but the lucky ones got rich overnight.

The resulting unscrupulous and profit-seeking plundering, the blood and fire of the colonial era...

A pound of cardamom can be exchanged for a flock of sheep, and a pound of cloves is equal to three times the weight of gold. Such a transaction is to kill There are people rushing to do it!

“The spices used by a poor native in Nanyang for every meal are a luxury that even the kings in Europe cannot imagine...”

Also, I have read a description of Southeast Asia As for the diet of a poor child, he can only eat rice mixed with crushed spices (I don’t know what kind of spices it is) every day... I think the value of the spices he eats for each meal would be enough to enjoy in Europe. It’s time for Manchu and Han Dynasty to have a banquet^-^!

The aroma of bacon is closely related to the wood used for smoking it

In the past, rural areas in Germany used cypress trees just like ours.

When smoked with other branches, there will be a very good aroma

In fact, the real aroma of bacon does not lie in the spices

but in the aroma released after the interaction between meat and smoke

This is the most natural

In fact, ordinary people in medieval Europe could not eat meat every day

Mostly some bread would be good

All day long I am so busy working that I don’t have much time to pay attention to cooking

Only aristocratic masters are so particular

(But compared to modern people, Louis XIV and Frederick the Great were nothing more than that, hehe )

There are some staple breads here that many people may not be used to eating.

For example, raw wheat grains are often used to make bread here

Sometimes sunflowers are added. Seeds (unfried)

It tastes sour, but it is said to be rich in nutrients

The nutrition of medieval Europeans was actually quite poor

19 The average height of the Germans in the 20th century was only a little over 1.6 meters

This can be seen from those castles and knight armors

Many places of real ancient castles are very narrow and short< /p>

Those knights’ armors are so narrow that even I can’t put them on

You can imagine how the knights behave like this

Class differences and regional differences must be They exist at the same time and cannot be absolute

(By the way, another characteristic of southern European cooking is that it likes to use wine for seasoning

The alcohol in wine can interact with the fatty acids in animal tissues. Strongly scented ester

and can remove the fishy smell from fish, which is very useful for Southern Europe with marine culture)

But there are indeed regional differences

The same poor people may be good at cooking in some places

It is said that Gypsies often use dead dogs, dead cats and sewage thrown away by Europeans

to make delicacies Delicious food

The rapid height growth of Europeans can be seen from their facilities

Many facilities that were built more than ten or twenty years ago, such as trams, have become less useful to today’s people. Very reluctantly

I've always wondered why they don't make things bigger and save materials?

The staple food of Westerners is of course bread, but the main ingredient of bread is not necessarily wheat. Throughout the Middle Ages, Western Europe was often in periodic food crises. The causes of the crisis came from various aspects. One major aspect is Low yield - Anyone who knows a little about agriculture knows that the unit yield of wheat is the lowest among the three major food crops (wheat, rice, corn). Coupled with the low level of agriculture, the climate in Europe is much colder than it is now. , so throughout the Middle Ages (it can be said that this era of scarcity almost continued into the 17th century) wheat production was in short supply. So a variety of substitute grains including barley, rye, emmer and other grains were used to make bread, and even chestnuts and beans were ground to make bread. Complex breads have long been eaten by the poor, while white bread was reserved for the rich, aristocrats and the privileged in the church. A kind of white bread at that time was called Priest's Bread, and there was also a fine white bread that added milk and used brewer's yeast instead of ordinary yeast, called Queen's Bread. According to French revolutionaries, it embodies the ugliness of the integration of church and royal power.

Meat:

This is a more complicated issue. Europeans at that time ate a lot of meat, but it was not steak as we think of it now, but pork. At that time, there were many forests and open wastelands in Europe, and pigs were basically free-range, so there was a profession like pig herders. Pork has been the main meat in the West throughout the Middle Ages.

Beef and mutton also account for a certain proportion, but not high. Sheep were raised mainly to obtain wool and dairy products. Large-scale cattle raising for food was relatively rare at that time, and the main purpose was to obtain dairy products-cheese and butter.

By the way, Europeans today are puzzled by the fact that we eat pig offal. In fact, Europeans at that time also consumed pig offal and blood. This custom still existed in Eastern Europe into the 20th century.

Game is also a major source of meat, but this is basically enjoyed by the lords and nobles, including deer, wild boar, hare and freshwater fish. The number one entertainment of European nobles in the Middle Ages was hunting, so private hunting was strictly prohibited. However, poaching by farmers still occurs frequently. After the rise of cities, wild game also began to infiltrate the tables of citizens.

Poultry:

Capons (for tender meat) and fat geese were delicacies in the Middle Ages. There are also many wild birds available for consumption. Swans and peacocks were once delicacies for gourmets. As for the taste, I can’t even imagine.

Fish:

A historian said that in the European Middle Ages, herring was a historical figure. During the Catholic Lent period, fish and eggs are the only meat dishes allowed. Therefore, pickled herring (and other fish species as well) was an extremely popular commodity, consumed almost year-round by the poor as a source of protein. The change of herring migration route even determined to a certain extent the decline of Hanseatica and the rise of Amsterdam (this statement is not very appropriate, it is just a talk).

Oil:

Olive oil is mainly consumed in the Mediterranean region, while butter is consumed in the north.

Alcohol:

Wine and beer were the two main types of alcohol at that time. Unlike China, wine was a common food for Europeans, not a stimulant at celebration banquets. Regardless of whether you are rich or poor, wine is a must for every meal. The military supply list at that time had detailed regulations on how much wine and bread each soldier should be given per meal, and its status was almost as good as bread. Of course, there are good and bad wines, and there are also grades. Generally speaking, in wine-producing areas (southern Europe), wine is a popular drink. The wine at that time was already divided into red and white, but grape schnapps (the brandy mentioned by the Lord) had not yet appeared. Wine was mainly shipped in wooden barrels, and the wine-making technology at that time may not have been up to standard. The newly brewed wine of that year was generally worth ten times as much as the old wine of the next year - because the latter often turned sour and was unpalatable.

The concept of beer in the Middle Ages was different from ours. It is not quite appropriate to say that the degree of similarity with modern beer is not as high as that with our rice wine. Some of the basic beer techniques at that time were still not the same as ours. did not appear, and the use of hops is a recent thing. Beer is synonymous with grain alcohol, but it is still a fermented alcohol rather than distilled grain liquor (whiskey is grain liquor). Beer is mainly popular in areas where grapes are not grown. The upper class generally enjoys drinking wine, while beer is mainly a drink for the lower classes.

Spice:

To put it simply, in the Middle Ages in Europe, winter was much colder than it is now. The lack of feed forces farmers who feed livestock to slaughter the livestock that cannot be fed before the onset of winter. Spices are needed for curing bacon and cooking.

To remember the bitter and sweet, you must use the original bacon, and educate It was difficult for our ancestors to start a business, otherwise we would always think that our ancestors had French bread with English cheese and sauerkraut sausages as a side dish every day. Hahaha!

Attachment:

A list of the properties of Charlemagne’s palace.

We saw a royal stone palace in the Asnapimu Local Imperial Mansion, which was extremely well built. There are three halls, the whole house is surrounded by balconies, and there are eleven rooms for women to live in; there is a basement below, and there are two cloisters in front of the main entrance; in addition, in the courtyard, there are seventeen wooden rooms with the same number. room and other equipment. The building is very good; in addition there are stables, a kitchen, a mill, a warehouse, and three fodder rooms.

The coverings include: one bed sheet, one tablecloth, and one hand towel.

The utensils are: two copper kettles, two wine glasses, two bronze cauldrons, one iron pot, one wok, a legal scale, a pair of iron fire racks, a lamp, a second-hand axe, and a pan (should be gold base, not stone base), two diamonds, an axe, a knife, a large wooden wrench, a small board, two long-handled sickles, two sickles, two iron-edged shovels, and there are sufficient wooden utensils.

Agricultural products: 90 baskets of German wheat harvested last year can be ground into 450 pounds of flour and 100 meters of barley; 110 baskets of German wheat were harvested this year, and 60 baskets have been used for sowing. , the rest is saved; 100 meters of wheat are used for sowing, and the remaining 60 meters are used for sowing; 98 meters of rye are all used for sowing; 18,000 meters of barley are used for sowing, and 1100 meters of barley are used for sowing. d for sowing, and left over; oats, 430 ed; soybeans, 1 ed; peas, 12 ed; in five mills, there are flour, 800 ed; in four brewhouses There are 650 millet eds of wine, except for the 240 eds paid to the priest of the manor, the rest is left; at the two bridges, there are 60 eds of salt and 2 shillings in money; in the four gardens, ten One shilling. Three millimeters of honey; one millide of butter; ten slices of lard saved from last year; two hundred slices of new lard, with minced meat and fat, and this year four or three pounds of dried cheese.

Livestock: five large animals, five three-year-olds, seven two-year-olds, seven one-year-olds; ten two-year-old ponies, eight one-year-olds, and three stallions; Sixteen cows; two donkeys, five hundred cows with calves, twenty buffalo calves, thirty-eight yearling calves, three bullocks; twenty sixty pigs, one hundred piglets, and five males Pigs; 150 sheep with lambs, 200 yearling sheep, 120 rams, three. goats with only young ones, 30 yearling goats, and 3 male goats; 30 geese; 80 chickens; and 2 peacocks.

The manor belonging to the above-mentioned palace: In Grixiu Manor, we saw manor buildings, three fodder houses in the middle and a fenced yard. There is also a garden with trees, ten geese, eight ducks, and thirty chickens.

In another manor, we saw manor buildings; a fenced yard with three fodder houses; a vineyard, an orchard, fifteen geese, and twenty chickens.

On the third manor, there are houses, two hay houses, a barn, a garden, and a fenced yard. There, as in the palace, there were dry and wet weighers. There were no goldsmiths, silversmiths, blacksmiths, hunters, or other men in service.