Food Question

[Omar]

Ok, not armor related, but a soldier has to eat, right?

Hardtack and its medieval equivalent I have figured out. Having never done Civil War reenactment (or anything of the sort) I am at a loss to figure out the other rations, such as Salt Pork.

Anyone have any experience with this?

[Magmaforge]

By "figure out" do you mean you want ideas of what to have, do you want to know how to make dishes/food items, or both?

[Omar]

All of the above?

I mean, hardtack was simple enough. Oil, salt, water, flour, bake until its a brick.

Beans are simple. Throw in pot with water and flavoring items (spices, meat, whatever).

Preserved meat on the other hand, it totally new to me. I would like to spend an event camping and eating period food without having to have a cooler.

[kelly powell]

Salt pork has differing shades of meaning....The salt pork you get today is just a bacon like material(pig cured in a nitrate solution)....You have salt dried pork...a jerky like material....barrels of pickled pork if you lived in a wine country...luttefisk....Which is cod dried and cured with lye(or is it lime? I check& edit)along with salt cod and stockfish....dried salmon and herring....The same above also goes with beef, mutton, horse, whatever.
If you didnt have camp bakers, then bannocks or way bread...or be lazy and just crack and boil your grains....along with dried beans, peas, and nuts(chesnuts was considered "peasant bread")and fruits ....dried root vegatables and onions and garlic....along with pickled and fermented veggies.....Hard cheeses keep for along time and you can smoke and drie sausages until they are mummified.
armies would also drive along cattle and sheep and cart along chickens & geese....for the officers at least.....you would also be gleaning what you could from the countryside and villages...maybe paying for them, maybe saying "fuck you" and raping the women while you were at it(depends on the army and whether you were on friendly ground or not)...
Was there anything specific I can tell you? I can get you some waybread or hardtack recipes.....you can get "cracker bread" at some bakerys that would be a fancier and tastier version of this.

[kelly powell]

lutefikj is lye..Salt cod became so prevelant in the portugeause diet that it is still served in at least two dishes in every meal..baracoda is the name i think....Sorry it is BACALHAU...my bad.
Then there are the herding cultures....mongols, huns, scythians etc.etc...Fermented milks, dried curds or dried yogurt is a mainstay in the saddle along with ANYTHING that walked, crawled or breathed that you could kill and eat.....Run a big enough remuda (sp? again) and you milked your mares along the way. In a emergency you drank your horses blood.

[B. Fulton]

All European armies, all the way up until the 1870s, could stockpile food to some degree, but past a few days, had to live off the land and loot whatever area they passed through.

The medieval chevauchee (burn/loot/rape/steal) raid was essentially the same idea, despoiling an area and taking the supplies for yourself, and denying it to your enemy (doing it on enemy lands) and thus denying him income as well (crops burned, cattle killed etc) for a considerable period of time into the future.


As a student of military history I've got at least one good book on military logistics and it's amazing how recent the "bring it all with you" idea is for armies.

[^]

With all questions of historical research you have to start off with when and where.

Late medieval practice tends to be more acquire what can be had locally, I can't remember the name of the feudal practice its based on. After that meat whenever possible seems to have transported on the hoof and then slaughtered in camp when needed. Most everything else transports relatively well and it is relatively easy to find ovens to make bread if necessary. What we call hardtack seems to be more of a naval food atleast in the later Middle Ages because most of the time supplies are available in the local and so even when you do find large supply trains and what not they tend to be very different then what you would find in like the ACW. You can't hardly travel 5 miles in large portions of Europe without going through a village. The one somewhat exception is fish for fast days, but it was practice to transport them even in peace. There is an interesting incident called the Battle of the Herrings where the French attacked a supply of fish being brought to English forces in the last part of the HYW.

Oh and peas seem like they might have been more popular then beans. Pea pottage being probably the primary pottage in the NW.

[Omar]

Here is my post to the SCA Byzantine list on the subject:

Ok, here is what I have so far.

This little experiment relies on a few things to be believable:
- My persona is of high enough rank/status to have spices and
materials readily available. Not rich, but not poor.
- The army group has just foraged/traded/bought locally to supply the
camp with necessary items, so more fresh items than while on the march
- The location of the camp is within the borders of the Empire, so the
foodstuff would be 'traditional' fare

As for the location being Armenia, I am not so sure. Perhaps
Kappadokia would be a better choice? The more I read about it, the
more similar it seems to my home. I am not even sure that I should
narrow it down to a single 'state' within the Empire. Without having
more personal experience with the region in question, I can never
really be sure. Besides, I am having a heck of a time figuring out
what foods are local to what region and such.

So, I will be leaving Friday morning from my house to travel up into
the mountains for this event, setting up camp around noon, with
various activities during the day. Saturday is the main day with
tournaments and melees, as well as a revel that evening. Sunday we
will break camp and leave site.

Some items will always be available:
- Paxmiata (hardtack)
- Picked Eggs
- Nuts
- Dried Fruit (dates and figs both seem appropriate, other suggestions?)
- Water, Posca (Water/Vinegar), Sekanjabin
- Olives
- Cheese (are there cheeses that will keep without being refrigerated?)
- Dried Meat/Fish

Friday:
Morning - Something I can cook at home thats fairly filling. Probably
bacon and paxmiata (I am to understand that crumbled up and mixed with
the bacon grease, then fried, its quite good), along with trehanas and
feta. That should sit well.
Afternoon - Likely just the 'standard' fare listed above, with Yogurt
(gotta eat it while its fresh). We will probably take a break during
set-up to eat, and have these items available.
Evening - I was thinking of Mustard Greens and Cow's Meat (pg 15 and
86 from Cariadoc).

Saturday:
Morning - Leftovers from the previous evening, along with a Millet
porridge.
Afternoon - Wild Foul (Cornish Game Hens) roasted over a fire,
probably with Trahanas. Fresh vegetables and fruit (what we found
while hunting foul).
Evening - Some sort of fish/lamb dish thats quick and easy, to be
determined. I dont want anyone to miss on the revelry while cooking
or cleaning up.

Sunday:
Morning - Unsure. Thinking of a bacon/paximata mix, but for sure
anything that is fresh and can not be stored (eat all of the fresh
food and save the preserved food and rations for the march home).



Some questions that have come up are what sort of spices would be
available (waiting on that book to become available, which should
answer that) and how to preserve the meat. The Varangian Voice
mentions salted meat/bacon.. so my thought is "Salt Pork" (as in, the
stuff they used in the American Civil War), but finding info on that
isnt easy. I cant seem to find any place that sells it, or how to
make it safely?

Cariadoc mentions pickled lamb. I imagine this could be done by
cooking, then just soaking the meat in the salt/brine. Should keep
for a bit longer. This could be added to the available items.

Wine will also be included, in the evening. Does anyone on here know
anything about Greek wine in period? Ouzo seems ok, but I cant find
any references there either. I think it was called tsipouro or raki
in period?

Stefan's Florilegium was useful with some of the e-mails, however I am
not able to verify any of them with actual sources. Klibanites were
mentioned, described as a pita-style bread. This would be quite good
with the other items available. Some sort of 'soft' bread, in any
form. They also mention the regular items such as olives, lamb, beef,
goat, etc. Bread was mentioned, but it didnt specify if it was
leavened or unleavened. Rice was also mentioned, but I am still
unable to verify what kind of rice was used, how common it was, or
anything else. Someone also said sauerkraut was period? Makes sense,
its just pickled cabbage, but I have so far heard no mention of it
before.

Fresh fruits/vegetables are my next problem, not really knowing what
grows where. I think this is a trait from my homeland, where nothing
is really 'native' and was introduced at one point or another. In the
late summer in the region, what might of been available?

I would also like to include sausage in some form to go with the
cheese, provided I can find a type of both that will keep without
refrigeration.


Anyway, its a work in progress. This is where I am currently.


Thanks again for all the feedback and replies. As always, suggestions
are welcome!

Alot of info was given from the list detailing alot of my questions, though I appreciate any insight. What I am looking for is practical advice or directions for salting meat (pork, lamb, fish, whatever) so that it is edible. I hear alot about these items, both in period and in more modern sources (the American Civil War for example), and am interested in how I can add items of this sort to my menu for the event.

Cariadoc spoke of pickled lamb in one of his articles (I might of mentioned that in the e-mail above), which also fascinates me. Cook the meat, and then toss in a jar with vinegar of a high enough acidity to kill any icky things that might want to grow (above 5%?)?

Figured there might be some folks who do living history on here with suggestions.

[Omar]

I should of read that e-mail before I posted it. The menu changed somewhat from that.

Doing the game hens on Friday evening, and then cooking a stew of leftovers and other odds and ends all day Saturday for dinner.


That leads me to another question... what was used to cook in period camps? I have heard cast iron cookware is the best, but cant find any reference of its use in period. Roasting a chicken on a stick isnt that hard to figure out, but what sort of cookware is period? I know the Romans used brass for just about everything...

[kelly powell]

Pickled meats are usually fairly raw....you heat the brine mixture and poor over the meat in a container.....modern ways call for the sealing of the jars and heating them for a specific amount of time....ensuring that you have raised the internal temp of the meat past the point where bacteria can live.....the vinegar(a acid) or if using a fermenting pickle it would be lactic acid then arresting the bacterial growth with vinegar and salt.......kim-chi, sourkraut and kosher sours are all fermented pickle.....the acids chemically cook the food and kill bacteria......cerviche and steak tartar are meat examples
Dishes like saurbratten& hausennphefer are direct ancestors of the use of pickled meats....except now we marinade the fresh meats to acheive the taste....where in old times you tried to rinse & cook the vinegar out of the dish to make it palatable.....A virginia ham is a salt cured example...you have to boil out the salt before it is edible.

[DietrichUhl]

Ok, not armor related, but a soldier has to eat, right?

Hardtack and its medieval equivalent I have figured out. Having never done Civil War reenactment (or anything of the sort) I am at a loss to figure out the other rations, such as Salt Pork.

Anyone have any experience with this?

You may want to look at the diet of the medieval person for the time period you are looking for.

I know that they where allot more vegetarian than we are now. I suspect it would be beans, grains and such. With meat when available and appropriate to eat. Some days you just where not allowed to eat meat regardless of whether you had it.

_D

[Ingvarr]

You may want to look at the diet of the medieval person for the time period you are looking for.

I know that they where allot more veterinarian than we are now. I suspect it would be beans, grains and such. With meat when available and appropriate to eat. Some days you just where not allowed to eat meat regardless of whether you had it.

_D

Seems like if they were more veterinarian, they would eat more meat. Healthy meat at that.

[kelly powell]

pots range from using your helmet to silver.....pottery crocks sealed with dough and put in the bakers oven on sunday is where cassaulet comes from(please forgive spelling errors...I'll get them close enough that google will be able to find it)....if you rotate it often and gradually heat it up crockery can be used in campfire cooking.....A good dutch oven would be my choice ......it's cast iron and may not be specifically period... but is a close approximatin to many differant style cooking pots.....A good clean terra cotta planter can be used as a roasting oven/bread oven.....you can also clay wrap or salt wrap(kosher salt,egg whites and flour mixed together to make a playdough like substance) along with spit, cord spit(twirl the meat until done) planked(wood slats set at a angle to the fire) or hot rocked......
Where you are from dictated alot of the cooking styles....A cold climate with lots of trees did more roasting and stewing of things.....Hot climates with lack of fuel(you end up cooking over your animals dried dung) promotes quikly cooked food....and probably chemically cooked to lower cooking time. Southern med is good middle example....this is where saute was developed......parts of china developed stir fry because of the use of bundled rice straw and expensive bits of charcol meant a quik hot fire.

[kelly powell]

Besides bread a typical diet for a english peasant was grains and anything else you can throw into a pot and boil for hours.....The use of human exscrement as fertilizer made it so you had to boil just about everything to safely eat it....even lettuce(yuck !)

[^]

Medieval diets sometimes changed radically over time. I'm not really sure my own personal or in general the meat/grain ratio today but in England from the 13th century to the 15th century there was a significant move to more meat.

What evidence do you have for people using human feces as fertilizer?

[kelly powell]

Other then bbc documentarys?..."gong farmers" was a job that was only allowed to happen during the nighttime hours.....garberobes and privy houses would get so bad that the gasses could actually kill people(mostly gong farmers)....they cleaned these out and sold the waste to farms....."lettuces" was a name given to a bunch of edible greens and were normally grown by the front door...which meant they were pissed on and chamber pots thrown on them.....i'll try to look up some foot note referances.....third world countries today do much the same thing....."montazumas revenge" is not the water half the time but the fruits and veggies.
"mucking the fields" was a winter time chore and meant "spreading the shit"......Fertilizer was fertilizer...Weird...I just found out muck also means worldly goods and wealth....Anyway googled "human waste used as fertiliser during the midieval period" and came up with a bunch of hits.....that was a no brainer cuz up until we found out about disease orginisms, most cultures used human waste on crops.

[kelly powell]

Do you think the little ice age , as they called the long cooling period that was around that time and the numerous plagues that took half the population out had to do with change of diet?......I'd say yes. The fact was skilled labor was at a premium and even peasants could probably get a better deal down the road if their lords did not treat them right...We started seeing the beginnings of the middle class, and people could afford to eat better.
This went on until the population topped off again.....And later down the road landholders started realising a better profit from their land with flax or sheep(this due to the textile industry) and started kicking tenant farmers out in droves(the irish have a bunch of good songs about this)....so all these guys end up in the cities working for a pittance in the textile mills and the diet got crappier then when they were peasants....Bread is a mark of civilazation, but in its way it fucked up many lives....you can live on it, but your not going to enjoy said life.

[Konstantin the Red]

The hard cheeses keep better at room temp than the softies -- which themselves will last some days.

Don't forget hard sausages: pepperoni, summer sausage, and the like.

Pastirma, a dried, red-peppered garlicked beef preparation, would be late-period. It seems an evolution of some Turkic nomad meat preservation method. You can use it rather like bacon, even pan-frying it at breakfast with eggs, but it is much leaner, so you'd add a little oil rather than just plop it in the pan. Herewith, further description:

The meat destined for pastırma is first salted, and stacked, then left for one night. The meat is then washed well and hung on hooks and left to dry without touching each other. The drying process takes 10-15 days. When the meat has turned dark red and firmed up, it is then put into a press to remove the salt and blood. After sitting one more day, it is then laid in çemen [CHEH-men]. Çemen is a mixture of red pepper, hot pepper, garlic and other spices, especially fenugreek. After lying in the çemen for 4-5 days, the pastırma is brought into the sun to dry further, and is ready to eat.

The Turks have sundry preservation recipes for meats. You might develop a taste for Turkish cuisine -- it's like Mediterranean in general, plus peppers and heavy on the garlic. Yoghurt out the yingyang too, eaten straight or an ingredient in saladish things.

http://www.turkishcusine.org/english/pages.php?ParentID=4&FirstLevel=30&SecondLevel=43&LastLevel=45

A more detailed description of pastirma prep here:
http://tinyurl.com/4cyfea -- scroll to p. 14. It's also got biltong.

Jugged, or potted meats, and meat pies were long popular in Europe. Generally, your choice of meat, plus chopped onions, raisins, and diced apples. Savory seasonings -- black pepper, salt, European green herbs. Enclosing anything you baked in a pie shell seems to have been all over the place. These guys would make pies of fish.

[Sigurd of Jorvik]

. These guys would make pies of fish.

They still do and it is delicious a good fish pie is one of life's great pleasures!

[Cian of Storvik]

A fish pie? I think I'm going to be ill.
-Cian

[Sigurd of Jorvik]

And you call yourself an Atlantian?!

Do you like chicken pot pie? Imagine a dish just like hat but with a tasty flaky white-fish.

Well no matter, more fish pie for me then.

There's also a post 1500's version which is topped with mashed potato and baked to a deep golden brown. MMMMM fish pie arrrruuuugghhhhghhhg....

[Murdock]

This is what my wife researches.

I'll ask her

[DietrichUhl]

One thing that my wife and I do is buy some pizza dough, ham slices and Cheese slices. We cut the dough into 6 sections. Roll out each section flat. Two slices of ham & one cheese slice is put in the middle and wrapped up in the dough. A little egg yoke on the top of the packet for color and they bake up quick.

At events we pop the cooler and grab a couple at a time. I don’t really think they need a cooler given it’s basically a baked sandwich. I have put a couple in my fighting pouch to eat on the field before the battle. Worked fine and is period.

We also like ground beef, onions, peas and carrots plus spices for a filling option.

This does take preparation in advance but quick easy tasty food is the goal for my wife and I at events.
-Dietrich

[Kilkenny]

Other then bbc documentarys?..."gong farmers" was a job that was only allowed to happen during the nighttime hours.....garberobes and privy houses would get so bad that the gasses could actually kill people(mostly gong farmers)....they cleaned these out and sold the waste to farms....."lettuces" was a name given to a bunch of edible greens and were normally grown by the front door...which meant they were pissed on and chamber pots thrown on them.....i'll try to look up some foot note referances.....third world countries today do much the same thing....."montazumas revenge" is not the water half the time but the fruits and veggies.
"mucking the fields" was a winter time chore and meant "spreading the shit"......Fertilizer was fertilizer...Weird...I just found out muck also means worldly goods and wealth....Anyway googled "human waste used as fertiliser during the midieval period" and came up with a bunch of hits.....that was a no brainer cuz up until we found out about disease orginisms, most cultures used human waste on crops.

And plenty of cultures still do. Not to mention that "night soil" properly handled is perfectly good fertilizer.

[Kilkenny]

Besides bread a typical diet for a english peasant was grains and anything else you can throw into a pot and boil for hours.....The use of human exscrement as fertilizer made it so you had to boil just about everything to safely eat it....even lettuce(yuck !)

This just isn't a valid conclusion.

Side bar - Owen did quite a bit of research into period brewing, its role in diet and in culture, etc. It provided a couple of very beneficial things - water that was safe to drink; roughly one third of the average person's daily caloric intake.

[Omar]

The hard cheeses keep better at room temp than the softies -- which themselves will last some days.

Ok... but which ones?

Don't forget hard sausages: pepperoni, summer sausage, and the like.

I thought about this as well, but am having a hell of a time trying to document it.

[Fearghus Macildubh]

I know from personal experience that the soft cheeses from La vache qui rit (The laughing cow) http://www.thelaughingcow.com/ will keep in a backpack for about a week. In the summer, in the south of France. The babybell semi-soft cheese kept for longer, I know some stayed in my pack for about 3 weeks. Sharp Gouda will dry out and get hard before it is bad. Camebert and Brie are good for around 5 days. They may still be safe, but they taste off.

[Omar]

I wonder how you can tell if a cheese is bad. The smell is always less than pleasant, so that doesnt work. I have always been of a mindset that if its dairy and isnt cold, its bad.

[Sinister_Theo]

Well generally molds and bacteria require "air" to propagate. So if a piece of cheese that has been out has its outer skin/layer removed it would then be edible.

How would you resolve this problem?

You have to travel for 15 days on foot. How would you succeed at this task, while not using any modern conveniences or technologies? Let's say limited to 1500's or earlier.

[Rittmeister Frye]

Bread, bread and more bread. By the 16th Century at least (and I believe this was the case in earlier centuries as well) most armies had a regular bread issue, even though just about everything else in the soldier's diet was up to him to purchase (or forage/steal, etc.) from sutlers (peasants/townsmen, etc.). To supply this bread issue, the Crown (or whomever was paying the army in question) would let contracts to various merchants to provide said bread issue for X amount of funds. It was not only to ensure that the soldiers were fed at least (if not very often paid on time), but also to ensure that the normal skyrocketing of prices of local resources wasn't too much of an impingement on the pay of the soldiers.

Of course, most soldiers much preferred to extort their food from the locals, bread ration or not, but when the bread ration ran out, what little discipline there was, along with the soldiers, usually left as well. Many a siege was lifted due to the besieging army running out of food before the besieged town did.

Cheers!

Gordon

[Destichado]

Don't forget hard sausages: pepperoni, summer sausage, and the like.

I thought about this as well, but am having a hell of a time trying to document it.

Try this: http://www.cliffordawright.com/caw/food ... php/id/45/
and then do research on the history of the sausages that interest you.

As someone who grew up in the meat business, Americans have NO IDEA what they're missing. The public knows about frankfurters, red bratwurst ("white brats? what are those?"), vienna sausage, soft bologna, and those disgusting varieties of summer sausage they sell in gas stations, and that's. about. it. Talking to German, Belgian and Italian processors at trade shows is really discouraging, because apparently, the public still knows about good sausage, good ham (none of this 50% water crap) over there, so they can still make a living selling the good stuff.

There is an OCEAN of variety out there, but you have to do some snooping to find it. Sausages were made for all purposes and all seasons. Some fresh sausages will have a taste like nothing you've ever experienced, but they'll need to be consumed in short order. Some hard smoked ones you'll find darn near inedible, but there's history to them so people eat it anyway.

Small meat processors -usually one-family delicatessens and butcher shops- still survive (god only knows how, with the USDA like it is) and they're responsible for pretty much all the variety that's out there anymore. If you're looking for something specific and can't find it -which would be very possible, given your period- you might have to make nice with a local sausage maker.
Explain that you're looking for an uncommon ethnic sausage for historical reasons, come up with a recipe, and ask if they'd make a test batch for you. You'll probably have to buy all of it, since the USDA won't let them retail it without a boatload of assenine bs, but if their equipment is small enough, you might get away with only needing to get 5 lbs or so.

[Konstantin the Red]

The hard cheeses keep better at room temp than the softies -- which themselves will last some days.

Ok... but which ones?

Come on, Omar, you can tell the difference between hard and soft without me holding your hand. Cheddars, Edams, Swisses, Goudas... et cetera. Hard cheeses have less moisture in them, and so are less inclined to get microbes.

Yoghurt holds up pretty well too, though not for above a week. If it's live-culture and not kept under thorough refrigeration, it will probably get more zingy -- and that's no bad thing, just lactobacillus doing its job. BTW, beat the stuff up hard enough with about equal volumes of water and yoghurt and you get a cool drink called lassi by the Indians and Kaymak by the Turks, which may be sweet, salty, or seasoned up a little. It's like a cousin to buttermilk.

[Donal Mac Ruiseart]

Some . . . you'll find darn near inedible, but there's history to them so people eat it anyway.

I can think of no other reason why so many people still eat lutefisk.

[DietrichUhl]

Don't forget hard sausages: pepperoni, summer sausage, and the like.

I thought about this as well, but am having a hell of a time trying to document it.

Try this: http://www.cliffordawright.com/caw/food ... php/id/45/
and then do research on the history of the sausages that interest you.

As someone who grew up in the meat business, Americans have NO IDEA what they're missing. The public knows about frankfurters, red bratwurst ("white brats? what are those?"), vienna sausage, soft bologna, and those disgusting varieties of summer sausage they sell in gas stations, and that's. about. it. Talking to German, Belgian and Italian processors at trade shows is really discouraging, because apparently, the public still knows about good sausage, good ham (none of this 50% water crap) over there, so they can still make a living selling the good stuff.

There is an OCEAN of variety out there, but you have to do some snooping to find it. Sausages were made for all purposes and all seasons. Some fresh sausages will have a taste like nothing you've ever experienced, but they'll need to be consumed in short order. Some hard smoked ones you'll find darn near inedible, but there's history to them so people eat it anyway.

Small meat processors -usually one-family delicatessens and butcher shops- still survive (god only knows how, with the USDA like it is) and they're responsible for pretty much all the variety that's out there anymore. If you're looking for something specific and can't find it -which would be very possible, given your period- you might have to make nice with a local sausage maker.
Explain that you're looking for an uncommon ethnic sausage for historical reasons, come up with a recipe, and ask if they'd make a test batch for you. You'll probably have to buy all of it, since the USDA won't let them retail it without a boatload of assenine bs, but if their equipment is small enough, you might get away with only needing to get 5 lbs or so.

You are an evil evil man. The two things I miss from California is the weather and the access to food stuffs. You really are evil. I may have to try my hand at home made sausage but I don't think I could find the right food stuffs here in Mississippi.
-Dietrich

[edricus]

An interesting discussion but I wonder, Omar were do I find a link to the SCA Byzantine list you mention.

Regards

Edricus