Tea at Trianon: Medieval Pottage

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Thursday, October 26, 2023

Medieval Pottage

From Medieval Recipes:

Making pottage was the simplest form of cooking and provided at least a reasonable meal for peasants in 12th century England. Recipes for pottage essentially called for vegetables and stock to be cooked in an earthenware pot or cast-iron cauldron. This is of course is the forerunner to soup making as we know it today.

Cooking pottage was an everyday activity for most people in medieval England. In their meagre homes the average peasant would cook in an earthenware pot amongst the hot ashes beside their fire in the down-hearth. If their hut had a beam stretched across it, they had the option of hanging a cauldron (usually a cast-iron one) from it over the fire like the one in the photograph. Here is a video of a fireplace with a cauldron over it at the castle of St. Mesmin in the Vendée area of France. The pottage mixture was brought to the boil, simmered and stirred occasionally with a ladle or wooden stick called a spartle. In the kitchens of grand medieval castles of course cauldrons were commonplace and much in evidence around the great fireplace.

A pottage recipe would vary depending upon the vegetables and meat available at the time. As our introductory page on pottage explains, peasants tended to be able to make only thin pottage with the thicker and more tasty pottages (frumenty and morrews) being enjoyed by the wealthy. (Read more.)

More HERE.