Crafts - Cooking

"Of Manners and Meals", The Medieval Cookbook, by Maggie Black

"In the late Middle Ages, children of good birth were often away from home to be educated even before they reached their teens. Those who would one day manage large estates were taken into the household of a great magnate or Church dignitary where formal meals, service, and manners were a daily routine (which might not be the case at home).

Under the skilled teaching of John Russell, Duke Humphrey of Gloucester?s Marshall, for instance, squires-to-be learned the entire care of the person of a ?lord? from morning till night: how he should be bathed, dressed, attended at meals and served. Carving was an art to be learned as much as sword-play, and good manners at table were essential when everyone at the tables of lower status in the hall shared a plate and a helping with another- his messmate. Not least, the "young gentlemen" received detailed instruction on menu planning, table-laying and also on diet, as in this verse:

"Butter is a wholesome food, first and last
for it soothes the stomach and helps one to
get rid of poisons
also it helps a man as an aperient and so gets
rid of ill humors
and with white bread, it has a lingering flavour.

Milk, creams, curds and also rose junket,
They close a man?s stomach and so are binding;
You must eat hard cheese after them if you sup late
And drink resinated wine to guard against constipation."

This education, by making the young sprigs of nobility the servants of princes, equipped them well for their future lives; they learned not only courtesy and hostmanship but also estate management and how to handle staff, which they would one day need to do on their own account. It is the type of medieval education we know best because it has been scrupulously documented in the manuscript collection published as The Babees Book. But it was not the only type for children of affluent parents. Boys and girls who stayed at home had tutors or governesses, and there were boarding schools, usually in religious houses. Lads whose parents had "given" them to the Church or who could not keep them at home for some reason were sometimes brought up by monks until old enough to decide whether they had a vocation. If they decided to enter the Church, they might finish their education at Oxford University.

Girls without means might occasionally be trained by nuns, perhaps as working lay sisters. But most boarding-school girls were wealthy orphans who were "put into care" by their guardians to protect them, and to train them in the courtesies and housekeeping befitting a gentlewoman.

At home, well-bred girls had to know at least as much as boys about the social status of different foods when the household dined together; who should get what and how much. They had to know when fish must be served, the etiquette of giving alms from the table, and the whole business of domestic preserving, whether of foods and drinks or herbs and medicines. Boys learned the more showy tasks such as displaying their skill in carving and their diet sense in ending the meal with cheese if they had a choice."