I like books about the history of food. Readers may remember my adventures with Historic Heston, by Heston Blumenthal which was a book of recipes derived from his mission to rescue Britain’s melancholy reputation for awful food by exploring its grand old traditions using chef’s recipe books of the past. That's a book for an ambitious cook because the recipes are adapted from creations at his London restaurant Dinner. The book is suitably extravagant with stunning photography and illustrations and I liked it very much but I've only ever been tempted to try one of the recipes.

The Original Mediterranean Cuisine by Barbara Santich (whose books I've reviewed before) is a more approachable book. The first part of the book is about the history of Mediterranean cuisine, starting with a chapter about the unity of Mediterranean Europe in this period, when Catalonia, southern France and Italy shared a common nature and a common culture, including language, that differed in many respects from the nature and culture of northern Europe. Travellers in the period could see it for themselves in the abundance of wheat and wine, olive oil, dates, almonds, citrus fruits, and figs in the southern region often grown using irrigation because of the dry climate, while in the north it was apple-and pear trees, cider, beef, fish, milk and butter where summer rain enabled three-year crop rotation.

The diet common throughout medieval Italy, southern France and much of Spain, as well as North Africa was based on white wheaten bread, olive oil, eggs and fish when possible, an abundance of wine; a variety of vegetables; and meat in the form of mutton, lamb and kid. There was only a little fresh pork , as pork was more commonly eaten salted. (p.3)

Not much in the way of recorded recipes exists until the 13th century, though some Roman manuscripts resurfaced in the 15th century. It was the crusades that revitalised trade in the 11th century, and cities grew rich transporting and provisioning pilgrims and crusaders. In this and other chapters there are charming reproductions of medieval pictures, and 'The Medieval Culinary Revival' shows the purchase of currants and other dried fruits.

'The Hierarchy of Food' reminds us that the hierarchy of food corresponded to the social hierarchy. It's no surprise to learn that the lower orders were thought to be unable to appreciate or digest elite foods, which were reserved for nobles and those who lead a contemplative life. Not only was food for the poor less interesting and less nutritious, there was also less of it, though of course they were the ones doing the manual labour. All this was divinely ordained, with everything graded from top to bottom with those nearest the earth ranked lowest. The foods described in the recipes are for the wealthy, as you'd expect. This applied to herbs and spices used for medicine too, so they also signalled wealth and status.

Interestingly, medieval account books don't include vegetables because they were outside the money economy. They came from the kitchen garden and/or were bartered. So at least the poor folks could have vegetables!

To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2021/01/15/the-original-mediterranean-cuisine-medieval-... ( )