Medieval feast - fit for a King's coronation

On Saturday 21st March an open day was held by the University of Leicester, on the last day of its safe custody of the  skeleton of King Richard III of England.  There was authentic music, medieval life and weapons demonstrations and much more. Not forgetting lectures by the multi disciplinary team members who brought the Looking for Richard project to its successful conclusion.

The highlight for your MedievalMorsels correspondent was the display of many medieval feast dishes, fashioned after those described at the Coronation Feast for Richard III in the Palace of Westminster on 6 July 1483.  Fortunately there was tasting of non-display foods too. An unintended consequence for me was being filmed and appearing on the local BBC TV news coverage of the event! Not filmed eating I hasten to add but discussing pig and red deer bones with an archaeologist, all the better to model them in the future.

Locally sourced venison: leg and, behind, saddle with sprigs of rosemary.

An enormous fish pie with flat sea fish species possibly plaice.

Poached (no pun intended) wild salmon: England's rivers were teaming with them.

Pears and dates gently stewed together

Rib of roast ox these were chunky ribs indeed

Oranges were a luxury imported from Spain, but bitter to taste!

The partridges that surround this very large capon are from France!

The pork and venison pie for sampling, I noticed the clove spicing 

A copy of the menu for the Coronation feast of Richard III, with three courses each of many dishes

A roast shoat or young pig under a year old,

Richard III re-interment - preparations and shop windows in Leicester

A Medieval King whose death 530 years ago shaped a different course of history for England. The last king of the House of York, and the last of the Plantagenet dynasty.  Its not often a long lost King of England is re-buried, and certainly not after an interval of more than half a millennium. 

It seems more like fiction, but the reality has been evident for the people of Leicester since the late summer of 2012 when it became possible, even probable, that King Richard's remains had been found. Fast forward to March 2015. Shops and streets had been prepared with impeccable care. There was a great sense of history and anticipation.

Here is some of what was to be seen before the ceremonies of Sunday 22 March when, late in the afternoon Richard's remains were finally handed over from the care of the University of Leicester to be received by the church and "surrounded by prayer" until his re-interment some days later on March 26th.

Unfurling Richard in the Tourist Information  Office

Plantagenet heraldic elements in their royal standard

Replica Medieval side arms such as a squire knight may carry

The end of an age of chivalric warfare died with Richard III

Images of Richard the Third at every turn.

A much photographed pub in Leicester

Walker's renowned pie shop in Leicester, paying tribute

Renowned modeller MedievalMorsels pays tribute with a pie  too!

Richard III The Last Journey of the Last Plantagenet

The last Journey of the Last Plantagenet - involving the historic reinterment an anointed King of England - will take place in Leicester and Leicestershire on Sunday 22 March 2015. A cortege carrying the mortal remains of King Richard III will depart from the University of Leicester (which was my father’s alma mater in the 1930’s) through the country and city before arriving at Leicester Cathedral. His remains were found in 2012 beneath a Leicester car park, excavated from the chancel of the long lost medieval Greyfriars church. If you are interested in the discovery please see my earlier posts of 16 and 22 August 2014.

Stained glass window in York Minster

MedievalMorsels is marking these events with a pie bearing heraldic badges of the Yorkist Plantagenets, the white rose of York and the golden sun in splendor adopted by ancestors Richard II and Edward III. The sort of decorated table pie that a cook in a castle or manor would have baked for a feast hosted by his Lord and Lady for a visiting Plantagenet monarch, Richard III of one of his ancestors.

MedievalMorsels has created a 1:12 scale miniature Yorkist Plantagenet heraldic pie! 

The one inch scale dollshouse period pie features white roses and a golden sun

One inch scale dollshouse period pie features white roses and golden suns 

But what of the man?

It was more than 530 years ago that Richard III was crowned King of England. His coronation followed the death of his brother Edward IV and was approved by the Council and Parliament after the legal declaration that his two young nephews were illegitimate (since Edward was bigamously married, having previously been married to Eleanor Butler). The fate of these young boys, formerly in direct line of succession and who became known as the Princes in the Tower, is shrouded in mystery. But Richard is not known to have ever killed a woman, a priest, or a child, unlike the Tudors who came after him.

Richard III was England's last medieval monarch. Only thirty-two when he died, he was born at a time of civil strife in the country. Intermittent, full pitch battles between warring armies of Plantagenet cousins and their supporters broke out, raging for the three decades of Richard's life as rival dynastic claims to the throne were contested. First, towards the end of King Henry VI's reign when Richard's father the Duke of York strove to bolster the Yorkist claim, second the challenges to his brother King Edward IV’s kingship, and lastly and most calamitously for Richard III during his own short, reign of 777 days.

Judging by impartial contemporary or near contemporary accounts Richard was, despite his slender frame and a spine seriously deformed by scoliosis (sideways curvature) from his teenage years, a skilled medieval warrior knight and a seasoned battlefield strategist. He was also an enlightened ruler, whose Parliament brought in reforms which are still in effect today - like the right to bail for those accused of crimes.

Richard was from the Plantagenet House of York. The family badge was the white rose of York, but also adopted was the sun in splendor harking back to Edward III and Richard II. Recall Shakespeare's lines "Now is the winter of our discontent, made glorious summer by this sun of York" a pun on "son of York" in his play Richard III dated 1594. 

Richard's personal badge by which he and his supporters could be recognised was a "sanglier" or wild boar rampant (a hind paw on the ground, three paws raised off the ground), argent (silver but shown on heraldic flags and banners as white), armed (with tusks) and bristled (shown along the boar’s back in a different colour). 

As Joe Ann Ricca explains in an article published by the Richard III Society in August 2012, all sorts of household and military equipment would have carried his personal badge, which was also worn on clothes.  Ricca goes on to explain that at the outset, there is some opinion that by choosing the badge of the white boar, Richard was identifying himself as an individual, separable from his rank, his family, and his in-laws, all of whom had their own particular emblems that he was entitled to display. The choice of a white boar for a personal symbol is not as obvious as that of a lion. But a boar signifies a valiant, wily warrior preferring to die than to save his life by flight. The records for his coronation in 1483 show that Richard ordered 13,000 badges of the white boar, one of these survives in the British Library.

From the stained glass window in York Minster, the rampant white boars, heads erect, stand supporting  the royal shield. The well-known motto of Richard III “Loyaulte Me Lie” (Loyalty Binds Me) appears in a banner in the top of the window, and a banner with a name plate appears at the bottom. The white rose of York and the golden sun in splendor also appear.

Richard's personal badge a pair of "sangliers argents" or white boars

Source: Fearn, Discovering Heraldry, Buckinghamshire, 2000, p.68

In this long standard flag a Boar passant (walking with three paws on the ground and the right fore paw raised) looks forward, armed, bristled, tail curled.

All of this make the contemporary and somewhat later accounts of the abuse of Richard’s corpse after being slain at Bosworth Field more obscene, since we are told (1588) that his body was “despoiled to the skin”, was trussed behind his badge “as an hog or another vile beast and so all to besprung with mire and filth, was brought to a church in Leicester for all men to wonder upon and there lastly irreverently buried”.

Some 532 years later, on Sunday 22 March 2015 all that will be put right. The people of Leicester and surrounding towns and villages, and those from much further afield watching simultaneous Channel Four television broadcasts can  wonder and participate. Several days of solemn and reverential process will folllow, culminating in the reinterment of Richard III’s remains with dignity and honour on Thursday 26th March. This will be less than 100 steps from where he lay buried for over 500 years. But this time it will be in a way that at last befits a pious medieval ruler, the last Plantagenet King of England.

Feeding the five thousand - fish and loaves

An acquaintance of mine has recently learned how to make paint icons. My daughter's former guitar tutor, Milly, explained to me that painting them was a very different kettle of fish (and you'll see why later) compared to using her usual art medium of watercolours. She particularly advised me that the application of gold foil was very tricky indeed. Obviously you wouldn't want a draught breezing through the room when you were applying sections of lustrous and impossibly thin, hammered gold leaf with a sable paintbrush!  Here is the first icon she ever painted.

Now this has got me checking what animal provides the hair for a sable brush, it is in fact a marten. These increasingly rare creatures occupy the northernmost forests of Europe and Asia. Although, it does seem that the most famous and sought after paint brushes are made from hairs from the tail of the kolinsky, a species of weasel rather than an actual sable. No poor (paw) relation that weasel then! The kolinsky is now on the CITES list of endangered species so international trade is problematic and Kolinsky "red sable" paintbrushes will be as rare as hens' teeth!

Another paintbrush with animal association crossed my mind yesterday while I was watching the 2014 film “Mr. Turner” about the later years in the life of J.M.W.Turner, one of my favourite artists. In one scene a pig’s head is bought and then prepared for cooking. Very medieval in fact! Although presently MedievalMorsels models only  boars’ heads.

MedievalMorsels one inch scale Tudor food - boar's head

1:12 scale dollhouse miniature food for a medieval feast

Medieval/Tudor dollshouse food - 12th scale boar's head

Turner’s father was a barber and was expertly shaving the whole pig’s head - I seriously wondered if he was going to recycle and tie the bristles into a painting brush. This did not happen - but I am not so mad to imagine it. Hog bristle, though rare and expensive is apparently the best natural filling material for a wide variety of bristle brushes, with “excellent durability and water resistance”. So there you are.

Getting back to Milly, she was kind enough to give me printed postcards of several copied icons that she has had printed. So I needed to reciprocate….

I made her five loaves and two fishes, wrapped in fine muslin and placed in a shallow basket. Whilst I did not photograph them, I did go on to produce two new fishy lines for MedievalMorsels and here they, inspired originally by the parable (the only one recorded in all four Gospels) of the feeding of the five thousand.

MedievalMorsels has modelled fresh and cooked fish 

And here are some full size loaves for the modern or period dollhouse table or dresser!

MedievalMorsels' food 12th scale period or modern rustic breads

Period one inch dollhouse food, bread loaves 

Middle Ages sausage supper - bratwurst, brat, chorizo, chourico

I am going on a short holiday soon and I had some vacuum packed sauerkraut in the fridge and did not fancy coming back from holiday to be faced with it once again. Does this herald a bout of spring cleaning? I think not. However, I was looking for a supper dish that would help me see off that sauerkraut.

Well a "new kid on the block" sort of supermarket, one that is giving the big four supermarkets in England (I don't know about Scotland and Wales) a run for their money, supplied the answer. Just steps away from my home I was able to buy some typical Middle Ages sausages, whose German recipe apparently remains little changed today. And here they are, a pale, finely chopped pork sausage or bratwurst (brat in the USA)!

This German favourite since the Middle Ages combines finely chopped pork and spices.

But first, sauerkraut or "sour cabbage". Shredded cabbage that has been fermented by various bacteria. Traditionally, cabbage should be pickled in a stony pot or wooden barrel (not a jar). This been done since before the Dark Ages, all across Europe. Cabbage - pickled or not - was a food mainstay in central Europe, in lands that are presently Germany, and in Hungary and Poland too. Also in Scandinavia, on the northern fringes of Europe, where the growing season was extremely short, so priority had to be given to growing a foodstuffs like cabbage that could be dried or pickled for winter use. Further east, all over Russia, rye bread was eaten with "kvas" a main course soup made from pickled cabbage. At these northern latitudes winter trading of food produce was impossible, so there was great reliance on winter stores and only prized cattle were kept and fed over winter.

Dolls house accessories, miniature vegetables, 12th scale dollhouse food cabbages 

Here are MedievalMorsels 1:12 scale cabbages, dollshouse food for the kitchen, pantry or larder. I do not turn my hand yet to pots or barrels of pickled cabbage, but if the right containers came along I might be tempted to add to my range!

Our European forebears would not have known it, but pickled cabbage is a very rich source of vitamin C. Even so, there was an instinct for these things amongst the sailing community and it was likely that several  barrels found their way onto Middle Ages and Renaissance sailing vessels. Dutch, Spanish and Portuguese vessels in particular plied the oceans of the world, trading in fabulous, otherwise unattainable spices, foods, cloths, porcelain and other imported goods from China, the West Indies and so on. No wonder Thomas Cromwell, in the BBC’s Wolf Hall dramatised from the Man Booker prize winning novels of Hilary Mantel, tries to explain to a hereditary aristocrat Henry Percy, Earl of Northumberland, that real power lies not with ancient title, or even favour from King Henry VIII but with those extending credit to the aristocracy. The rich merchant traders of Antwerp, Lisbon and Florence who delt in those precious goods imported fro one-way trade. I expect they ate sauerkraut too, whilst at sea. But I doubt any trader or pirate could have got a price for a barrel of it, in lands where luscious fruits and spices grow.

Dollhouse miniature food, one inch scale blood pudding, blood sausage

MedievalMorsels has modelled twelfth scale dollshouse food black/blood puddings

And here are one inch scale sausages of various types by MedievalMorsels, dollhouse kitchen accessories for the Medieval kitchen or Renaissance/Tudor dining table.  Recreated “puddings in skins” - black or blood pudding, “white” rice pudding, and toasted marrow puddings. For as long as man has been carnivorous, the intestinal tract of meat animals has been used for pudding and sausage casings.

One inch scale marrow puddings  food for a period Medieval, Renaissance or Tudor dollshouse

 Rice puddings in skins, luxurious 12th scale period dollhouse food by MedievalMorsels

And here are cured sausages for a contemporary rustic or Mediterranean dollshouse setting. Whilst these spicy paprika and garlic flavoured sausages used in modern Mediterranean cooking may not be typical Medieval or Renaissance period fare we cannot actually be sure. Our ancestors in sunny Southern Europe may well have spiced up their sausages to produce the now familiar chorizo.

1:12 cured paprika sausage, chorizo, chourico for a modern dollshouse

mmm - would you believe it, one is being cooked for lunch as I write this blog-post! Seriously, there are oddments in the fridge to be used up before we fly off for a week - probably to buy more chorizo (chourico) sausages to bring home!

What a peach! BBC's Wolf Hall Tudor fruit of course..

We have a few expressions in the English language that rather suggest we were, and to some extent still are, in awe of peaches. We talk of something being a peach "What a peach of a day!" or peachy "That's just peachy!" when its pretty much perfect.

Shakespeare never mentioned peaches in his plays, but used the phrase “peach-coloured” twice. Once when describing the colour of stockings (hose) in Henry IV, and again in Measure for Measure describing the colour of satin.

The peach certainly is a luxurious, summer fruit. At the peak of ripeness, lasting maybe a day but probably just hours, it will have soft flavoursome flesh and be wonderfully juicy on biting. The Romans loved to cultivate peach orchards for their fruit, flowers, scent and shade - they called peaches Persian apples and grew them in most provinces of their empire, as far north as the Loire in France.

   

1:12 scale dollshouse miniature food Tudor platter of luxurious sliced "white" peaches and apricots

But it is sliced apricots, not peaches, that are mentioned in Hilary Mantel's Booker prize winning novel "Wolf Hall". The first of a trilogy about the rise to power of low-born Thomas Cromwell, Henry VIII 's favourite adviser during and after his divorce from Katherine of Aragon, his break with the Church of Rome and his marriage to Anne Boleyn. 

The BBC is currently airing a 6 part historical drama of Mantel's novel and it successor "Bring up the Bodies" her unprecedented second Booker prize winner. Wolf Hall is causing an "all things Tudor" frenzy in the UK at the time of writing - January 2015. We can expect the mini-series it syndicate worldwide. But when?

In Episode 3 of the BBC dramatisation Wolf Hall, a large platter of sliced and whole apricots and white peaches is presented for Thomas Cromwell to examine, before it is placed on the banquet (sweet course) tables at Calais where Henry VIII's court has removed to win France’s King Francois over on the subject of Henry’s divorce. MedievalMorsels has created a one inch scale Wolf Hall dollhouse miniature featuring sliced white peaches and apricots.

MedievalMorsels one inch scale Tudor dollhouse fruit

12th scale Tudor dolls house food, a silver server of Wolf Hall banquet fruit 

Tudor feast luxury fruit plate as seem in BBC TV's Wolf Hall drama

Alexander the Great brought apricots (Prunus armeniaca) and peaches (Prunus persica) to southern Europe, they had already arrived in Armenia and Persia via Middle eastern traders using the earliest trading route - the Silk Road from China. Apricots were prized by the Romans and Greeks who called them the "golden eggs of the sun". The Romans erroneously thought the apricot was a species of plum, an easy mistake to make and in fact they are distantly related. They called peaches Persian apples. 

Later, in Medieval times the Portuguese explorer Marco Polo wrote of yellow and "white" peaches “great delicacies” in China in 1290's. But it took until the 1500's for apricots and the 1700’s for peaches to be successfully cultivated in northern Europe. Reputedly Henry VIII was the first to grow apricots in a garden in England. Before these centuries and definitely in Tudor times - fictional or not - apricots and peaches were a rare, luxury imported item unless you were a pioneer nobleman horticulturalist! So a dainty dish truly befitting a king and to be rationed by individual slices then! Some sticky fingers but no doubt finger bowls or servants carrying towels were in attendance.

Wolf Hall Tudor food - More helpings please

As we reach the midway point of the BBC's six part Tudor drama "Wolf Hall" what fare has been served up so far?

Well, not so much luxurious food because Thomas More's dining gatherings are a little parsimonious, whether it be Lent or not. (There are so many Thomases it can get a bit confusing. My nephew is called Thomas too and it is his birthday on this day of posting!) 

All the same I have been busy creating additions to the MedievalMorsels Wolf Hall Tudor miniature food range,

More is a very religious man and in Episode 2 he serves cooked greens with hard boiled eggs   just four half eggs to be sahred by all the company! And plenty of "maslin" bread, made from a mixture of rye and wheat wholemeal flours. Plenty, yes plenty of bread. In fact there was a preponderance of differently shaped loaves amongst other rather uninspiring foodstuffs, considering he held the role of Chancellor of the Exchequer.

MedievalMorsels Wolf Hall miniature Tudor food, 12th scale greens and boiled eggs

The makings of a Wolf Hall supper courtesy of Chancellor Thomas More

Henry the Fool's view of the supper proceedings, cheese and cabbage garnished with eggs

Oh and he did serves plates with large cheese wedges too.

Tudor dollhouse food, 12th scale miniature Cheddar cheese wheels and wedges 

MedievalMorsels'  dollhouse miniature cheese - 12th scale wedges of Parmesan

In that same dining scene, More's resident "fool" Henry hoots like an excited owl from a minstrel's gallery above the gathered diners. More remarks that he hopes the poor Henry is not suffering the ill effects of too rich a diet. A dining guest and fellow Privy Counsellor remarks unguardedly "No anxiety on that score!" 

To be fair I did spot a bowl of yellow lentil pottage and a plate of cubed white fish too - probably herring and not a more exotic fish! Even when More is himself a dining guest in Episode 1, his host only dare serve him white herring  the so-called "wheat of the sea" and a meat-free staple food for rich and poor alike.

MedievalMorsels'  period dollshouse one inch miniature food, white herring

Dark Ages, Medieval,Tudor miniature food at 12th scale: pickled, brined herring

By Episode 3 of the BBC adaptation of Hilary Mantel's Man Booker prize winning novels Henry VIII and the court, including his mistress Anne Boleyn, have arrived at Calais - a last English outpost in France. Here Henry hopes to get King Francois of France onside in his petition to the Pope. Some food colour at last - a fleeting close-up of a platter of sliced and whole apricots, peaches, apples and plums for Thomas Cromwell to inspect. The rest of the banquet - of sweet courses - was too far distant to positively identify any further dishes. I have made a start on some on those apricots. I have read somewhere that Henry VIII was the first person (excepting the Romans of course) to cutlivate them in his garden.