Ale or beer? A potted history

2015 marks the 600th anniversary year of the Battle of Agincourt. As the year comes to a close, what Agincourt-relatfood and drink related Medieval morsels can I find to post about? How about ale and beer for starters....

“Henry V: Act 3, Scene 2  “Would I were in an alehouse in London! I would give all my fame for a pot of ale and safety.”  

Spoken not by Henry V, but by a boy at what became a lengthy siege of the French channel port town of Harfleur.  Henry had promised all his troops fame to follow their anticipated successful re-conquest of ancestral lands in France. The preliminary siege tied the English/Welsh army for much longer than expected and undermined Henry V’s original plans to march south and regain former English possessions in Aquitaine (English Gascony). Delayed in eventually taking Harfleur, the Battle of Agincourt was in fact a showdown as the English army instead made for its garrison at the Channel port of Calais and home!

Boar's head inn keeping with that pictured Ringwood (New Forest) ale!

12th scale dollshouse cheese by MedievalMorsels with your ale anyone?

Henry V of course would never have been seen in an alehouse, but he would have drunk ale however as all classes of society did. He and the nobility would also have enjoyed imported Gascon wine from ancestral English possessions in France!

12th scale ale and lampreys by MedievalMorsels anyone?

But returning to ale and beer, there is a lot of confusion about them. Are they the same thing? And if they are different, what is that difference and which came first? To make ale or beer you need water, grain - in Britain this was barley - and yeast. Additionally, to make beer you need hops. "Beer" was the name for fermented malt liquors bittered with hops.

Barley was an extremely important cereal across northern Europe in Dark and Middle Ages. It was a staple food of man and beast alike. It was fermented barley, known as malt, that was the essential basis of brewing ale. Home brewed ale was drunk by all classes of medieval society, including their children who would probably have been given a weaker version! Because water is boiled as part of the process, ale was a safer drink than water itself. Its alcoholic content would also discourage micro-organisms to some extent, although ale did rapidly go sour. The cloudy drink was nutritious too!

Ale made with a top fermenting yeast continued to be the drink of choice, even in Shakespeare's day. Everyone from the poorest farmer to the Queen herself drank the brew, and a mini brewery was an essential part of every aspiring merchant class, and noble household. Shakespeare's own father was an official ale taster in Stratford – an important and respected job which involved monitoring the ingredients used by professional brewers and ensuring they sold their ale at Crown-regulated prices. Tudor society, and Medieval society before it, was highly regulated you see!

So we know ale drinking habits continued throughout England into Elizabethan times when, from 1524, the introduction of hops and beer making began to gain some ground in London. This was despite hopped beer first being imported from Holland much earlier, around 1400. And despite hops being condemned as late as 1519 as a "wicked and pernicious weed". 

Hops are useful in helping to preserve beer, and this likely became a reason for man first using them about 1400 years ago. Their first known use was in Germany in the 8th century. Hops used in England were imported from France, Holland and Germany with import duty to pay!  It was not until 1524 that hops were first grown in Kent in the southeast of England, introduced as an agricultural crop by Dutch farmers.

But what are hops? The hops used in brewing are actually the flowers of the hop plant, a vine-like climbing member of the hemp family. They contain an essential oil with a very bitter flavour which counters the sweetness from the malt, to create a more balanced beer. As we have learned, hops also act as a preservative.

According to Anne Wilson’s book “Food and Drink in Britain” by Elizabeth I's reign (1558 - 1603)  even ale came to be lightly hopped to help it keep better. Annette Hope in her book “Londoners’ Larder notes that both ale and beer could be made very strong “..and London ale houses, where the ‘ale-knights’ sat all day, drinking until they fell off their stools, were a byword.” A few dents to their armour then!  And a byword for excess by the sound of it!

Hopped beer, with its better keeping properties eventually became more popular than ale. In 1574, there were still 58 ale brewers to 33 beer brewers in the City (London), but beer gradually replaced ale as the national drink over the course of the century. Alehouses were rough and ready. Taverns by contrast served a better class of person with wine and simple food.

Let’s return to Shakespeare for a final word on this:

OLIVIA: What's a drunken man like, fool?

CLOWN: Like a drowned man, a fool, and a madman: one draught above heat makes him a fool, the second mads him, and a third drowns him.  Twelfth Night: Act 1, Scene 5

The Medieval Dairymaid

The King asked

The Queen, and

The Queen asked

The Dairymaid:

“Could we have some butter for

The Royal slice of bread?

Extract A.A.Milne, “The King’s Breakfast” from The Complete Poems of Winnie-the-Pooh. Copyright © The Trustees of the Pooh Properties

Well MedievalMorsels has accepted the royal challenge! By producing 1:12 scale dairy goods for a fully equipped Medieval or Tudor dollshouse dairy. We have a tub of milk, a butter churner in mid-use, pats of butter for the store room and for the table, and plain and muslin wrapped cheeses in whatever quantity you desire!

12th scale dolls house food: cheese butter and milk for a mini dairy scene

Miniature food for a one inch scale Medieval dolls house dairy scene

Butter, milk and cheese for a 1:12 Tudor Dollhouse by MedievalMorsels

To return to the poem, A.A.Milne’s Dairymaid promised the Queen she would consult with the Alderney cow before it retired for the night. But said sleepy cow had the temerity to suggest that marmalade was a substitute for butter, favoured by many people! This development was dutifully reported back to the King via the dairymaid and the Queen, but it left the poor King in turn miffed, confused and saddened. He went back to bed!

The situation was related back to the recalcitrant cow.  She immediately offered butter for his bread AND milk for his porringer (porridge). The King, when he heard the news, was ecstatic! He promptly jumped out of bed and slid down the bannisters for his breakfast.

Now, banisters aside (poetic licence) I have always assumed that this was another of A.A.Milne’s poems about King John. A previous Christmastide poem was somewhat sad  because John had no presents in his stocking, afterall he was a “Bad King”. But not the only bad Medieval English king in all probability….

And as for marmalade, lets return there in a Christmastide blog-post by MedievalMorsels.

But just for good measure lets finish with some different 1:12 dollhouse scale Medieval and Tudor period cheeses....

This year marks the 90th anniversary of the beginnings of Rentokil. To quote Rentokil “It all started with a small but very damaging insect that has been recorded in the UK since the Middle Ages, the Deathwatch Beetle.”  And a problem with the roof timbers of the Palace of Westminster,  one of Parliament’s finest heritage buildings. Now MedievalMorsels found this all very interesting!

So Rentokil’s life started, terminating many pests' lives, with a mission to save the late 14th century oak timbers of Parliament's 11th century Westminster Hall from the ravages of woodworm!  In reality the old  adversary, threatening the very fabric of  Britain’s life back in the Medieval times was not the French after all but the Xestobium rufovillosum - a woodboring beetle!

The now safely preserved oak roof timber roof beams form the oldest hammerbeam roof in Europe, take a virtual tour here. (Such a roof design was developed to overcome the problem of spanning wide spaces by cantilevering the upper roof timbers from a beam projecting from the wall.) The Hall was built between 1097 and 1099 by William Rufus, third son of William the Conqueror and survives in almost original form. Its more than 600 year old roof timbers have borne witness to multiple coronation banquets, layings in state and executions nearby. The trials of Thomas More, King Charles I and Guy Fawkes happened here, the lavish coronation banquets of many of England’s monarchs including Queen Anne Boleyn, her daughter Queen Elizabeth I. Even jousting tournaments (horses and dogs were the only animals allowed by Medieval convention in any Great Hall).  More recently Winston Churchill and The Queen Mother, Queen Elizabeth lay in state there, and Nelson Mandela and Barack Obama were invited to address both Houses of Parliament.

12th scale meat latticework pie fit for a coronation

MedievalMorsels' dollshouse pies

What might be served at a coronation banquet? Well, the British were famous for their pies...(and their spit roasting as it happens).

 

 Getting back to the enemy. Why has this woodboring insect  come to be known as the Deathwatch beetle? I found a fascinating analysis by Tim Floyd  in a past issue of Country Life. He says “The name, almost certainly a contributory factor in this fear, probably derives from past outbreaks of plague, when an increase in audible insect noise would coincide with flea activity and consequent increased sickness levels. Both carers (with heightened senses) and afflicted (in initial stages tired but unable to sleep) would presumably have been subjected to watch-like ticking against a silent night while they contemplated heaven or hell.

He also reminds us that this pesky beetle is  joined by the common furniture beetle as a  “woodworm” species, able to cause structural damage to hardwoods. For good measure Rentokil also tells us that What might be served at athe indigenous, aptly named, Powder Post Beetle is the primary pest of British timber yards. It has the capacity to reduce the hardwoods it favours (yum yum)  to a simple wood veneer - hence the name “powder post”.

To commemorate this milestone a new book, The Pest Detectives has been published, available from all good bookshops and online with a £1 to Malaria No More UK for every book sold. According to Rentokil the malaria community only has half the resources needed to rid the world of this global killer, transmitted by infected mosquitoes.    

Cauliflowers and parsnips can masquerade as cabbages and carrots, don’t you know!

Cauliflower and broccoli are rarely mentioned in Medieval and Renaissance historical sources, despite them being the two oldest cultivar cabbage varieties. Probably this is because in old writing they are simply not differentiated from plain old cabbages (or carbouches)! 

 1:12 dollshouse food cauliflower and its ancient ancester cabbage

The same may be said of parsnips too,they are hardly ever noted in written sources, whereas the  vari coloured purple, white or yellow carrot is. Once again it seems likely that the term carrot was used  interchangeably by our ancestors to mean parsnip too! Don’t get me on to salsify either….

One inch scale dollshouse food by MedievalMorsels, cauliflowers on a sideboard!

A single or more head(s) of cauliflower by MedievalMorsels will look well in your 12th scale Medieval dollshouse, your one inch Tudor dollhouse kitchen, your 1:12 Georgian or Victorian dolls house pantry, or your 1/12 American Colonial dollhouse food store. Because it is modelled with a trimable stalk you can also plant it in any period of dollhouse garden or vegetable patch!

Described by Arab botanists and known to the Romans, the cauliflower (Brassica oleracea) originated as a cultivar of cabbage in the Middle East. An ancient vegetable of the (European) Old World, cauliflower has been cultivated in parts of  Europe from the 13th century. It is known from Arab writings in Spain, and was well known in England by the 1500s. Its old English name “coleflore” means cabbage flower. According to Lorraine Harrison in her book “A Potted History of Vegetables” the English herbalist John Gerard in his “Herball” printed in 1597 advised that the “colieflore” (spelling was not a precise art in the Middle Ages or Renaissance times) should be sown on a pile of dung in early Spring. Cauliflowers were introduced to France by the Italians (Genoese) via Cyprus in the 16th century but they did not commonly appear on noble tables in France until they became all the rage at the court of Louis XIV.

So the cauliflower a very appropriate vegetable for MedievalMorsels to model, here with its green leaves trimmed back to reveal the white “curd” or flower. The flower head remains white because protective leaves growing around the head prevent chlorophyll being formed, keeping the head from turning green. It’s the same effect you get by earthing up leeks and asparagus to get white growth.

MedievalMorsels' 1/12th scale cabbages

MedievalMorsels' 12th scale parsnips

And, just for completeness, here are some 1/12 th scale cabbages and parsnips by MedievalMorsels for good measure seen alongside C18/19th  Flemish illustrations.

MedievalMorsels gets under the skin of Vellum and Parchment

Parliament in the UK is grappling with the problem of Vellum or Parchment, or both. It’s a murky tale, a murky distinction and I cannot be sure what the outcome has been. Will they or won’t they discontinue a thousands of years old practice? MedievalMorsels has not thoroughly got under the skin of this problem....

Earlier this month House of Lords Committee recommended to the UK’s House of Commons that Parliament should no longer print the official copies of its Acts on Vellum. Instead, as a cost cutting exercise, it is suggested that record copies of Acts of Parliament  should instead be printed on archival quality paper. As now, one copy would continue to be stored in the Parliamentary Archives and the other sent to The National Archives (which has already stated that it does not require a copy on Vellum).

And the implication is that parchment quality paper used for other official purposes will also be discontinued. For the Queen’s Speech, her annual address to Parliament, for Royal wedding certificates and so on….

So it boils down to whether ‘recorded history’ will be accessible to those who follow many generations into the future. Archival quality paper has proven 250 years life expectancy and, we are told, a probable 500 year life expectancy. Centuries ahead it seems likely that posterity may not have Vellum or Parchment for to pore (?paw) over. But will it have an otherwise preserved written record?

What exactly is Vellum, and what is Parchment and what is the difference? The term parchment is a general term for an animal skin which has been prepared for writing or printing. Parchment has been made for centuries, and is usually calf, goat, or sheep skin. The term vellum from the French veau refers to a parchment made from calf skin. But even as early as the 16th century in England there has been some confusion in use of the terms.  So we had better leave it at that.

The manufacture of Parchment  involves removing the skin of an animal of any hair or flesh, stretching it on a wooden frame where the parchment maker scrapes the surface of the skin with a special curved knife. To create tension in the skin scraping is alternated by wetting and drying the skin. The Parchment must be scraped, wetted and dried several times to bring it to the right thickness and tautness for calligraphy or printing.

Parchment has traditionally been used instead of paper for important documents such as maps, religious texts, public laws, indentures, and land records as it has always been considered a strong and stable material. Even in the US the five pages of the U.S. Constitution, as well as the Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights, and the Articles of Confederation are written on Parchment.

Back in the UK, in 2011 William Cowley was privileged to supply a piece of fine calfskin manuscript vellum to the Royal Household where Royal Calligrapher wrote and illuminated an ‘Instrument of Consent’, signed by the Queen and  sealed with the Great Seal of the Realm, giving formal consent to the marriage of Prince William and Kate Middleton. The largest calfskin ever supplied in the UK was used for magnificent re-creation of a Mappa Mundi, commissioned by English Heritage, which hangs in the refurbished Great Tower of Dover Castle.

"Going goat" is still a phrase used in Whitehall to describe the moment when the Queen's Speech has to be finalised and sent to the Palace for Her Majesty's approval. But the Monarch’s speeches, formerly printed on goatskin Parchment we must assume, are presently printed on sheepskin Parchment! Perhaps not for long...

Now I have been unable to find out how the Parliamentary Acts question was finally resolved in the Commons.Lets leave the last, spoken, word to William Cowley (est. 1870)  the last remaining Vellum maker and Parchmenter in the UK, one of only four in the world and probably the last in the world to produce skins using traditional craft tools and skills. Their Vellum sheets can take up to six weeks to produce and are sold to practitioners, conservationists, bookbinders, museums and libraries all over the world. No air conditioners or hermetically sealed rooms for Vellum! (Or Parchment? Ed.)

As Cowley remarks: "There is bitter irony that the very year we celebrated 800 years of Magna Carta, we may also witness the end of recording Acts on Vellum. Vellum has excellent 'green' credentials, needs no specialist aftercare, and has provided us with more understanding of earlier civilisations than any other historical artefact."

Quails' eggs are sooo small...

MedievalMorsels' 1:12 dollhouse food, dish of quail eggs with goose eggs for comparison

I bought some quail eggs the other day from a well known supermarket. I have always wanted to model them at twelfth scale as part of MedievalMorsels' range. So even better, to model them, then eat them!

Real quail eggs

The European Quail is Europe’s smallest game bird. MedievalMorsels already models this miniscule game bird at one twelfth scale but its tiny, mottled eggs would prove a new challenge! In real life the eggs ranged between about one and a quarter inches to one and a half inches long. Depending on their girth, some were more "classically" pointed than others. Here are the real life -sized thing but the "nest" is not real, it's just some dried grasses I had handy to spread on the lawn!

I armed myself with a ruler with twelfths on it (a rare occurrence even on an "old" school ruler, take a look). It was a question of carefully copying the quail egg background colour, a greenish tinged but very pale ochre easily achieved because coloured Fimo clays are so readily mixable. Then it was decision time for the speckles and splodges, stipple brown splodges of paint or use brown Fimo clay? I am not handy with a paint brush, especially on a target only a little over a twelfth of an inch large, so it was a question of applying chips of brown Fimo clay!

Quail eggs for a 12th scale period dolls house, Medieval/Tudor luxury food

The end result seen here was very pleasing, one of my favourite minis ever that's for sure!

MedievalMorsels'  one inch scale quails for a Medieval or  Tudor dollhouse

And then to eat a dozen eggs between two of us, soft boiled (one minute boiling, half a minute standing) and halved on salad tossed with cress, and toast croutons with fried onion sprinkles. Plus ground black pepper of course!

Despite its small size, the European Quail is a migratory bird capable of flying phenomenal distances. I suspect it was the quail's well observed migration routes that made it an attractive and easy target for early capture for the Dark and Middle Ages tables. It could be easily netted at commonly used feeding points en route, or where it fell exhausted to the ground after literally making landfall after a long sea passage. Their migration is actually mentioned in the Bible, in Exodus: "And it came to pass at even(ing), the quails came up and covered the camp."

12th scale dollshouse food, quails

Quails first arrived on the medieval menu in England via France - they were netted and shipped live to British shores in little cages complete, it is recorded, with grain and water to sustain them on the journey. I imagine, given all this effort, they must have commanded a very high price and be bound for some of the richest households in the kingdom. Quails were therefore a rare and seasonal treat, reserved for aristocratic dining. However they are tasty and came to be domesticated in England by the 14th century.

So much smaller than its cousins, quails were later raised and trapped on manor estates in the English countryside - alongside partridge, and pheasant. The collective noun for many quail is a "bevy" and this term can be used for beauties, ladies and maidens, as well as larks and doves. How lovely!

If you want to look at a more sinister side of Quails look at my blog-post from 12th July 2014 "Hemlock, Quails and MedievalMorsels".

Great British Pastry baking - at 12th scale of course!

The UK is in the grip of the Great British Bake-Off! The final, with three contestants, airs this week. For the first time ever, there was an historic theme during the series. Namely, a Victorian bake week which aired a few weeks ago.  The six surviving bakers were asked to make a decorated, "raised"  game pie. 

A raised pie is one where the pastry sides are raised up to enclose deep contents.  Early pie makers had to raise their pies entirely by hand. Easily moulded hot water pie-crust had been used since medieval times by the best "pastillers" or pastry chefs. 

But it was the invention of the sprung metal pie form or mould, which later came to give the pastry sides of the pie support. This allowed a finer pastry to be used and elaborate decoration incorporated.  

Back to the Bake-Off and one contestant, fire fighter Matt, had even managed to source an authentic pie tin dating from 1850. He made a good game pie, but this did not prevent him from going out that very week.

1:12 scale Victorian dollshouse raised game pie by MedievalMorsels

Victorian dollhouse 12th scale game pie, historic miniature food

MedievalMorsels makes quite a few raised table and smaller pies. But, inspired by Bake-Off, it has added a Victorian raised game pie to its range too!

MedievalMorsels one inch dollhouse scale ornate pies

 In her book “Food in History” Reay Tannahill noted that a mixture of wheat and rye (maslin) flour was found to be best for pastry making - neither giving too soft a dough (as rye did) or too brittle a dough (as wheat did). The wheat with rye mixed flour made it possible to mould either a simple, or a highly ornate pie crust. 

Dollshouse dining! 1:12 ornate pie crust with leaves

In Medieval Northern Europe the usual cooking fats were lard and butter. Lard made a stiff pastry and allowed a solid, upright case or pastry coffin to be formed. Et voila! the “raised” pie-crust container, ready for its filling!

A simple individual meat pie, one inch scale dollhouse miniature food

MedievalMorsels' 12th scale medieval or Tudor meat pies or chewitts

No medieval cookery books gave detailed instructions on pastry making, this knowledge was assumed to be passed on by Medieval cooks. 

Gilt fleur-de-lys decorated table pie, dollshouse miniature food

According to the food historian Peter Brears the pastry dough would have been mixed, kneaded and shaped as empty crusts - large and small - on the work-table, and then briefly dried off or hardened in the ovens. For custards and the like, the fillings would be poured into the empty shells whilst still inside the oven. But for most other recipes they were returned to the work-table, filled with a cooked filling, any lids set in place, then put back in the oven for perhaps only 20 to 40 minutes. Crusts and fillings could all be prepared in advance, then quickly baked immediately before they were required. Just like the ‘blind baking’ technique we use today.

 Medieval, Tudor heraldic decoration in gilt on 12th scale table pies