The recipes in each section are arranged chronologically in subsections based on the prime ingredient, rather than their place in the meal. This is because, unlike today, the meal structure was not based on a progression of different kinds of recipes from appetizers to soup to fish to meat to desserts and coffee. One would often find savory and sweet dishes in every course. Or an entire course would be composed of roasted dishes, whether made of meat, fowl, or fish. Pies could be found in any and every course. Fruits and vegetables were often served just before the end in a fruit course. In some places, particularly in Italy, hot and cold courses would alternate, or there would be a table or credenza set with cold foods, what are today called an- tipasti, such as cold cuts, cheeses, pastries, and olives. The meal structure actually underwent a very subtle and complicated development over time and differed greatly from place to place. It is probably best today to serve everything at once, or with a larger group to divide into two courses with boiled and sauced food in the first and roast food in the second course, but keeping in mind that there should be several different types of food in every course so that diners have a choice. Although there were no desserts per se since sweet dishes appeared throughout the meal, it was customary, after the fruit course, to serve comfits or candies, preserves, and spices. These were thought to improve the digestion and breath, and of course they tasted good.
To reconstruct a typical medieval or Renaissance meal it is most impor- tant to remember that food was served in what we would call family style, on platters placed on the table and never arranged on individual plates in the kitchen. There should be one or several individuals whose job it is just to carve and serve the food. In Renaissance Italy, everything would have been carved. Even small fruits and tiny fowl were carved in mid air perched on a fork. Everywhere the carver was an important position. There should also be separate pages to fill drinks or offer the basin to wash hands ceremoniously. A scalco, or what we would call head waiter or maitre d’, who was certainly
who organized the entire banquet, would place the food on the plates of individual diners. Toward the sixteenth century, these officers of the mouth proliferated and the ceremonies of eating became increasingly complex, but never would an aristocratic diner be expected to serve him- or herself. Noble equals were honored by being given the privilege of doing so.
The time for a grand meal will also strike us as rath- er odd. The largest meal of the day, dinner, was eaten around 11 a.m. or noon. It gradually shifted later and later in the day until finally, long after the period stud- ied here, it was eaten at night. In the Middle Ages and Renaissance, however, the evening meal is supper and
is generally a smaller affair and with fewer courses than dinner. Banquets, on the other hand, were special occasions and they could really take place any time of day, but people were generally accustomed to eat their larger meal early in the day. Laborers might eat a very small meal in the morn- ing, but breakfast was not common. Lunch was unheard of. In some places smaller snacks—forming a meal called merenda, taken late in the afternoon, might hold people until the evening.
Assuming the meal is not during Lent or on a fast day, each course, any- where from two or three to twelve or more, should contain both flesh and fish, pies and pastries, and always bread—either in thin slices with the crust removed, or rolls. A typical menu from the sixteenth century looked liked this. There is a certain logical progression, but certainly very unlike modern service. In creating your own banquet, of course, recipes can be taken from any of the chapters that follow. As in most banquets, there is a set scene made out of food arranged before diners arrive. In the menu that follows, it is figures of Hercules made out of sugar, fighting the mythical hydra made out of pheasant with seven heads attached, and a bull made from a baby goat with silver horns. Also, there were eight separate plates of every dish described. That probably meant a plate for each table of about six or eight people, so this was a grand meal for maybe as many as sixty people. Even if one prepared such a meal for one table, it is obvious that incredibly vast amounts of food are required.1
Carver.
APRIL
Banquet made by the Illustrious Signor Count Ludovico Manfredi, for most Serene Princes and Excellent Lords, Knights, and Ladies, with eight plates, furnished with two tablecloths, with beautiful paintings and strewn with flowers, in the evening.
First Cold Course
Pastries of goat, with a Hercules of pastry on top Endive salad with balls of cheese
Salad of sprouts with halved hard boiled eggs Lettuce with dabs of caviar
Slices of beef pie with slices of citron
Aspic [meat-based gelatin] with partridge meat underneath
Flaky little pastries filled with blancmange [pounded chicken with spices, sugar, and almond milk]
Beef tongue in long slices with pitted olives
Pastry roses filled with marzipan [sweetened almond paste] Peacock in white sauce stuck with bacon
Boar’s Head covered in pomegranate seeds
Salami split lengthwise and sliced with gilded citron leaves interspersed Prosciutto julienned over fried bread, and slices of boiled prosciutto [Italian ham] Capons in pastry with white sauce, stuck with cinnamon sticks and gilded myrtle
leaves
Cold quails on a spit interspersed with yellow sausage Slices of pork loin soaked in vinegar with toast Cherry sauce
Second Course, hot and all roasted
Peacock roasted covered with fried oysters, with oranges
2 Pheasants per plate covered with slices of fried squid, with lemons Kid covered with golden pears fried
Shoulder of lamb
Beef chuck roast larded, and in caul fat [net-like visceral lining of a pig] Sweet foccaccia of flaky pastry filled with beaten turtledove
Third Course again roasted
Partridges six per plate with slices of lemon Tarts of apple
Tongue of beef larded with sauce Figpeckers with lemon
Young Turkeys, two per plate Little pastries of minced capon Veal loin with oranges
Leg of goat with garlic and rosemary
Bastard Sauce [spicy sauce based on sweet wine] Flaky pastries, empty
Veal liver, larded, cut in mouthfuls with sauce
Cow’s Belly larded, but first boiled, on a spit, with sauce Fritters of blancmange
Fruit Course
Honeyed Milk Wafer cones
Tarts of black lupins [relative of beans]
Quinces hollowed and filled with sugar, cinnamon and baked in an oven Truffles
Chestnuts
Cooked pears in slices with fulignati [wine sauce?] Raw pears
Apples, two sorts
Cheese from Lodi [city near Milan, Italy] Cardoons [stalks related to artichokes] Fresh grapes
Pitted olives
Hands washed and towel dried, then present the confections, first seven labors of Hercules in Sugar that appear on plates
Cherry Jelly in little majolica vases Citron halves in syrup
Artichokes in sugar, dry Pistachio biscuits
Filled Portuguese flans [egg custards]
White Portuguese cannelloni [tube-shaped pastry], gilded Little red cannelloni, silvered
Boxes of quince paste cut into mouthfuls with whole cinnamon sticks Boxes of marmalade
Almond Comfits [candy-coated almonds] Little Marzipan gnocchi [dumplings] Anise
Little mallets [presumably for breaking the sculptures before eating them] Napkins and knives
Toothpicks