Medieval cuisine
4
held on fish days could be splendid, and they were popular occasions for serving illusion food that imitated meat, cheese and eggs in various ingenious ways; fish could be molded to look like venison and fake eggs could be made by stuffing empty egg shells with fish roe and almond milk and cooking it in coals. While Byzantine church officials took a hard-line approach, and discouraged any culinary refinement for the clergy, their Western counterparts were far more lenient. There was also no lack of grumbling about the rigors of fasting among the laity. During Lent, kings and schoolboys, commoners and nobility, all complained about being deprived of meat for the long, hard weeks of solemn contemplation of their sins. At Lent, owners of livestock were even warned to keep an eye out for hungry dogs frustrated by a "hard siege by Lent and fish bones". The trend from the 13th century onward was toward a more legalistic interpretation of fasting. Nobles were careful not to eat meat on fast days, but still dined in style; fish replaced meat, often
as imitation hams and bacon; almond milk replaced animal milk as an expensive non-dairy alternative; faux eggs made from almond milk were cooked in blown-out eggshells, flavored and colored with exclusive spices. In some cases the lavishness of noble tables were outdone by Benedictine monasteries, which served as much as sixteen courses during certain feast days. Exceptions from fasting were frequently made for very broadly defined groups. Thomas Aquinas (c. 1225–1274) believed dispensation should be provided for children, the old, pilgrims, workers and beggars, but not the poor as long as they had some sort of shelter. There are many accounts of members of monastic orders who flouted fasting restrictions through clever interpretations of the Bible. Since the sick were exempt from fasting, there often evolved the notion that fasting restrictions only applied to the main dining area, and many friars would simply eat their fast day meals in what would later evolve into the misericord rather than the refectory. Newly assigned Catholic monastery officials sought to amend the problem of fast evasion not merely with moral condemnations, but by making sure that well-prepared non-meat dishes were available on fast days. Medieval society was stratified into classes that were strictly separated. In a time when famine was commonplace and social hierarchies were often brutally enforced, food was an important marker of social status in a way that has no equivalent today in most developed countries. According to the ideological norm,
Class constraints