The Five Senses of Historical Fiction ( Cont ’ d ) heads , while cloaks covered shoulders when the weather was unkind .
Inside the churches you ’ d find them not blank stone , but painted with an eye-popping mélange of color and gold leaf , enough to choke our modern sensibilities with color sensory overload .
4 ) TOUCH . Here ’ s where travelling to do your research can be valuable . What does the cold stone of a church interior feel like ? What of the rough woolens worn by everyday folk ? Or fine velvets or silks ? A trip to a fabric store can give you that , or even a Renaissance Faire . The feel of a shaggy horse ’ s hide , or the thick fleece of a sheep . Chapped fingers and noses from the cold . These sensory details will be important to bring your prose alive . Think creatively on how to get close and personal with them .
5 ) TASTE . I ’ ve made it my business to know medieval life , and part of that is knowing what it was the people ate and drank , and experiencing it myself . Medieval recipes are not hard to find . Recipes are available , some more complicated , like making a cockatrice . That ’ s a mythological creature with the front part of a bird and the back part of a four-legged animal . But medievals were clever . Here ’ s the medieval recipe :
Cokentrice
Take a capoun and skald hym , and draw hym clene , and smyte hem a- to in the waste overthwart . Take a pige and skald hym , and draw hym in the same manner and smyte hem also in the waste . Take a nedyl and threde , and sewe the fore partye of the capoun to the after parti of the pygge and fore partye of the pigge to the hinder party of the capoun , and then stuffe hem as thou stuffiest a pigge . Putte hem on a spete and roste hym an than he is y-now , dore hem with yolkys of eyroun and pouder ginger and safroun , thenne wyth the ius of percely with-owte and than serve it forth for a ryal mete . Did you get all that ? Basically , cut a chicken and a pig in half at the waist , sew the front half of one to the back half of the other , stuff them , and roast them on a spit . Glaze them with egg yolks and powdered ginger and parsley and serve as a royal feast . Sometimes the feathers would be carefully put back on the bird for a fancy presentation .
You don ’ t have to be that elaborate . Just knowing the sorts of spices you ’ ll be using can really give you the idea of English medieval cookery . For instance , spices were expensive and exotic . They all had to be imported and so some of the fancier meat dishes were cooked with cinnamon , cardamom , and mace . We think of these as dessert spices now , but if you eat Moroccan dishes , you will
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SPRING 2017
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WRITERS ’ TRICKS OF THE TRADE