Medieval Meat Pie

We’re going back to Medieval times to learn about what Europeans were eating from the 5th to 15th century. I realize the medieval era, or Middle Ages covers the span of 1000 years so it’s challenging to pack all the information in one video/post so I’m going to do my best to give a general picture of food in this time. I’m definitely going to do a better job at illustrating food in this era than a certain Medieval themed restaurant and tournament, you know the one. I love anything that gets people excited about history but if you’re going to have a themed restaurant, and tell people it’s the 11th century (according to their website), you can’t serve tomatoes, corn and potatoes and be accurate. Not one of those ingredients made its way across the Atlantic from the New World to Europe before 1492, and certainly not in the 11th century. Even then, these ingredients were not eaten by Europeans right away.

Kitchen gardens were on nearly every property  & were an important source of nutrients and flavor. Medieval cooking used a wide variety of herbs like parsley, rosemary, mint, basil, thyme and ditany (which I honestly thought was something JK Rowling made up in Harry Potter.) Herbs and spices were commonly used in tonics to cure ailments in Medieval Europe.

We start by chopping the vegetables. Onions, leeks and carrots were eaten by all classes in Medieval Europe. Vegetables were rarely eaten raw although recipes for “salat” can be found in medieval cookbooks. They were usually used for cooking. I’m using beef for this pie. There’s a common myth that spices were used to mask the flavor of rotten meat but if you could afford spices, in most cases you could afford meat from a reputable butcher. For spice, I’m using black pepper, cloves, and tossing in a whole cinnamon stick to the pot.(Some spices were worth more than gold. Man I’m fancy!) Coating the meat with flour will create a thicker sauce for the filling.

How was cooking done? Today I’m using open fire with a grate For drama and ambiance. Typically cooking was done in an indoor hearth with a cauldron (typically with 3 legs to stand alone or over a hook that could be adjusted over the flame). Pots were made of cast iron, brass or clay. Noble & royal kitchens had spits to roast meat. People believed that of a higher class needed different means of cooking because their bodies responded differently. Which is so snobby! Roasted meats were reserved for royals and nobles. Peasants stewed tougher cuts of meat. It was also much cheaper to stew or boil meats in a pot. Roasting required a lot of time, wood and someone to constantly turn it. Many times meats were cooked in several different ways like boiling, then roasting, then pan frying. Undercooking meat was a common fear and often meat was salted for preservation so it needed to be rinsed or cooked additionally to offset overwhelming salt flavor.

To the meat and vegetables I’m adding beef stock and ale to braise this meat into a tender filling for our pie. This will cook low and slow. We’re going to make this pie dough all by hand. Savory pies were originally used as a vessel to cook. The outside crust was for cooking and preservation but not usually eaten.  If I’m going to the trouble of making this dough, I’m eating it! The word pie comes from magpye, the bird, which collects bits of things for their nest. Meat pies could use any bits of meat or vegetables to create a filling. Butter or animal fats like lard or suet were most commonly used for pie crust. At royal feasts, pies were used to entertain! There are stories of real live birds being put in pies and when cut open, they would fly open to the amazement of the feasters. One wild story includes an actual living little person being put into a pie. He was fine! They cooked the pie and then put him inside. But just goes to show the level of outrageous entertainment medieval Europeans enjoyed.

I’m using this spring form cake pan for my pie. It creates a tall, straight sided pie and many people have one at home. You divide the dough into thirds, using 2/3 for the bottom crust, the remaining 3rd for the top. Any leftover bits can be used for decoration. After a quick egg wash, this will bake for an hour at 400 degrees. Medieval markets were riddled with food additives & adulterated ingredients. It was common for butchers to sew fat on meat or fill kidneys with rags. And Without refrigeration, meat and fish had to pass the sniff test.

So, What were they eating?! Obviously there were major differences between European Peasant diets and that of nobility and royalty. In general, these are the foods available in western Europe in the Middle Ages.

Bread: The staple food of Europe. Obviously society’s Upper crust could afford the finest, whitest, most refined loaves of bread called manchet , while the poor ate brown loaves made with rough, unrefined grains called maslin. Wheat was ground into flour by stone mill or water mill. Many breads were made with wheat, barley and rye & most dough was made at home and cooked in community ovens.

As towns and cities grew, more regulations went into place to prevent sellers from taking advantage of customers. like Mr. Brid who owned a bake house in London for example. He swindled customers by using a trap door under the counter to take bits of each customer’s dough as they were chatting with him. They were there to use his oven but he was taking bits of dough to make loaves to sell. Standard loaf weights became enforced and any baker caught selling light loaves would be dragged through the streets with the bread tied to their necks. This was a common theme for sneaky sellers in the Middle Ages…rotten meat? To the stocks with him! Sour wine? Make him drink it in shame in front of the whole town! I guess the modern equivalent would be annihilating a restaurant with a bad yelp review?

Spice: Spices were incredibly important to medieval cuisine… But expensive, some costing more than pure gold. Spices made their way through Europe through the Silk Road (which is a whole future video in itself) or by sea through Venetian traders. 75% of the world’s spices come from India. Black pepper, cinnamon, saffron, cloves, ginger and nutmeg were among the most popular. Spices were a way to add flavor, health properties & excitement to dishes & to show others that you could afford it. Sugar was considered a spice. In some cases, traders tricked customers into buying wooden nutmegs or juniper berry peppercorns so buyer beware was the motto of European markets. What else could you get at the market? All kinds of food and drink, fur, wool cloth, cookware, even a haircut or shave from the barber, who also performed bloodletting on the side. Feeling ill? Get rid of some of that pesky blood!

Meat: The best way to preserve meat in medieval times was to cook it, salt it, dry it or smoke it.  Remember these are deeply religious times so eating meat on the wrong day could get you jailed or worse( I read accounts of teeth being pulled as punishment!). No meat or animal products on fast days (usually fridays) and Lent. This must have been extremely frustrating because food was hard to preserve and expensive to acquire. So what meat was available in Europe? Nearly all meats except turkey were available. Pork, beef, venison, mutton, lamb, poultry, fish,shellfish, & rabbit, were all eaten. Peasants ate considerably less meat than nobles and royals but plenty of dairy and beans for protein. Royals feasted on exotic meats like peacock, suckling pig, swan, beaver and even porpoise.  At feasts, carvers would bring cuts of meat to diners, in order of importance!

Fruits & Vegetables/ herbs/etc: We know they did not yet have access to potatoes, corn or tomatoes but they did have: onions, peas, cabbage, herbs, carrots, garlic, many greens and lettuces (although many fresh foods weren’t eaten raw in this era). Native Fruits include apples, pears, pomegranate, grapes. Citrus was imported. Many fruits like dates, figs, and grapes were dried.

Honey was very popular as a sweetener and for making mead. Vinegar was popular for preservation and flavor. Animal fats like lard,tallow and butter were used predominantly for cooking. Olive oil was used in the Mediterranean.

Grains- wheat, barley, oats, and rye were staple European crops and rice was imported from Asia and then grown throughout Europe.

Cheese & butter, & milk- mostly cow milk, some sheep and goat milk were used for milk, cheese and butter. Butter, cheese and milk were vital to peasant diets. We think of almond milk as a modern invention but it was very common in medieval times among all classes, especially on fast days, when animal products were prohibited.

Beverages: If you’ve seen any Medieval movie, you see characters drinking beer, ale and wine out of gold goblets or wooden tankards all day long. While Medieval Europeans did drink beer and wine daily, surprisingly they also drank water. Yes, medieval water sources like the Thames river were incredibly polluted, Medieval Europeans needed water for survival, for making beer and for cooking. Yes it’s also true that beer and wine were often safer than water because it had been boiled killing bacteria. In London for example, clean water was supplied through a conduit. It was controlled, monitored and people were charged for use. Adults and children were drinking beer for hydration and calories. Up to a gallon a day for adults.

Children drank “small beer” which had much lower alcohol content. As a mother of a 3 year old, I can tell you sober children are hard enough to parent. Oh and those conduits supplying water to London, during coronations or times of celebration, WINE flowed through them and citizens could drink as much as they desired! See? It wasn’t all bleak and miserable.

Plates/silverware/trenchers: Medieval diners used spoons, knives and their hands for eating. Plates were traditionally pewter or wood. Even more common was the use of trenchers- stale bread that foods were placed on. It was the job of the servers to replace the trenchers throughout the meal. Discarded trenchers and leftovers were donated to the poor.

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Medieval Meat Pie

Yield: 4-8

Author: Allyson Van Lenten

Ingredients

Dough

• 3 3/4 cup all purpose flour
• 1 cup ice water
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 3 sticks cold butter (cubed)

Filling

• 2 1/2 lbs. beef stew meat
• 3 Tablespoons flour
• 3 carrots (chopped)
• 2 leeks, white only (chopped)
• 1 large onion (chopped)
• 10 ounces frozen peas (optional)
• 1 cup beer
• 2 cups beef stock
• Salt and pepper
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 4 Tablespoons butter
• 1 egg mixed with 1 teaspoon water for egg wash

Instructions

1. To prepare crust, put salt, butter, and half the flour into a food processor. Pulse until the butter is finely chopped into pieces smaller than a pea.
2. Put rest of crust ingredients into a large bowl and mix with hands until a dough forms. Divide dough between 1/3 and 2/3. Cover and chill 30 minutes.
3. While chilling, prepare the filling. Dust all the beef with flour, salt and pepper. Heat a large Dutch oven with butter over medium-high heat. Brown meat on all sides. Remove and set aside.
4. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Brown all vegetables for several minutes until they pick up some color. Add beer & broth and all beef back to the pot. Cover with lid and bake for 2 hours. After 2 hours the sauce should thicken. Allow filling to cool before adding to the pie. Taste for salt and pepper. Add frozen peas.
5. Roll out the 2/3 dough in a thin, even layer. Fill a springform cake pan with the dough leaving plenty to go over the edges.
6. Fill the pie. Use the rest of the 1/3 dough, rolled out to fit the top of the pie. Crimp with a fork or use egg wash to glue top to bottom crust. Egg wash the top. Cut a few holes for steam.
7. Bake for 1 hour or until golden at 400 degrees. Cover with foil if it’s browning too fast.

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SOURCES:

Pelner Colman,Madeleine. (1976) Fabulous Feasts:Medieval Cookery and Ceremony.

Secrets of the Castle, BBC, Ruth Goodman

Odile Redon, Francoise Sabban, and Silvano Serventi (1991) The Medieval Kitchen, Recipes from France and Italy.

Tannahill, Reay(1973)  Food in History.

Fernandez-Armesto, Felipe (2001) Near a Thousand Tables, A history of food

Golden, Richard M. (2003)The Social Dimension of Western Civilization Vol. 1

Medieval Magazine History BBC

Food & Feast in Medieval England, Peter Hammond