Dinner in London, 1390 - The Spicekeeper's Almanac, Issue One

michel1492
Jun 22
16 min read

Updated: Jun 24

From the private library of The Spicekeeper Oak City Spice Blends · History in Every Seasoning

The fires are lit before the city wakes. That is the first thing to know about my life, and very nearly the last thing anyone ever wrote down about men like me. While London sleeps in the dark and the cold, a boy in my kitchen is at the great hearth, blowing an ember back to life.

"More to the back of it," I tell him, "or it will be dead again before the bread is in." He does not answer, only blows harder, and the ember catches, and the day's work has begun. By the time the lords above us stir, the bread is baking, the meat is turning, and the smell of it is climbing the stairs toward people who will never once think about how it got there.

I am cook to a great household in the London of King Richard the Second, in the year of our Lord 1390. I write these recipes down because I must remember them, the order of the spices, the heat of the fire, the way a sauce should fall from the spoon, and for no grander reason than that. It does not once occur to me that anyone will read them after I am gone. That is the joke God plays on a working man. The things we do without thinking are the things that last.

What follows is a single dinner, the kind I have made a hundred times, set down so that someone, someday, might stand in my kitchen for an evening.

The Year

England in 1390 was ruled by a young king with expensive taste. Richard II had come to the throne as a boy of ten and by his early twenties had built one of the most lavish royal households Europe had seen, a court fascinated by ceremony, fashion, and the theater of display. Food was central to that theater. A great meal was never only nourishment. It was a performance of wealth, taste, and power, staged before an audience of nobles, rivals, and foreign guests who would carry word of it home.

It is almost certainly no accident that the cookbook history remembers from this court, the Forme of Cury, was compiled by the master cooks of Richard II's own kitchen around this very period. It survives as one of the earliest and most important collections of English recipes, written not for a curious public but as a working record by cooks, for cooks, a kitchen's memory committed to parchment so that the next hand could find the same dish again.

This issue sets a single dinner at such a table: what was served, who was in the room, what they wore, how they spoke of the meal, and what it actually took, in trade and labor and distance, to set a serving of cinnamon-spiced meat before a fourteenth-century English diner.

Before the Hall

A great dinner does not begin in the hall. It begins hours earlier, in rooms the guests never see, and it begins with me.

My kitchen is its own country, with its own ranks and its own laws. Below me are the cooks and the turnbroaches who mind the spits, and below them, at the very bottom of everything, are the scullions. A scullion is usually a boy of ten to fourteen, and his life is the hardest in the building. He scours every pot and dish in the scullery, a room kept well apart from the cooking fires so that the filth and grey water never come near the food. He hauls the water. He rises first, in the black of the morning, to wake the fires no one else will touch until they are warm. It is the lowest work a household has to offer, and the whole house knows it.

I will tell you how low. Only a few years ago, in 1386, Parliament pressed the King to dismiss certain of his ministers, and the King, who does not care to be told what to do, answered that he would not turn out so much as a scullion of his kitchen at their asking. He reached for the smallest, meanest office in his whole realm to make his point. Even kings know what a scullion is, if only as a way of saying nothing.

Beyond my fires lie the storerooms, each with its keeper, each its own small kingdom. The pantry, from the French pain, holds the bread and dry goods under the pantler's eye. The buttery holds the ale and wine under the butler, whose whole first duty is to keep the drink in order and the cups clean. The larder holds the meat and fish, hung from the beams away from vermin, taking a little smoke from the fires below. A royal household keeps dozens of us at this work, pantlers and bakers and larderers and butchers and carvers and the poor scullions, all of it turning like a mill to feed a house that may number in the hundreds before the day is done.

And we eat earlier than you might think. The great meal, dinner, comes not at evening but in the late morning, somewhere between the tenth hour and noon. Supper follows in the early evening, lighter, though still a fine table by most men's reckoning. There is no breakfast to speak of for grown men of this rank, a bite to break the night's fast and no more. The day's true eating begins at dinner, which is why my fires are lit in the dark. To set a great dinner on the board by mid-morning, a kitchen must already have been awake for hours.

The First Course

When the food goes up, it does not simply arrive. It is announced.

The grand dishes of a great house are carried in a procession, and at the finest tables they come to the sound of trumpets, so that the whole hall turns to watch the kitchen's work brought in. I have read that a poet of these very years wrote it down exactly so, in a tale of Sir Gawain: Þen þe first cors come with crakkyng of trumpes, which is to say, then the first course came in with a blare of trumpets. The letter that looks strange there, þ, we call a thorn, and it says nothing more than th. That is our English as it is spoken now, in the King's London, the tongue Master Chaucer is writing his tales in at this very hour. It is not the old, hard speech of our grandfathers' grandfathers. It is full of French words like cours itself, the very word for a stage of the meal, carried into England with the Normans and never given back.

I should say plainly: these stages are courses. You may one day hear a feast like this described in removes, but that word is a later fashion, borrowed from the French long after my time, and it means a single dish lifted away and changed for another, not a whole course. In my kitchen, in 1390, the word is cours, and a course is not one dish but many, brought up together in a single glittering wave.

Here is how I open the meal. A pottage of herbs, gentle and green, to ease the table toward the richer things behind it: parsley and sage and the good kitchen herbs chopped small, simmered in broth with onions, and lifted at the end with a sweet warm powder of spice. It is a quiet dish. It is meant to be. A cook who throws his whole hand down on the first course is a fool who has misjudged the evening.

The Table

I have never sat at the table I cook for, and I never will. But I have stood beside it often enough to know it better than the men who eat there.

The boards are not fixed furniture. They are long planks set on trestles, raised for the meal and cleared away after, so the hall may serve another purpose by night. The lord's table stands on a dais, a raised platform at the head of the room, lifted above the rest so that no one can mistake where the center of the world is. The cloths are fine white linen, changed between courses at the high table so that it never looks anything but immaculate, however long the meal runs.

Before each diner sits a trencher, a thick slab of days-old bread that serves as his plate. It soaks up the sauces through the meal, and at the end it is not eaten by the great but gathered up, to go to the poor at the gate or to the dogs in the hall. Between every few diners sits a shared bowl for the wetter dishes and a cup to share, for it is cups and pitchers here, not a glass for every hand.

And at the head of the high table stands the one object that rules all the rest: the salt. A great cellar of it, worked in silver or gilt, set near the lord. Salt is dear enough that where it sits becomes a map of the whole room's worth. The honored guests sit above the salt, within easy reach of it.

The lesser sit below the salt, further down the board and further down the reckoning of who matters. Where a man sits decides not only his dignity but his very dinner, for the high table is offered the widest choice of every course, six dishes or more, while the lower tables may see two, and smaller at that. One feast, remembered by history as a single meal, is in truth many meals at once, graded by rank, served in the same room.

What the Women Wore

A woman comes to this table carrying her standing in her very cloth, as plainly as the lord carries his at the dais, and the fashions of these years are made to be read at a glance.

Beneath everything is a linen smock against the skin, seen by no one. Over it, the kirtle, a gown fitted close through the body and falling full to the floor, its skirt widened not at the waist but by panels set into the hem. The sleeves run tight to the wrist, sometimes over the knuckle, and the gown laces or buttons close. Over the kirtle, a lady of this court will most likely wear the newest shape of all, the houppelande, a great sweeping overgown with a high collar and wide trailing sleeves, lined in fur and trimmed richly enough to announce a fortune. The whole effect is of deliberate abundance, cloth spent lavishly because the spending is the point.

The color does the rest of the talking. This is an age of deep jewel hues, scarlet and rich blue and green, worked with braid and embroidery and fur, and at the highest tables sewn with pearls and gold. A married noblewoman binds her hair up and covers it, often in a net of gold or red thread we call a fret or a caul, beneath a veil. Loose hair belongs to the young and unwed, and so even her head tells the room exactly who she is.

And here is the detail almost no one pictures. That elegant woman in the houppelande came to dinner carrying her own knife, just as every soul at the table did.

The secret of it is the girdle, the decorated belt worn at her waist or hips. A noblewoman's girdle is rarely plain. It is mounted with worked metal, sometimes silver or gilt, and it is the anchor for everything she must carry, because her gown has no pockets at all. From the girdle hang her purse, her small needful things, and her knife in its sheath, slung on a cord. When she sits to eat, she draws that knife to cut and spear her food, for the table lays out none, and the fork is no part of an English meal in my day. For a lady of rank the knife and sheath are made to match the girdle they hang from, ornamented to her quality, so that the very blade that cuts her meat also hangs in plain sight as a quiet sign of who she is. Even the way a woman carries a dinner knife, in this world, is shaped by wealth and rank and the endless soft labor of showing it.

The Knife Every Guest Carried

It is the same for the men, and the same for me, though my knife is a working tool and theirs is half jewelry.

In 1390 a diner brings his own knife to the table, worn at the belt in a sheath, as ordinary to him as his shoes. To come without one is to go hungry or to borrow, a small shame either way. These knives are forged of iron, some of them of an early steel, by a cutler, a smith whose whole trade is blades. The knife is straight-backed and sharp at the point, made as much to spear a morsel and carry it to the mouth as to cut, for there is no fork to do that office. The handles are bone, or horn, or wood, and a good knife is a man's own possession, carried for years, sometimes laid in the grave with him at the end.

At the table the guests' own knives do the small cutting, but the great work, the breaking-down of a roast swan or a whole boar, belongs to the carver, an office of such honor that it is its own formal post in a great house. To carve well before the high table is a kind of performance, and the man who does it is no servant but a gentleman. He came down to my kitchen once before a great feast, turning his blade in the light, and said only, "Send it up hot, master cook, and I will see it carved as it deserves." I have never forgotten the pride in it. A man may be proud of cutting meat, if he cuts it before the right eyes.

The Second Course

Now the table is ready for its showpiece, and I send up the dish that says, more than any other, you are honored here.

A capon, roasted on the spit and basted as it turns with ground cinnamon tempered in wine, and finished with a scattering of sugar over the bird before it goes up. "Mind the sugar," I tell the boy who carries it, "a lord's eye is on that bird before his mouth is." I know how that sounds to a plainer age: sugar, on the meat. But sugar in my kitchen is no sweet for the end of the meal. It is a spice, and a costly one, set on roasted flesh exactly as I would set pepper, and the setting of it is itself the message. To sugar a man's meat is to spend on him. The pairing of warm spice and sugar over roast fowl is the surest mark there is of a noble table against a common one.

What It Took to Get Here

Every spiced dish I send up is the far end of a road longer than I can imagine.

The cinnamon and the pepper grow in lands to the south and east that I will never see, and the saffron comes from the eastern sea. None of it travels to me direct. It passes through hand after hand, Arab and Indian and Mediterranean traders, before it ever reaches the Venetians and Genoese who hold Europe's door to the spice of the East, and who sell it onward at a steep price, first to the ports and then inland to cities like my London. By the time a pinch of cinnamon reaches my hand it has changed owners more times than anyone can count, crossed seas and deserts, and taken on cost at every stage, the tax, the risk, the merchant's profit, again and again.

This is why spice is a mark of standing and not a mere flavor. The price of it carries the whole hidden weight of that journey, and the men at my table know only that it is dear, which is the entire point. It is worth standing still a moment over the distance. The lord who eats my cinnamon capon is tasting the far end of one of the longest roads in the world, thousands of miles of sea and sand and mountain pass, gathered into a single warm spoonful, and never once thinking of the road at all. That is my work. To hide the road, and serve only the warmth.

The Almond and the Fast

There is one more labor in my kitchen worth setting down, because it rules so much of what I cook: almond milk.

It is no poor man's substitute. It is a staple, and among the most toilsome things my kitchen makes. We begin with whole almonds, pounded fine in the mortar, a little water added partway so the oils do not turn the whole to paste. Then the ground almond is steeped, in water for a plain milk, in broth for a savory dish, in wine for a rich one, and left to soften before it is wrung through a cloth, squeezed by hand until the last drop is won. What stays behind in the cloth we do not waste. We soak it again for a weaker second milk, for the lesser dishes.

Why so much trouble? Because of the fasts. The Church forbids meat and eggs and dairy on many dozens of days through the year, and on those days almond milk lets me build the body of a cream or a custard without breaking the fast at all. This is why the Forme of Cury leans on it so hard, for it is written for a household that keeps its fasts in earnest. From it I make blancmange, a thick pudding of almond milk and rice, sometimes with shredded capon worked through it, prized as much for the visible labor in it as for the taste. In my world, the work a dish costs is part of what it says.

A Word on the Recipes

Editor's Note: The dishes described above, the herb pottage, the cinnamon capon, and the almond dishes, are faithful representatives of the food recorded in the Forme of Cury and cooked at noble English tables in this period. They are written in the spirit of that manuscript rather than transcribed word for word from a single recorded menu, since the menu of any one such dinner was never written down. The two recipes that follow are modern kitchen versions built around Oak City Spice Blends seasonings, designed for a table tonight rather than a fourteenth-century hall.

Cook It Tonight

Two modern versions of dishes from this table, built around Oak City Spice Blends that echo the same flavor logic as the originals.

Cinnamon-Spiced Roast Chicken

Inspired by the Second Course of Dinner in London, 1390

A modern, weeknight take on the honored-guest dish of a noble English table: roast fowl basted in warm spice and wine, finished with the sugar-and-spice pairing that marked the costliest cooking of the age.

Bloom Classification: Medium Bloom (Butter)

Why the Bloom Works: Cinnamon, clove, ginger, and nutmeg carry their aroma in fat-soluble oils. Warming the Poudre Douce in melted butter before it touches the bird releases those oils and lets them spread evenly across the skin, rather than sitting dry on the surface, which is the modern echo of the medieval cook tempering his spice in wine and fat before basting.

Ingredients

1 whole chicken, 4 to 5 lbs (1.8 to 2.3 kg)
3 Tbsp Oak City Spice Blends 14th c. Poudre Douce (18 g)
2 Tbsp butter, melted (28 g)
1 Tbsp honey (21 g)
1/2 cup dry white wine (120 ml)
1 tsp salt (6 g)

Method

Preheat the oven to 425°F (220°C).
Warm the melted butter gently and stir in the Poudre Douce, blooming for about 30 seconds until fragrant. Whisk in the honey and wine to make a basting liquid.
Pat the chicken dry and season with the salt. Rub roughly a third of the bloomed mixture under and over the skin.
Roast for 60 to 75 minutes, basting with the remaining liquid every 20 minutes, until the thigh reads 165°F (74°C).
Rest 10 minutes before carving. The honey and wine reduce into a glaze that nods to the sugar-and-spice finish of the original dish.

Best With

Roasted root vegetables
Buttered bread
A simple green pottage

Historical Note

Oak City Spice Blend's 14th c. Poudre Douce carries cinnamon, cloves, ginger, nutmeg, and sugar, the gentle, pepper-free "sweet powder" that gives this style of cooking its warm register. The sugar already in the blend does the work the medieval cook did by scattering sugar over the finished bird, so the honey here is only for the glaze. This is the English cousin of the warm sweet spice that Renaissance Rome would reach for in Franconia a century on: one family of flavor, two countries, two issues apart.

Golden Almond Sauce

Inspired by the almond cookery of a medieval English kitchen

A warm, saffron-gold sauce built on almond milk, the labor-intensive staple at the heart of fast-day cooking, spooned over roasted fish or vegetables the way a medieval cook would have served it alongside the fish course.

Bloom Classification: Gentle Bloom (Low Heat, Almond Milk)

Why the Bloom Works: Warm spices release their oils more evenly into warm liquid than when sprinkled on at the end. Steeping the Poudre Douce into gently heated almond milk disperses the cinnamon, ginger, and clove throughout the sauce, the modern echo of the medieval cook letting his spiced almond milk cook slow over a low fire.

Ingredients

1 cup unsweetened almond milk (240 ml)
1 Tbsp Oak City Spice Blends 14th c. Poudre Douce (6 g)
Pinch of saffron threads (0.1 g)
1/4 tsp salt (1.5 g)

Method

Warm the almond milk gently in a small saucepan over low heat. Do not let it boil.
Add the saffron threads and let them steep for 5 minutes, until the milk turns pale gold.
Whisk in the Poudre Douce and the salt. The sugar already in the blend does the sweetening, true to the original, which called for sugar directly.
Simmer gently for 5 minutes, stirring often, until lightly thickened. Spoon warm over roasted fish or vegetables.

Best With

Roasted white fish
Roasted vegetables
Plain rice or barley

Historical Note

Almond milk colored gold with saffron was a status dish in its own right, the gold being a color closely tied to wealth at a fourteenth-century table. Poudre Douce supplies the warm spice the medieval cook would have ground in by hand; the saffron does the gilding. Keep the heat low throughout, since this sauce is built on aroma and color, not browning.

A Note from The Spicekeeper

I keep returning, issue by issue, to the same quiet thing: a piece of knowledge that nearly slipped away, and the ordinary person who saved it without meaning to. Here it is a working cook in Richard II's kitchen, writing his recipes down only because he needed to find them again, never once imagining a stranger six centuries on would stand in his kitchen for an evening through those same words.

That is the whole of it, really. The lords are remembered for the feast. The cook is remembered, if at all, for the parchment he left behind by accident. I find I would rather keep his company than theirs. He spent everything he had, every dear pinch of spice carried halfway across the world, on people who would never think to thank him, and he wrote it all down so the next pair of hands could do the same. History in every jar, including the ones the great never noticed.

The Spicekeeper's Almanac is a periodic publication of Oak City Spice Blends, drawn from a private library of more than 400 historical cookbooks. Seasoned by centuries. Made for tonight.