A Day in the Life of a Cook in the King's kitchen

 Good Day to you,

"So you want to know what a day in my life is like, eh? It's not an easy one mind you, but it's better than the life of a scullery maid, or even a stable hand.  In this day it is common for a person to go hungry. Often.  The position of cook is a coveted one, as a cook is always in a position to have a bit extra to eat, and to offer others.  It's precious little power, but power nonetheless for a woman not of the royalty, but a royal position in the King's court.

We rise early, everyone rises early even the King and Queen as breaking one's fast is a very important part of the King's day.  The average man or woman awakes before sunrise and has a couple of hours of  work completed before breaking their fast, but the King and Queen eat as soon as they dress and leave their bed chamber.

Breakfast traditionally was bread and wine or ale when I was a girl, but each Monarch changes the world in ways that last longer than themselves, and with various additions over the years breakfast now often consists of cold meats, cheeses, breads, butter, fish, eel, eggs left over roasted vegetables and fruits.  There are no 'official' breakfast foods,  but more like a cold picnic of foods not eaten the previous day.  This meal as is every other,  is consumed with plenty of ale or wine, or water. Aye,  alcoholic beverages are consumed at every meal and are consumed by adult and child alike. Much of the wines or ales are watered down to prevent intoxication. This is common practice amongst all common folk not just here in the King's court. 

But whereas the wines served for the average man, if he is able to obtain them, they are often sour, muddy, thick, greasy, stale and very unpalatable. All wines are served young. This is true even of the wines the King can afford.  The ales are better and more drinkable, but very strong. Hooo, you could down a draft of ale in the morning and be feeling no sorrow till way past noon! So we water down the drink so that they are safer to drink as a drunken lout is no good to anybody.  In truth, few people ever appear drunken as most work so hard they sweat out the drunkeness, at least in my humble opinion. I've seen more of the royals themselves acting silly and not at all royal, but then they are allowed to, aren't they?

For the working souls, those of us that keep the castle running we wake very early and have breakfast by 6 am at the latest.  Right afterward the great hall is set with trestle tables that are taken down after each meal and reset for the next.   The large noontime meal starts around 10 am and last until noon.

The household staff sit and eat along with every other soul in the king's court... The King and his family sit at the head table, which is set up at a vantage point for the King to survey the entire hall.  Then they all pile in for the food. The soldiers, workers, castle staff,  visitors, guests and people from the surrounding castle keep were all welcome. The blacksmith, the ale master, the baker, the candle maker even the carpenter. All that serve his highness and the royal family are welcome to sup with the King and his family.  The dining area gets quite busy at times, for one could have his meal and discuss a new suit of armour to be made by the armorer or order a number of loaves of bread from the baker, so much business and discussion went on.

When we eat it is a communal, cosy affair you might say. You see,  two people share a dish with the lesser helping the more important of the two, such as the servant feeding the master, the younger serving the older and as it should be in all things, if ye ask me,  the man serving the woman.  We ave utensils but by tradition we eat much of our food with our fingers and there is much etiquette associated with the ritual of supping together.  Like ones hands.  That's right, everyone who sits down to dinner is expected to wash their hands, cleanly and with much vigor.  It may be the middle ages, mind, but we know all about how sick one can make another by their dirty paws!  Why I just slapped that no account lazy lout Jervis just yesterday as he tried to walk into the dining room with filthy mitts.  He won't be forgetting the feel of my hand on the back of his thick skull anytime soon.  Most likely saved all of us from certain death by making him wash his hands and I inspected them personally before he was allowed to eat with anyone.Hmmph!

Most of the meals consist of roasted meats and each place is set with a trencher, or thick slab of day old round bread, sliced according to proper technique and placed also very specifically in each spot, and the food would be placed upon this 'edible' plate.  What? Did ye think we'd be washing hundreds of dishes three times daily in our kitchens? We have enough to do keeping the cooking utensils clean, mind. 

We had a shipment arrive yesterday of some new cooking pots and such.  The nice thing about the King's kitchen is we tend to have the best of the possible items and equipment available. Many crafts people saved their best items for the King and his Queen and if they could sell to the castle it was a fine thing indeed.   Yesterday we received a new Mortar that stands 4 foot tall and large enough that a small child can stand upright in it. As I found out when I saw little Johnnie, the Butler's boy standing within, with just his shock of yellow hair sticking out the top.   I saw him as I crossed the kitchen and grabbed up the pestle, about three feet long with a large knib on one end and made a great show of crossing the room to put it in the mortar and starting to grind up my herbs when he squealed and scampered out before he was turned into poudour douce!

We also cook in cauldrons large enough to bathe ten adults in, all to keep the King's castle fed and happy.  We have three swines, a calf, 30 chykens, several baskets of fresh fish for fischye day tomorrow, and two whole cows all in the larder to be roasted over the next few days. From these will be made good broths, tartlets or meat pies, stews, potages, dumplings and custards of fish and meat and chicken. 

I have the younger girls and boys in the kitchen gather the herbs, leeks, onions, turnips  from the gardens and mushrooms from the forest for the proper amount of flavor.  Along with the shipment brought yesterday on seven carts drawn by horses, was my spices.  Or the Master Chef's spices mind you.  I would use them even if his royal cookness wasn't part of this household. The spices used in our typical poudour douce, or powder dust contain ginger, cinnamon, nutmeg and cloves.  At times the recipe allows for black pepper to be added. We use this mixture of spices often as it seems to be a remedy against the stomach sickness that overtakes some when food goes bad. 

We roast several haunches of beef, pork, venison and stew a dozen or more chykens and ducks.  The common man lives on a diet of rabbit, venison, and small game birds.  These are at times part of the feast especially when the King and his lady go hunting.  At every meal the most dominant flavor is mustard. The King particularly enjoys Lumbard mustard.  It is used by all to flavor and spice according to individual taste.

The recipe I snitched out of the Chef's little recipe book looks like this:

".lumbard mustard. cxliij. Take mustard seed & waysche hyt and dry hit in an ovene. grynde hit drye. sarse hit þorow a sarso(ur). claryfye hony wiþ wyne & vyneg(er) & stere hit wel to gyder & make hit thyk y nowh. & whan þou wolt spend þ(er) of. make it thyk,  

A simple recipe, to be sure. But one we will use the new mortar and pestle with as we needed a larger mortar since we make the mustard by the barrel-ful.  Ye see, this is what we do to make the mustard every man, woman and child demands spooned onto their side of the trencher.  Just as the recipe says, take mustard seed, and we use sacks filled to make a batch. At least several cups and we wash them with clean water ran over a sieve they lay in.  Then they are laid out on paper and laid inside a hot oven to dry and bring the flavor up.  They are then put in the mortar and ground fine with the large pestle.   Then thick, freshly gathered honey is added to the ground mustard seed , also several quarts and it's thinned a bit with cups of wine and vinegar  to taste.

(For those of you who wish to make this yourself here is an easy modern recipe for this mustard sauce made with honey and wine.  


Lombard Mustard ~ Honey wine mustard sauce to serve over fish, roasted meats, bread, and roasted root vegetables.  


Take 1 cup of stone ground prepared mustard or other hearty course ground prepared mustard. Make sure the mustard has vinegar as an ingredient.  Even yellow (hot dog mustard) can be used to nice effect.  Add 1 cup of honey and mix well.  Add a few splashes of wine, white is preferable, just to thin the consistency a bit.
Serve a spoonful or two on the side of your trencher to dip your beef in.)

We serve the food communal style with a large platter containing each food being passed around and being taken from, again the lesser taking for the more important of the couple sharing a plate.  We have many vegetables you might be familiar with that is served alongside the meats, such as Onions, Parsnips, Fennel, Garlic, Parsley, Shallot, Onions, Watercress, Endive, Lettuce, Beetroot, Cabbage, Leeks, Carrots, Artichokes, Long-Beans, Broad-Beans, Peas, Lentils and Asparagus.  We also dress our vegetable platters with thistle, what you would call an artichoke.  We roast them, stew them, chop them, dice them, mynce them, and hew them small.  Our food is flavorful, rich and hearty enough to satisfy the most kingly of appetites.  Why just last fysche day we had stuffed stomach of porpoise.  Now, I'm not too fond of it mind ye, but the King and his Lady like it enough. 

After people are finished eating the meat off the bones its common to throw the waste scraps to the castle hounds that lay about on the rushes waiting for some morsel of food.  The rushes are long swaths of dried grasses, herbs like tansy strewn upon the floor of the great room.  This is the custom of floor dressing.  It is felt to keep the feet from the bare floor and many times the rushes were also strewn with sweet herbs to keep away bugs and other small pests.  The dogs would eat the scraps off the floor and the rushes were changed regularly to keep the castle clean and free of vermin.  

After lunch everyone would go about their daily business, for everyone had a job. The kitchens were at full force and activity all day and most of the night long.  The kitchen had its own staff, as did the pantry, the bottlery (where the ales and wines were kept), the larder (where foods were kept cool), the bakery, all have separate staffs to supply the castle and the keep that surrounded it.  

There are many people we cook for in the kitchens and then a light supper is served again in the late afternoon. This one would largely consist of a main course rather than the three or more at afternoon dinner, along with light side dishes and then cheeses.   Late suppers are oftimes eaten right before bed and then the household goes to sleep early by eight o'clock at night.

This is a long day and a full day everyday in the King's kitchen.  I hope you try my Lombards Mustard sauce, or the Chef's if ye're picky.  I must go, I smell soemthing roasting that needs tending.  

May ye never hunger or thirst my friend ~ The King's Cook, Mrs. Pippery

 (The reason the wines served were young wines was because of a failure to develop a suitable stoppering system for the wines in containers. It was purchased by the barrels and then spiced and put into jugs.  Wine aged a year or more was undrinkable. Proper stoppering techniques were developed at a later time which ushered in the age of aged wines after the period we are discussing in this blog.)

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(Author's Note: I will allow Mrs. Pippery to tell the story of her encounters with the Forme of Curye, the recipe book of the Master Chef for King Richard II during the years 1367 - 1400. The owner of this manuscript (University of Manchester, Manchester, England, see Attribution Section below) does not currently know the actual name of the Master Chef. Accordingly, as used in this series of articles, the names of the Master Chef, Mrs. Pippery and any other principals mentioned, are fictional. This author’s personal comments, translations or interpretations of the manuscript are presented in parenthesis and in italics. The supporting story including the description of the day-to-day life of the characters were created by the author, using her historical research of the time period. The modern recipes provided are based, in part, on the author’s interpretations of the recipes appearing in the manuscript, adapted to today’s cooking equipment and techniques.)

Attribution: The Forme of Curye is an ancient manuscript owned by the University of Manchester, Manchester, England, under its Manchester Middle English Manuscripts, of the John Ryland's Library Middle English Manuscript Digitisation Project. The transcription as they appear in these article were done by or for the University and appear as released by the University for research and for the use of scholars and other interested parties.