fd-in-Chaucer-msg - 12/22/08

Mentions of food in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales.

NOTE: See also the files: cookbooks-bib, online-ckbks-msg, fd-Anglo-Saxn-msg, fd-Wales-msg, England-msg, Tavern-Feast-art, pilgrimages-msg.

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This file is part of a collection of files called Stefan's Florilegium. These files are available on the Internet at: http://www.florilegium.org

I have done a limited amount of editing. Messages having to do with separate topics were sometimes split into different files and sometimes extraneous information was removed. For instance, the message IDs were removed to save space and remove clutter.

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Thank you,
    Mark S. Harris                  AKA:  THLord Stefan li Rous
                                          Stefan at florilegium.org
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Date: Tue, 01 Jan 2002 13:52:31 -0500
From: johnna holloway <johnna at sitka.engin.umich.edu>
To: sca-cooks at ansteorra.org
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Food mentions in Chaucer

Stefan li Rous wrote:
> Has anyone ever researched the food references in Chaucer? I know
> Adamantius recently mentioned there were some, and I found a more
> complete reference to this in the Florilegium, but right now I
> don't remember what subject was being discussed.

http://www.godecookery.com/chaucer/ccookery.htm
has  A Chaucerian Cookery:
 examines the references to food and dishes in all
 of Chaucer's writings, studies the dietary habits
of his characters, and gives a complete list of all
foods Chaucer refers to. Included is A
Chaucerian Feast, which presents an authentic
 Medieval feast based on the writings of Chaucer
and corresponding 14th c. recipes.

Johnna Holloway   Johnnae llyn Lewis

Date: Tue, 01 Jan 2002 14:35:58 -0500
From: johnna holloway <johnna at sitka.engin.umich.edu>
To: sca-cooks at ansteorra.org
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Food mentions in Chaucer

See also:
http://icg.fas.harvard.edu/~chaucer/special/lifemann/manners/feast.html
and the paper by Hieatt, Constance B.
" A Cook of 14th-century London: Chaucer's Hogge of Ware."
Cooks & Other People.
Oxford Symposium on Food, held in 1995.
published 1996, pp. 138-143.

Johnna

Date: Sat, 02 Aug 2008 02:45:29 -0700
From: "Laura C. Minnick" <lcm at jeffnet.org>
Subject: [Sca-cooks] [Fwd: Nutmeg in stale ale]
To: SCA-Cooks <sca-cooks at ansteorra.org>

So, what do you all think? Why is the nutmeg in 'stale ale'?

'Lainie

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: 	Nutmeg in stale ale
Date: 	Sat, 2 Aug 2008 11:22:26 +0200
From: 	Brian S Lee <brianlee at XSINET.CO.ZA>
To: 	CHAUCER at LISTSERV.UIC.EDU

Fresh from a reading of John Keay's history of _The Spice Route_ (2005), 
I can better appreciate the absurdity of Thopas's adventuring into the 
forest of exotic spices incredibly located in Flanders.  Chaucer selects 
the rarest and so most valuable of spices, cetewale (zedoary) from Java, 
cloves from Ternate, and nutmeg from Banda, each further east than the 
last, but their origins in the mysterious regions beyond India totally 
unknown in medieval Europe.  Pepper, the commonest spice, he 
significantly doesn't mention.  Thopas's world is one of precious 
luxury, marred by the sudden injection of reality, that stale ale which 
was doubtless all too common in the experience of readers (hearers) of 
tail-rhyme romances. 

Nutmeg, apparently, is a prestigious thing to keep in the kitchen 
cupboard ("in cofre").  You wouldn't waste your most valuable spice 
(would you?) in stale ale.  Would it help to improve or disguise the 
flavour if you did?  Never having tried it, I await the comments of the 
culinary experts on this list.  The Host wanted a drink of moist and 
corny ale to help him recover from the Physician's Tale: does moist 
simply mean fresh?  Isn't all ale moist?  Is stale the opposite of 
moist, the result of neglect or poor brewing perhaps, or are these 
technical terms for different kinds of ale?  Why put nutmeg in both 
kinds, or is "stale" simply Chaucer's hint at the thoughtless use 
of cliches for rhyme in the romances he's burlesquing?

Brian

Date: Sat, 02 Aug 2008 07:45:07 -0400
From: "Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius" <adamantius1 at verizon.net>
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] [Fwd: Nutmeg in stale ale]
To: Cooks within the SCA <sca-cooks at lists.ansteorra.org>

On Aug 2, 2008, at 5:45 AM, Laura C. Minnick wrote:
> So, what do you all think? Why is the nutmeg in 'stale ale'?

"Stale", as in "stale ale", and in fact as in, "English ale, good and  
stale," is regarded by brewers and drinkers as a good thing, in case  
that matters. It means it's fully fermented, and is not only at full  
potency, but also doth not engendyr wynde, etc.

So while I have no idea as to why the nutmeg's there, it's probably  
not a matter of throwing good money after bad.

Adamantius

Date: Sat, 02 Aug 2008 08:23:15 -0700
From: "Laura C. Minnick" <lcm at jeffnet.org>
Subject: [Sca-cooks] [Fwd: Re:  [Fwd: Nutmeg in stale ale]]]
To: SCA-Cooks <sca-cooks at ansteorra.org>

More questions!  -'Lainie

-------- Original Message --------
	
Which raises the further question: is the moist ale which the Host and 
Pardoner seem to want or expect on the pilgrimage a cheaper or inferior 
brew likely to be more readily available or perhaps easier on the palate 
and stomach in the quantities ale drinkers seem to prefer?

Is there evidence that anyone in the Middle Ages expected the nutmeg to 
have hallucinogenic properties?  There is at least one Google site that 
suggests that if you can bear to eat enough of it you may start to see 
little pink men from Mars, or  the like.  I don't advise the testing 
thereof -- a poor druggie self-centered enough to describe his 
experiment on the internet found it tasted so horrible that he was 
obliged to mask it with so many other substances that it's hard to know 
what caused his mild disorientation during his excruciatingly boring day 
diarized in detail while his mother had left him alone.

Brian

Date: Sat, 02 Aug 2008 12:34:56 -0400
From: "Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius" <adamantius1 at verizon.net>
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] [Fwd: Re:  [Fwd: Nutmeg in stale ale]]]
To: Cooks within the SCA <sca-cooks at lists.ansteorra.org>

On Aug 2, 2008, at 11:23 AM, Laura C. Minnick wrote:

-------- Original Message --------
Which raises the further question: is the moist ale which the Host  
and Pardoner seem to want or expect on the pilgrimage a cheaper or  
inferior brew likely to be more readily available or perhaps easier  
on the palate and stomach in the quantities ale drinkers seem to  
prefer? >>>

You might take a look here:
http://forum.wordreference.com/showthread.php?t=601639

I gather that "moist" in Chaucerian ale terms is the polar opposite of  
"stale". Neither is bad and either can be appropriate for certain  
specific conditions, but it's conceivable that moist ale was cloudy  
and still had bits of unsettled grain and yeast in it, and while  
deprecated by some later medical authorities such as Boorde, it may  
have been considered more robust and more filling for someone on a  
journey.
On the other hand, a bellyful of active yeast isn't necessarily the  
first thing I'd be looking for to get ready to walk all day.

<<< Is there evidence that anyone in the Middle Ages expected the nutmeg  
to have hallucinogenic properties? >>>

I don't think that's a period concept; I believe that's a discovery  
made in the 20th-century American prison system, and one highly  
disputed, at that, but everyone seems to agree that it takes a large  
amount of nutmeg to have any effect.

Adamantius

Date: Sat, 2 Aug 2008 13:43:07 -0500
From: "Terry Decker" <t.d.decker at worldnet.att.net>
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] [Fwd: Nutmeg in stale ale]
To: "Cooks within the SCA" <sca-cooks at lists.ansteorra.org>

<<< So, what do you all think? Why is the nutmeg in 'stale ale'?

'Lainie >>>

In the this context, Chaucer is likely using "moist" to mean "new" and 
"stale" to mean "old."  Considering that traditional ale is unhopped and 
meant to be drunk immediately, that "old" is probably relative and may 
relate to a higher alcohol content as the fermentation will continue until 
all of the sugars are consumed.

IIRC, Falstaff also adds mutmeg to his ale in one of Shakespeare's plays.

I suspect the nutmeg is being added to the ale to give it some bite.  The 
traditional ales I've encountered tend to be a little on the sweet side.

Bear

Date: Sat, 02 Aug 2008 14:50:26 -0400
From: Gretchen Beck <grm at andrew.cmu.edu>
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] [Fwd: Nutmeg in stale ale]
To: Cooks within the SCA <sca-cooks at lists.ansteorra.org>

--On Saturday, August 02, 2008 11:09 AM -0700 "Laura C. Minnick" 
<lcm at jeffnet.org> wrote:
<<<
S CLEMENGER wrote:
> Can you quote the original (pertinent) passage from Chaucer, for
> context's  sake?
> --Maire

 From CT, Sir Thopas' Tale. I'm on my way out to an event- I'll try to
find it when I get home if someone else hasn't found it first.

'Lainie >>>

Ther spryngen herbes grete and smale
The lycorys and Cetewale
And many a clowe gylofre
And Notemuge to putte in Ale
Wheither it be moyste or stale
Or for to leye in cofre

-------------
There sprange herbes great and small,
The liquorice and the setewall,* *valerian
And many a clove-gilofre, <12>
And nutemeg to put in ale,
Whether it be moist* or stale, *new
Or for to lay in coffer.

toodles, margaret

Date: Sat, 02 Aug 2008 15:20:55 -0400
From: Gretchen Beck <grm at andrew.cmu.edu>
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] [Fwd: Nutmeg in stale ale]
To: Cooks within the SCA <sca-cooks at lists.ansteorra.org>

--On Saturday, August 02, 2008 1:43 PM -0500 Terry Decker 
<t.d.decker at worldnet.att.net> wrote:

>> I suspect the nutmeg is being added to the ale to give it some bite.  The
>> traditional ales I've encountered tend to be a little on the sweet side.

I think it's also being added to balance the humors of the ale (of course, 
in medieval cooking, I'm always amazed how taste and humors often follow 
each other:-)). Here's some lines:

from Robert Greene (contemporary of Marlowe and Shakespeare), Looking Glass 
for London and England:

"...I am a Philosopher that can dispute of the nature of Ale; for marke you 
sir, a pot of Ale consists of foure parts, Imprimus the Ale, the Toast, the 
Ginger, and the Nutmeg...The ale is a restorative, bread is a binder, mark 
you sir, two excellent points in physic: the ginger, O, ware of that! the 
philosophers have written of the nature of ginger, 'tis expulsitive in two 
degrees; you shall hear the sentence of Galen:
   "It will make a man belch, cough, and fart,
    And is a great comfort to the heart,"
a proper posy, I promise you; but now to the noble virtue of the nutmet; it 
is, saith one ballad (I think an English Roman was the author) an 
underlayer to the brains, for when the ale gives a buffet to the head, O 
the nutmet! that keeps him for an while in temper..."

The ditty "The Nut-Brown Ale" by John Marston (1575-1634) more or less 
repeats this (or perhaps vice versa, or perhaps both just make fun of 
conventional wisdom)

The nut-brown ale, the nut-broen ale
Puts down all drink when it is stale!
The toast, the nutmeg, and the ginger
Will make a sighing man a singer.
Ale gives a buffet in the head,
But ginger under-props the brain;
When ale would strike a strong man dead
Then nutmeg tempers it again.
The nut-brown ale, the nut-brown ale,
Puts down all drink when it is stale!

toodles, margaret

<the end>