Title: p-street-food-msg
Subject: Period street food.
Author: Edited by Mark S. Harris
Last saved by: Mark S. Harris
Keywords: vender, street food, medieval, fried, pastry, pretzel, lunch

p-street-food-msg - 12/15/14

Period street food.

NOTE: See also the files: finger-foods-msg, fried-foods-msg, nuts-msg, eggs-msg, pies-msg, jumbals-msg, Ital-Fnl-Caks-art, pretzels-msg, wafers-msg.

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NOTICE -

This file is a collection of various messages having a common theme that I have collected from my reading of the various computer networks. Some messages date back to 1989, some may be as recent as yesterday.

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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    Mark S. Harris                  AKA:  THLord Stefan li Rous
                                          Stefan at florilegium.org
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Date: Mon, 16 May 2011 12:25:00 -0700
From: Susan Fox <selene at earthlink.net>
To: Cooks within the SCA <sca-cooks at lists.ansteorra.org>
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Period Street Food

Nuts to you!  Archeological excavations of Shakespeare's Globe Theatre 
revealed layers and layers of hazel nut shells on the ground.  
Apparently that's what you crunched at the theatre before popcorn.

Churros, if you called them "Cryspes" can be documented.   You'd have to 
get some nutcase who is willing to deep fry outside though... wait, you 
have one.  :-)

Selene

On 5/16/2011 12:19 PM, Mercy Neumark wrote:
<<< I wanted to get peoples' opinions as I am contemplating doing simple lunches at events for fundraisers, however I want to offer a) period food (not the sandwiches and chips that have been seen in the past few years and b) I'm looking for something different than a pastry/meat pie (forgive my spelling), meat on a stick, or sausages. Something cheap to make, tasty and unique within period that can be made either at a day event with no kitchen or with very little set up kitchen.

Would love the final price point at $5-6 with costs in the $2 and below.

--Mercy >>>

Date: Mon, 16 May 2011 14:03:05 -0700
From: David Friedman <ddfr at daviddfriedman.com>
To: Cooks within the SCA <sca-cooks at lists.ansteorra.org>
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Period Street Food

A dip along with bread--Badinjan Muhassa, say--might work.

I like barmakiya for something to bring to an event, and I expect it 
would work for your purpose, although you might want to make it as 
lots of small units rather than the larger ones in our recipe. Not 
sure if that counts as a "pastry/meat pie" or not.

Hais.
-- 
David/Cariadoc
www.daviddfriedman.com

Date: Mon, 16 May 2011 17:12:42 -0500
From: Sayyeda al-Kaslaania <samia at idlelion.net>
To: Cooks within the SCA <sca-cooks at lists.ansteorra.org>
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Period Street Food

In _A Mediterranean Society, Vol 1._ S.D. Goitein discusses how most 
urban dining in Cairo during the Middle Ages (specifically the Abbasid 
and Fatimid periods) was "take out" food, since people didn't keep 
kitchens in the urban living spaces during this period. Fresh fruit 
would be fabulous, especially melons. This is all around p 110-30.

He also mentions bagels being sold in such a fashion, I believe that's 
in Vol 2.

There's a little more about the food markets in his article "Urban 
Housing in Fatimid and Ayyubid times".

Sayyeda al-Kaslaania

Date: Mon, 16 May 2011 18:41:04 -0400
From: Johnna Holloway <johnnae at mac.com>
To: Cooks within the SCA <sca-cooks at lists.ansteorra.org>
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Period Street Food

If you need references see this paper:
Carlin, Martha. "Fast food and Urban Living Standards
in Medieval England."

appears in the volume:
Food and Eating in Medieval England,
edited by Martha Carlin and Joel T. Rosenthal. London: The
Hambledon Press, 1998. ISBN: 1-85285-148-1.

Johnnae

Date: Mon, 16 May 2011 21:14:49 -0700
From: Ursula Georges <ursula at tutelaries.net>
To: sca-cooks at lists.ansteorra.org
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Period Street Food

On 5/16/2011 3:36 PM, sca-cooks-request at lists.ansteorra.org wrote:
<<< In _A Mediterranean Society, Vol 1._ S.D. Goitein discusses how most
urban dining in Cairo during the Middle Ages (specifically the Abbasid
and Fatimid periods) was "take out" food, since people didn't keep
kitchens in the urban living spaces during this period. Fresh fruit
would be fabulous, especially melons. This is all around p 110-30. >>>

Late-period Istanbul had a similar system.  If you look at lists of 
guilds, there are lots of people specializing in making a specific food. 
Helva-makers (the sweet) and tripe-soup-sellers spring to mind.

Ursula Georges.

Date: Tue, 17 May 2011 07:25:14 -0700 (PDT)
From: Honour Horne-Jaruk <jarukcomp at yahoo.com>
To: Cooks within the SCA <sca-cooks at lists.ansteorra.org>
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Period Street Food

In Spain, little old ladies sat on street corners with a charcoal brazier heating a pot of oil. When a customer showed up, they'd crack an egg into it and dish it up deep-fried. I tried it- it's actually amazingly good. There's a painting, just OOP, of such a woman.

In England, there were carts where you could buy hot buttered barley.

Yours in service to both the Societies of which I am a member-
(Friend) Honour Horne-Jaruk, R.S.F.
Alizaundre de Brebeuf, C.O.L. S.C.A.- AKA Una the wisewoman, or That Pict

Date: Tue, 17 May 2011 12:09:06 -0400
From: Robin Carroll-Mann <rcarrollmann at gmail.com>
To: Cooks within the SCA <sca-cooks at lists.ansteorra.org>
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Period Street Food

On Tue, May 17, 2011 at 10:25 AM, Honour Horne-Jaruk
<jarukcomp at yahoo.com> wrote:
<<< In Spain, little old ladies sat on street corners with a charcoal brazier heating a pot of oil. When a customer showed up, they'd crack an egg into it and dish it up deep-fried. I tried it- it's actually amazingly good. There's a painting, just OOP, of such a woman. >>>

Because I know *someone* is going to ask. . .

That's "Old Woman Frying Eggs" by Velazquez:
http://www.wga.hu/frames-e.html?/html/v/velazque/01/0105vela.html

Brighid ni Chiarain

Date: Fri, 20 May 2011 10:58:51 -0700 (PDT)
From: Honour Horne-Jaruk <jarukcomp at yahoo.com>
To: Cooks within the SCA <sca-cooks at lists.ansteorra.org>
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Period Street Food

--- On Fri, 5/20/11, Stefan li Rous <StefanliRous at austin.rr.com> wrote:
Alizaundre earlier also said:
<<< In England, there were carts where you could
buy hot buttered barley. >>>

Anyone have any more info on this? Was the barley boiled,
like rice, and then butter added to it, like we often do
with popcorn? Or were these made into a sort of barley
mush/rice pudding like patty and fried? Or would the dry
kernels be raw or cooked somehow (like popcorn?) and then
buttered?

Stefan >>>

As I remember (This was fifteen years ago, and the computer where I'd stored the link is long since dead) The barley was boiled, and the standard toppers were either butter or pepper - which also says a lot about how much the price of pepper went down between the middle ages and these Elizabethan entrepreneurs.

Yours in service to both the Societies of which I am a member-
(Friend) Honour Horne-Jaruk, R.S.F.
Alizaundre de Brebeuf, C.O.L. S.C.A.- AKA Una the wisewoman, or That Pict

Date: Mon, 16 Jun 2014 16:18:39 -0400
From: Johnna Holloway <johnnae at mac.com>
To: Cooks within the SCA <sca-cooks at lists.ansteorra.org>
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Street food?

I have an article on the topic of Past Repasts for Pilgrims, Wayfarers, and the Poor. It's a revision of an article I did for TI. It's just been submitted for publication.  If and when it is published, I can send you details. For the topic of foods associated with fairs you might want to start with The English Fair by David Kerr Cameron. [Stroud, England: Sutton Publishing, 1998]

Also see Carlin, Martha. "Fast Food and Urban Living Standards in Medieval England." Food and Eating in Medieval Europe. Edited by Martha Carlin and Joel T. Rosenthal. London: The Hambledon Press, 1998. pp. 27-51.

Johnnae

Date: Mon, 16 Jun 2014 15:25:52 -0600
From: James Prescott <prescotj at telusplanet.net>
To: Cooks within the SCA <sca-cooks at lists.ansteorra.org>
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Street food?

I grabbed nine possible books from my bookshelves.  While all nine 
mention the selling of food on the streets or in fairs or markets, none 
goes into any great detail.

My guess is that probably almost anything cooked was for sale, though 
probably not any of the super-fancy dishes that are described in the 
cookbooks for upper-class tables.  There is mention of "baked apples" 
for sale in one of the books; bakery goods (breads and cakes and wafers 
and so on) of almost any kind in others; roast or baked meats (including 
whole roast birds and whole roast venison) in others.  Sweets of various 
kinds, and meat pies, and prepared sauces, cooked peas, fried peas, 
would be sold.  A whole roast pig for 8 pence in 1363.

One good source would be the street cries, which were sometimes noted 
down by authors.  For example from 1377 England (in modern translation) 
"Hot pies, hot!  Good pork and geese!  Let's go dine!  ... [wines] to 
wash the roast down with!"  Also mentioned is "Les Crieries de Paris", 
part of a two-volume set in French edited by Barbazan that mentions 79 
raw and prepared foodstuffs, though the short quotation mentions only 
raw items.

But, alas, none of the nine that I grabbed covers the topic in any 
particular detail.

Thorvald

Date: Mon, 16 Jun 2014 17:35:57 -0400 (EDT)
From: JIMCHEVAL at aol.com
To: sca-cooks at lists.ansteorra.org
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Street food?

Silly me. Of course. For thirteenth century Paris, you have the classic  
"Cris de Paris":

Les rues et les cris de Paris au XIIIe si?cle: pi?ces historiques publi?es  
d'apr?s les manuscrits de la Biblioth?que nationale et pr?c?d?es d'une 
?tude sur  les rues de Paris au XIIIe si?cle 
L. Willem : P. Daffis, 1874 

http://books.google.com/books?id=rRAoAAAAYAAJ&dq=%22cris%20de%20paris%22&pg
=PA153#v=onepage&q&f=false

And  any "street food" sold at the fairs would simply have been one of 
these  peddlers making their way over (though possibly having to pay a fee for 
the  right). Note however that many of these products are simply foods, like 
fruit or  fish, being sold as at market. Only a few would have been prepared 
hot food,  like hot tarts.

Jim  Chevallier

Date: Mon, 16 Jun 2014 18:52:29 -0400 (EDT)
From: JIMCHEVAL at aol.com
To: sca-cooks at lists.ansteorra.org
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Street food?

Since the Cris de Paris is in old French and has a lot of other material in 
it, here are the foods which seem to have been sold as prepared foods:

Pea puree, hot broad beans
hot pasties, hot cakes [gastiaux/gateau - not  necessarily a cake as we 
would understand it today] 
Stale cakes? [gastiaux rastis]
hot "reinforced" wafers [waffles?]
Hot galettes, "scalded" pastries [dipped in boiling water]
Bread from the Sas and Carmelite brothers'
Various other breads from other groups
Warm flans
Hot tarts and simnel bread
Cake with bean [typically for the Feast of the Kings, but mentioned 
outside those dates as well]

The fruit too might have been sold as street food, but that's less  certain.

Otherwise, there's a poem further on specifically about one of the major  
fairs (the Lendit fair), but it doesn't mention food vendors; it does however 
mention taverns at the fair:

p. 175 Du Lendit Rime

Jim  Chevallier
www.chezjim.com

Date: Mon, 16 Jun 2014 19:04:34 -0700 (GMT-07:00)
From: <lilinah at earthlink.net>
To: sca-cooks at lists.ansteorra.org
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Street food?

I suppose it also kind of depends on what is considered "street food".

In the Ottoman capital of Kostantiniyye (Contantinople) barely 6 per cent of homes had kitchens, so much of the population bought ready-cooked food, since the cost of kitchen ware and especially of fuel would be too much for the average person to bear: an unskilled laborer earned 4 to 7 akce [ahk-jeh] per day, a master artisan between 8 and 12.

There were quite a few food booths and wandering vendors. Sheep's heads and feet were popular: one head in vinegar sauce with four feet and some bread sold for 1 akce.

A borek sold for 1 akce and weighed 1-1/4 lb. (576 g). It was made of 11-1/4 oz. (320 g) bread dough, 8 oz. (224 g) meat and more than 1 oz (32 g) onions. This was enough to feed a family, and not much like delicate modern borek made with flakey phyllo.

There were also kebabs - chunks of meat - cooked in a variety of ways. And there were soups, which are a basic Turkic food item.

There were also ambulatory vendors selling cooked sweets: helva with almonds, with grapes, and "homemade helva" (hanegi) the composition of which is unknown - helva were often made of sugar, butter, and wheat starch cooked together, although there were other kinds as well.

I am not certain if they were around before 1601, but by the 17th c there were also ambulatory vendors of water and of sherbet (fruit syrup beverages).

During the festivals held for the circumcisions of the sultans' sons, the palace distributed food to the populace and presented parades of life-size sculptures of sugar, which were later left to the populace to pillage.

Urtatim

Date: Tue, 17 Jun 2014 15:32:41 -0400
From: Johnna Holloway <johnnae at mac.com>
To: Cooks within the SCA <sca-cooks at lists.ansteorra.org>
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Street Food?

Along those lines, there is this volume 
Pieter Bruegel and the Culture of the Early Modern Dinner Party
By Claudia Goldstein. described as "In focusing on dinner parties in sixteenth-century Antwerp, Goldstein contextualizes some of Bruegel's paintings by examining patronage, intellectual history and the history of food and feasts. Goldstein explores fine art and material culture, letters and books, inventories and archives. Her research is thorough, her conclusions sound, her writing style is clear and lively, and she crosses disciplinary boundaries to contribute original ideas to the study of early modern Europe.'"

Also Clifford Wright's thoughts on "Mediterranean Take-Out Food in the Middle Ages."

http://www.cliffordawright.com/caw/food/entries/display.php/topic_id/8/id/100/

Johnnae 

On Jun 17, 2014, at 12:53 AM, elise fleming <alyskatharine at gmail.com> wrote:
<<< Some of Breughel's paintings show vendors of food.

Alys K. >>>

Date: Tue, 17 Jun 2014 17:47:27 -0400 (EDT)
From: JIMCHEVAL at aol.com
To: sca-cooks at lists.ansteorra.org
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Street Food?

It occurs to me that if one wants to go far back, to when Gallo-Roman  
culture lingered on under the Franks, one might leverage Ausonius' (slightly  
earlier) mention of blood sausage in a tavern reeking of wild thyme.

http://books.google.com/books?id=om1fAAAAMAAJ&dq=Ausone%20taverne&pg=RA1-PA1
83#v=onepage&q&f=false

I've always been tempted to try that myself.

Jim  Chevallier

From: <lilinah at earthlink.net>
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Street food?
Date: June 16, 2014 9:04:34 PM CDT
To: sca-cooks at lists.ansteorra.org

I suppose it also kind of depends on what is considered "street food".

In the Ottoman capital of Kostantiniyye (Contantinople) barely 6 per cent of homes had kitchens, so much of the population bought ready-cooked food, since the cost of kitchen ware and especially of fuel would be too much for the average person to bear: an unskilled laborer earned 4 to 7 akce [ahk-jeh] per day, a master artisan between 8 and 12.

There were quite a few food booths and wandering vendors. Sheep's heads and feet were popular: one head in vinegar sauce with four feet and some bread sold for 1 akce.

A borek sold for 1 akce and weighed 1-1/4 lb. (576 g). It was made of 11-1/4 oz. (320 g) bread dough, 8 oz. (224 g) meat and more than 1 oz (32 g) onions. This was enough to feed a family, and not much like delicate modern borek made with flakey phyllo.

There were also kebabs - chunks of meat - cooked in a variety of ways. And there were soups, which are a basic Turkic food item.

There were also ambulatory vendors selling cooked sweets: helva with almonds, with grapes, and "homemade helva" (hanegi) the composition of which is unknown - helva were often made of sugar, butter, and wheat starch cooked together, although there were other kinds as well.

I am not certain if they were around before 1601, but by the 17th c there were also ambulatory vendors of water and of sherbet (fruit syrup beverages).

During the festivals held for the circumcisions of the sultans' sons, the palace distributed food to the populace and presented parades of life-size sculptures of sugar, which were later left to the populace to pillage.

Urtatim

From: elise fleming <alyskatharine at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Street Food?
Date: June 16, 2014 11:53:20 PM CDT
To: sca-cooks <sca-cooks at lists.ansteorra.org>

Some of Breughel's paintings show vendors of food.

Alys K.

From: Johnna Holloway <johnnae at mac.com>
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Street Food?
Date: June 17, 2014 2:32:41 PM CDT
To: Cooks within the SCA <sca-cooks at lists.ansteorra.org>

<<< On Jun 17, 2014, at 12:53 AM, elise fleming <alyskatharine at gmail.com> wrote:
Some of Breughel's paintings show vendors of food.

Alys K. >>>

Along those lines, there is this volume 
Pieter Bruegel and the Culture of the Early Modern Dinner Party
By Claudia Goldstein. described as "In focusing on dinner parties in sixteenth-century Antwerp, Goldstein contextualizes some of Bruegel's paintings by examining patronage, intellectual history and the history of food and feasts. Goldstein explores fine art and material culture, letters and books, inventories and archives. Her research is thorough, her conclusions sound, her writing style is clear and lively, and she crosses disciplinary boundaries to contribute original ideas to the study of early modern Europe.'"

Also Clifford Wright's thoughts on " Mediterranean Take-Out Food in the Middle Ages."

http://www.cliffordawright.com/caw/food/entries/display.php/topic_id/8/id/100/

Johnnae 

<the end>

Edited by Mark S. Harris	p-street-food-msg	 of