Feeding the Royal Face, Part Two

Last time, I talked a little bit about what you might call the day-to-day imperial food culture. But what about those really big occasions, when a little something extra was called for?

Maximilian as King of the Romans
17th century woodcut

When Maximilian became King of the Romans in 1486, he gave orders for food to be prepared on streets and squares for the common people. For example, a gigantic spit was erected where a whole ox was roasted, which was filled with a pig, which was stuffed with a goose, then a chicken, then a game bird. Rhein wine flowed from city pumps.

Maximilian sees your Turducken, and raises you an Oxpigoochibird.

While the commoners were feasting thusly, Maximilian and his father, Emperor Friedrich III, were dining at the Rathaus (city hall), where a festive coronation banquet was given. Kaiser and King sat eight steps higher than everyone else under a golden canopy, and ate from gold plates while the rest ate from silver. Fifty different dishes were served, including thirty-two different meat dishes.

Maximilian (wearing crown)
and Friedrich III (wearing turban)
depicted as Magi in an altarpiece

Another time, Maximilian and his entourage were celebrating Epiphany on the road. They stopped at an inn in Bozen, South Tyrol, all one hundred and forty of them, and had dinner. I certainly hope they called ahead.

Maximilian, c.1500
Glass panel

The menu consisted of four capons, nine chickens, two hares, one Star* of white peas "for his majesty's own mouth", sauerkraut, beets, apples, onions, cabbage, pears, two pigs "turned into sausages at his majesty's command", cumin seeds, and four hundred pounds of beef and veal.

Mention was also made of milk, vinegar, salt, barley, and lard, presumably from which to make sauces, and fine white flour for rolls.

*According to Wikipedia, a Star was about thirty liters. Let us hope that his Majesty elected to share his peas with the entire company, for the sake of the imperial digestion.

Food was linked to status in Maximilian's time, as it is today. Certain things on this menu were more likely to be found on the table of a peasant than an emperor, like cabbage, sauerkraut, and beets. Capons were a high-status food, however, and presumably Max made short work of all four of them himself.

Banquet scene from Weiß-Kunig

The cost for all of this? Unfortunately, the bill for the drinks didn't survive, but the food bill came to twenty Rhenish gulden, or about eight Kreuzer per person. Just to give you some idea of the value of money in those days, it was possible to live on an income of forty gulden per year, if you were extremely frugal.

I'll leave you with an interesting twist on 'four-and-twenty blackbirds baked in a pie'. In 1454, Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy, gave a massive banquet which included, as part of the non-edible entertainment, twenty-eight musicians in a pie crust.

Sources:

Adamson, Melitta Weiss: Food in Medieval Times. Greenwood Press, 2004.

Benecke, Gerhard: Maximilian I: An Analytical Biography. Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1982.

Wiesflecker, Hermann: Kaiser Maximilian I: Jugend, burgundische Erbe, und Römisches Königtum. 1971.

At table with the Emperor

Banquet of the Peacock
Anon, mid-15th century

Characters in novels have to eat sometimes, even in a book about art, music, and an emperor's quest for immortality. So I've been doing some reading about food in the late middle ages and early modern era, roughly around the year 1500. Learning about people's eating and drinking habits and food preparation is always interesting, otherwise we wouldn't find ourselves watching cooking shows for hours on end, right?

Before we talk about what Europeans were eating in the early sixteenth century, let's take a moment to consider what they weren't eating: they weren't eating tomatoes, corn, or chocolate. They weren't eating out-of-season fruit, and they weren't drinking coffee or tea. Even the potato, something we consider a staple of the traditional German diet, wasn't introduced in Europe until the second half of the sixteenth century.

So what were they eating? What did Maximilian find on his breakfast table in the morning, alongside his copy of The Financial Times? (Just kidding, there were no newspapers, either.)

Maximilian's Power Lunch
by Altdorfer

The short answer is bread, meat, and wine. Meals were served twice a day at court in Innsbruck, at 9 AM and 4 PM, and everyone ate together in one large dining hall, from the emperor on down to the lowliest kitchen maid. Who sat where was dictated by strict protocol. The royals, court officials, and the upper servants ate rolls of fine white flour, while the lower servants ate coarse dark rye bread. The diet was heavily meat-based, especially at the court of a fanatical hunter like Maximilian. 

Stag Hunt of Frederick the Wise by Cranach (detail)
Maximilian is on the right, in a blue hunting habit

Here's a typical menu at the Innsbruck court of Maximilian and his second wife Bianca Maria Sforza:

Breakfast: meat and soup, game fried in batter or in a pie with pastry, cabbage, porridge, bread, and wine.

Dinner: Cooked cabbage or beets, stew, salted calfs head, or similar dishes according to season.

Wine mixed with water was the beverage of choice.

Anonymous painting depicting
Herod's banquet
Innsbruck, 16th century

Catholics had to adhere to strict rules regarding fasting, and there were lots of fasting days: the forty days of Lent, plus Wednesday, Fridays, and Saturdays throughout the year, and the eve of major feast days. No meat, dairy, or animal fats were to be consumed. Cooks became very creative while working within these restrictions: almond milk sounds like a modern invention, but it was widely used on fast days instead of cow's milk, and they even succeeded in making cheese out of it!

If you were entertaining important guests on a fasting day, here's what the menu might have looked like:

1. Almond puree with dumplings
2. Fresh fish, boiled
3. Cabbage with fried trout
4. Crayfish cooked in wine, then pureed and sprinkled with cloves
5. Figs cooked in wine with whole almonds
6. Rice pudding made with almond milk and decorated with whole almonds
7. Trout boiled in wine
8. Crayfish cooked in wine
9. Shortbread with grapes covered with dough, and sprinkled with icing sugar
10. Various kinds of pears, apples, and nuts
    
    
    
    

    

    The Marriage at Cana by Gerard David,
    with members of Maximilian's family depicted

    
    

Maximilian was fond of good wine, especially Ribolla and Malvasia, and he liked fruit: apples, pears, cherries, peaches and grapes. He also had his fruitier special-order southern fruit like melons, oranges, and figs.

Food is a powerful way to connect to happy memories: people evoke nostalgia by preparing cherished family recipes. Maximilian was no different. In a letter to his daughter Margaret, who was governor of the Netherlands, Maximilian mentions that he is sending her a kitchen hand, and asked that he be taught to make pâtés in the Flemish way. Considering that Maximilian spent some of the happiest years of his life at the Burgundian court, it's no wonder that he looked to food to remind him of those days.

Banquet scene from Weiß-Kunig
showing Margaret of York,
Maximilian, and Mary

Sources:

Adamson, Melitta Weiss: Food in Medieval Times. Greenwood Press, 2004

Benecke, Gerhard: Maximilian I: An Analytical Biography. Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1982