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.