For medieval people, colour provided important information about the nature of objects, and that was no less true of what they ate than of anything else. On one level colour might expose moral and spiritual connotations, on another it might offer indications of characteristics of a foodstuff according to medieval humoral theories. Moreover, it was to form an important element in the elite cuisine that developed across Europe from 1200 and perhaps earlier. Display was a crucial part of this cuisine, and this paper demonstrates how and why it was employed, and the ways in which these culinary practices were emulated elsewhere in society. Recipes instructed cooks in colouring dishes, and in ways of adding verisimilitude to made dishes. Heraldic colours and designs were employed for 'subtleties', the set pieces that came to table with wider messages. There were general cultural associations between colours and culinary preparations, and some types of dish show common patterns of colouring. However fleeting the colours of foodstuffs, they offer a further dimension to our understanding of meals, the material culture of dining and medieval mentalities.
a b s t r a c tGifts of food were an integral part of late medieval culture. Small items, such as fruit, might be given by anyone. As part of commensality, sociability, hospitality and charity, food gifts underpinned customary patterns of life; they developed networks of relationships, establishing good lordship, and played an important role in negotiations. Patterns of giving demonstrate the distinctiveness and appropriateness of some categories of foodstuff, and illuminate the purposes of donors. Changes over time can be identified: indiscriminate hospitality or large-scale food alms fell out of common practice after the Black Death and gifts of money were preferred in some circumstances. Giving choice foodstuffs, however, remained a constant.
a b s t r a c tThe study of food in the middle ages attracted much interest among antiquarians from the eighteenth century on. New perspectives came with the growth of social and economic history. Over the last two decades, re-evaluations of historical sources, along with contributions from other disciplines, especially archaeology, the archaeological sciences, anthropology and sociology, have changed the possibilities for this area of research. The study of cooking, of cuisine and its cultural context, as much as food production and the material conditions of life, is now central to developing our understanding of consumption. This paper explores new possibilities for the study of taste and demotic cuisine, food and virtue, the association of women with food, and the role of food in society and in cultural change.It is hardly surprising that food is ubiquitous in our sources for the middle ages; what is less expected is that interest in food in the past has not been more in the mainstream of study in history or in related disciplines. There are now ample signs that this is changing and historians expect to consider a wide range of topics intimately connected to food: the place of fasting and feasting; the relationship with virtue and religion; taboos; physical arrangements for cooking, along with the development and training of cooks; the role of gastronomy, the development of taste and specialised food products; food grammar d the structure and timing of meals; food preservation and marketing; technological change and new foods; famine and glut; group diets, regional and wider food cultures; seasonality, wild foods and hunting; and connections to nutrition and to demography. It is a list easily susceptible to expansion. With it have come important developments in the availability and use of evidence, and an interest in the interpretative models of cognate disciplines. *
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