What People Ate In Medieval France — Recreated With AI

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Hail fellows! Prithee, take a gander at this bounty, a fare ramble througheth meals of ages gone by... Okay, I can't keep up this medieval speak, but I do love the vibes. And as a food writer, I LOVE thinking about what and how people ate in other time periods.
In culinary school, I learned all about the stale bread once used as plates called "trenchers" and the heavy-handed seasoning used to mask the stench of rotting meat — both staples of medieval European dining. But I could never quite picture what an actual medieval dinner looked like (beyond the overly dramatic portrayals in movies like Sleeping Beauty or A Knight's Tale)... until now.
Using a quintessential product of the Information Age, generative AI, I can finally actually conceive of some of the wildest medieval dishes I'd only ever read about. Using Le Viandier de Taillevent, one of the oldest French cookbooks out there, I recreated historically accurate images based on recipes for a 14th-century banquet at the royal court in Paris. For this food history geek, the results were SO. FASCINATING.
Feasts at 14th-century French courts didn't have courses as we think of them — or forks — but they did have plenty of meat...
The upper echelons of the era LOVED eating birds — especially when they symbolized royalty and opulence as peacocks did. French royals stunted on their dinner guests with an elaborate bird dish called "armed* peacock":
Le Viandier instructs the cook to: "Blow them, scald them, slit them along the belly, skin them, and remove the carcasses. Roast the carcasses on a spit and glaze them (while turning) with batter of beaten egg white and egg yolk. Remove them from the spit, let them cool, and (if you wish) clothe them in their skin. Have little wooden skewers put in the neck to hold it upright as if it were alive. At a feast, serve in the second course.Another translation specifies seasonings: "add cloves and for two plates, an ounce of powder and small spices: seeds, cloves, long pepper, nutmeg and two ounces of cinnamon ground into powder and then take a pint of rose water and a pint of vinegar and put under the roast..."*armed — refers to the bird being "redressed" in its feathers and presented at a feast to look like the bird in its living state. Wowza.
How do you take your lark? Yes, the cute little songbird was a mainstay of Middle Age banquet halls. This is how the royal chef prepared them:
"For the larks. Take the larks and make them suffer*, and put veal in a pot with them to get the best broth. Then, take some bread and season it, and put it in beef broth and mix it with the livers and bread to strain. When it is strained, you will put everything together in the pot. Take cinnamon, ginger, fine spices, and greens."*make them suffer — This likely refers simply to butchering the bird. But what a way to phrase it. Brutal.
For the grandest of all feasts, the dishes had to be just as blinged out as the guests, as evidenced by this recipe for Gilded Chickens with Quenelles:
"After the chicken is killed, break a bit of skin on the head, take a feather tube, blow in until it is very full of air, scald it, slit it along the belly, skin it, and put the carcass aside. For the stuffing and the quenelles, have some raw pork... some chicken meat, eggs, good fine powder, pine nut paste, and currants... Stuff the chicken skins with it (but do not fill them so much that they burst), restitch them, and boil them in a pan... When the quenelles are well made, put them to cook with the chickens... on slender spits...Afterwards, spoon an egg batter on top of your chickens and quenelles, until they are glazed... Take some gold or silver leaf and wrap it."In my head, this is what Elon Musk has every night for dinner.
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Today, we have Croque Madame, back in the day they had Sauce Madame, which is — you guessed it — not at all like the sandwich we know and love:
"To make Sauce Madame, roast a goose and place a pan underneath. Take the liver of a lamb or other poultry and roast it on the grill. Then, when it is cooked, toast it and soak it in a little broth, and pass it through a cheesecloth. Boil a dozen eggs. Take the yolks and finely chop them. Then, when the meat is cooked, place it on top and add the sauce. If you want to taste milk, add a drop or two to the boil."This dish won the award for "Most Appetizing" of the meat course for me... that's saying something.
While a young cow's intestines might not sound like a good time to you, it was the talk of the dinner party circa 1345. Here's how they made it back in the day:
"To make calf mesentery, that one calls 'charpie.' Take your meat when it is completely cooked, cut it up very small, and fry it in lard. Crush ginger and saffron. Beat some raw eggs, and thread them onto your meat in the lard. Crush spices and add some."These dishes were heavy on the spice for more than just flavor: spices were expensive imports that communicated to everyone at the party just how good the hosts had it. It's giving caviar.
As if this meal wasn't pungent enough, let's add some seafood to the mix...
Lemprey is a fish — one that looks more like a sandworm from Dune than an earthly edible thing. And yes, Middle Age nobles ate it stuffed and covered in gelatin:
"Lamprey in galantine. Bleed it... keep the blood, and cook it in vinegar, wine, and a bit of water. When it is cooked, put it to cool on a cloth. Take grilled bread, steep in your broth, [strain] through cheesecloth, boil with the blood, and stir well so that it does not burn. When it is well boiled, pour it into a mortar or a clean basin and stir continually until it is cooled. Grind ginger, cassia flowers, cloves, grains of paradise, nutmeg, and long pepper, steep in your broth, put as before into a basin with your fish, and put the basin in a wooden or tin dish. Thus, you have a good galantine."Thus, you have a dish that makes my skin crawl.
Honestly wasn't expecting to read a recipe for dolphin in this cookbook, but at this point, I am way past getting shocked with these dishes:
All our 600-year-old text says is, "Dolphins, lily flowers, star of creams, fried with sugar and egg yolks."Right. Riiiight. I'm detecting a slight mistranslation... it has been 600 years, after all.
Based on Le Viandier, the French were not too worried about getting their veggies in. Mustard soup is one of the few vegetarian dishes in the cookbook:
"To make mustard soup... take eggs fried in lily or butter and then puree mustard, cinnamon, ginger, small spices such as cloves and garlic, and sugar, all together, boil in a pot, and remove any excess greens and taste with salt as appropriate and put the broth aside."
And, a French banquet isn't really complete without dessert...
Did you know the All-American apple pie has a medieval French cousin? Me neither! Surely, this simple apple tart is going to be simple, spiced, and sweet:
"Apple tarts: apple pieces, figs and grapes, well-cleaned, and put among the apples and figs & all mixed together. Here is put an onion fried in butter or in wine... crushed apples and destemmed apples in wine... with saffron... a few small spices: cinnamon, white ginger, anise... all the ingredients put together very crushed by hand [into] a paste well thick with apples and other ingredients.. After it is put the lid... gilded with saffron and put in the oven & cooked."No, ya, they put onions in apple pie. Of course, they did that.
Hath your 21st-century tastes found this medieval feast scrumptious or stomach-churning? Tell us in the comments and share the other historical cuisines you're curious to learn more about.
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This post was enhanced using AI-powered creativity tools.