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 Fast Food in Medieval Europe
  
While we generally think of fast food as a uniquely
American invention of the late twentieth century, it has in fact
been around since Roman times in urban settings in which there were
a great many poor and /or single adults living in small rooms. These
people had no money or space to lay in stores of food; they could
afford neither cooking utensils nor fuel to prepare food. [1] Already in the late 12th
century, there was a "fast food" area on the Thames
in London, a medieval version of a "drive-in", where
hungry travellers could fill up; these shops provided a range of
pricing and foods and were open around the clock.[2]
By the high and late Middle Ages, there were many urban centers in Britain and continental Europe where such conditions, as in ancient Rome, were also present. 13th century Köln and Venice had around 50,000, while London was nearing the 25,000
mark in its smaller confines.[3] However, studies of the city of Colchester,
England, in the early 14th century show that only 3%
of households that paid taxes [11 out of 389] had a kitchen. Many
artisans, other workers, and classes of the urban poor, such as
impoverished widows, lived in single rooms, where there were no
cooking facilities, not even a hearth. From wills that inventoried
possessions, it is possible to gain a glimpse of the difficult circumstances
in which they lived. The bequests of the poor women included only
clothing and bedding, which means that they must have lived in inexpensive
lodgings with neither furnishings nor cooking equipment. Langland's
Piers Plowman notes that
impecunious widows had to spend the little money they earned spinning
on their rent, milk, and oatmeal. Coroners' rolls for convicted
criminals reveal a similar picture. In fourteenth-century London,
murderers and other perpetrators of violent crime were listed as
having no possessions; in the rolls that still exist, only seven
criminals had kitchen utensils. [4]
What did people like these, living on society's
margins, eat? The one commercial product that was cheap, readily
available, and not immediately perishable, was bread, which formed
the mainstay of their diet. Flour also formed the basis of a wide
variety of prepared foods, most of which were sold hot, which means
that they were meant for immediate consumption. Fast foods of the
London of the late 13th and early 14th centuries
containing wheat included pies, hot cakes, pancakes, wafers.[5] Meat
pies and pasties were especially adaptable for ease of carrying
and consumption, much like today's Big Mac.
How do we know that poor people were the chief
patrons of the fast food shops? Since these people were illiterate,
they left no spending records. The answer is in the process of elimination.
We do know the spending and eating habits of the wealthy, because
they left detailed records, which indicates that they rarely used
the cookshops; their main commercially prepared expenditures were
for bread, which everyone from all classes who lived in cities,
purchased, and condiments like mustard.[6]
Additional evidence that the main patrons
were the poor can be found in urban surveys of grain stocks, which
show that 41% of the households had no grain at all on hand. [7] Evidence
can also be found in regulations such as in those enforced in London
in 1350, which prevented greedy bakers from charging more than a
penny to put the meat of a customer in a bread casing and bake it.
[8]
Why did people with sufficient incomes to buy food,
store it and cook it not use the cookshops and the fast food outlets
of the time, as many in that position do today? There are some answers
that are the same now as then. The cooks in these places were generally
not well-regarded; the common view of them was that they were dishonest
and dirty. Both of these qualities affected the wholesomeness as
well as the safety of the food. Norwich sources from the late thirteenth
century indicate that cooks from a neighboring town made sausage
and pudding from diseased pork that was not fit to eat. During the
same period, cooks and pasty makers apparently warmed up pasties
that were several days old and spoiling. York ordinances prohibited
the sale of fresh meat kept for more than 24 hours or the sale of
undercooked pasties or those with tainted meat, yet York cooks were
successfully indicted for all of these practices. Other unsafe food
practices included the production of pasties and meat pies from
tainted rabbit, geese and offal, or to pass beef pasties off as
venison. In Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, the host of the Tabard
Inn was infamous for the use of warmed-up pies and the presence
of numerous flies in his establishment.[ix] A common saying in late medieval and
early modern times was that God sends the meat, but the devil sends
cooks.[x]
The wholesomeness and safety of food concern people
today; even with a much stronger state and enforcement of food safety
practices, people know that dirty restaurant kitchens and use of
unwholesome food still exist. But, then as now, the urban poor depended
on such places for day-to-day sustenance. Then as now, fast and
unwholesome food is available to those whose incomes or lack of
them make their cost prohibitive. Medieval people, who lived alone
with not even a hearth, often returned to their miserable quarters after
a hard day out in the cold, at a time when the food markets were
closed. They had to have something to eat.[xi]
And the cookshop, often open well after midnight, with smells of
savory pies and hot cakes, was it.
Related projects:
Medieval fast foods made with flour: the baked pastry or roll, then as now, provided a convenient package. For a Home Economics lesson, you could do the following:
Notes
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