Foreign food in the Middle Ages

A lot of foods that Americans now take for granted were once considered foreign foods.  Pizza, now one of the most popular American things to eat, really only appeared in the US after World War II.  (I've heard it said now that anyone who knows how to make a good pizza can get a job anywhere in the country.)  Chinese stir fry, sushi, tacos, Greek olives, and so much more have similarly been thoroughly domesticated.

In the Middle Ages, "foreign" foods were also introduced and taken up.  A lot of them came originally from Asia.  Dishes and ingredients that had already been popular in India spread to Persia (modern Iran), and from there to the Muslim Mediterranean.  The Spanish peninsula, which was at least partially under Islamic control during the Middle Ages, was a conduit for new dishes to reach western Europe.

An important migrating vegetable was the eggplant.  From India it spread to Persia, where an eggplant-lamb dish became very popular among the upper classes, and from there onward eventually to Europe, which it reached in the ninth century.  Eggplant however will not grow everywhere in Europe, as it needs lots of sun and also lots of irrigation, so northern Europe did not take it up until more recently.

Why is a purple vegetable called eggplant?  The version first introduced into England was white, not purple (you can still get white eggplant at farmers' markets) and more round than elongate, hence looking sort of like an egg with a green stem, as seen below.  The French call it aubergine, a word that might suggest something grown and served at an inn, but which is in fact a corruption of al-badinjan, the Arabic name for it.  Aubergine is also now the name of a dark purple color.  (Recipe tip:  always use lots of olive oil and spices when cooking eggplant.)

Spinach made a similar journey, reaching western Europe in the ninth century.  Spinach, however, will grow readily in many conditions and does not need nearly as long a growing season as eggplant, so it very quickly spread across medieval Europe.  Spinach has iron (as Popeye knew), so it provided needed nutrients to the medieval diet when in season.

Apricots also spread across Europe around the same time.  The trees are more cold-tolerant than peaches, which helped their spread.  The name is a corruption of the Arabic al-barquq.  The fruit bruises easily,  so it really does not transport well (which is why apricots in the store are usually disappointing), but people who had had the fruit liked it so much that they planted orchards of their own (no problem transporting the seed).

One dish we may now think of as "foreign" is lasagna.  Italian, not English, right?  But in fact it was known both in England and in Sicily in the thirteenth century, as cookbooks from then attest.  In both cases, they probably got it from the Normans, who may have invented it.  Now it wasn't the same as our lasagna, because there was no tomato sauce, but it was a dish with layers of flat noodles and lots of cheese.

Much of the information in this post is based on the important scholarship on food being done by Dr. Katie Peebles.

© C. Dale Brittain 2019

For more on medieval food, see my new ebook, Positively Medieval:  Life and Society in the Middle Ages.