Staff of Life and all that

Do you know what pottage is?

In medieval days pottage, bread and ale were the backbone of  everyone's diet. We are told by Andrew Boorde (1542) that "pottage is made of the liquor in the which the flesh is sodden in, with putting-to chopped herbs, and oatmeal and salt."

 The object was to  produce a semi-liquid  but thick spoonmeat.
Cereal pottage was based on the breadcorn of the region - rye, wheat, or a combination of the two, often called maslin; barley, oats or dredge-corn (again a mixture of the last two). These might be ground at home with a hand quern or in a mortar. Both resulted in rough grain. Later this became illegal as it was said to deprive the manorial mill of its dues.

Once this was done, the  mixture was washed and then boiled until it was tender and brown. Some recipes had the grains boiled, cooled and then mixed with cows' milk and a beaten egg stirred in. This earned the name "Frumenty." Rich folk ate it with venison or porpoise. Poor folk ate it as a breakfast or supper dish, with little else but for milk or a little cream or butter if it was to be had. Gruel was oatmeal boiled in water.

In Scotland the cereal pottage was brochan - the old Gaelic word for oatmeal porridge, and sometimes eaten with kail and/or onions. The dalesmen of the Pennines and the Welsh ate a similar oatmeal or oatmeal and barley mixture. In the south of England oatmeal became a favourit thickener for meat and herb pottages as well as breadcrumbs or "amidon," a wheat starch very much like Cato's amulum of sixteen hundred years before.

"Drawn  gruel"  contained lean beef, boiled and pulled to draw out the gravy, and with  the addition of oatmeal, parsley, sage, and salt. "Forced" gruel had pork added, once it had been worked to a pulp in the mortar. Eggs were sometimes added, but considered rather extravagent.

Rice from the south of Europe was added to pottage, too. It came with the spice ships from the Mediterranean and the Countess of Leicester used 110 pounds of it in four months during 1265. In a smaller household, the record show only 3 pounds of rice used in the whole year 1419.