My name is Giles Coren.
I'm a writer, restaurant critic and unashamed glutton.
I'm being joined by Sue Perkins,
performer, broadcaster and sort of vegetarian,
on an extraordinary journey exploring the dining habits of the last 2,000 years.
Each week we'll be medically tested...
...dressed for the part...
and forced to trough our way
through the breakfasts and banquets of our culinary past.
This week, we'll be going back to medieval England to sample
400 years of extraordinary social and culinary change.
We'll be gorging on mythical beasts...
Some form of sick, genetic, twisted experimentation
you've been doing in the kitchen.
...I'll be learning how to be a knight...
...And Sue will have a run-in with a ravenous bird of prey.
Don't eat my hat!
In 1066, William the Conqueror and his Norman army defeated the English
King Harold and launched 400 years of cultural and gastronomic upheaval.
England became a vast cross-channel country,
stretching from Scotland to Paris, and the unsuspecting Anglo-Saxons
got a new ruling class, a new language and a radical new cuisine.
I'll be living the life of a conquering Norman knight.
Brutal violence will be my way.
And I'm an Anglo-Saxon damsel in distress. Great distress.
I've lost my land and my home to the invader, Sir Giles,
and there seems to be some idea that he gets me too.
And the gardens? They're through here with the infinity pool.
I'd love to put a pool in.
There's planning permission, is there? Oh, yeah, yeah!
But before we face a week of medieval life,
we're off to the clinic for a check-up.
Medieval doctors believed in a system of bodily fluids called
the four humours, which they thought were the key to life and good health.
Now, humours were four basic fluids
that moved around your body almost in a mushy soup.
So, yellow bile, found in vomit.
Black bile, found in your poo,
blood was blood, and phlegm was phlegm.
And if those fluids were in balance you were well.
And if they were out of balance, you weren't well.
Balancing one's humours was a medieval preoccupation,
and the easiest way to do it was with your diet.
This was fantastically important to medieval people.
This wasn't a fad, this was almost a matter of life and death to them.
If they ate the wrong foods, their humours would be disturbed,
OK, and they would become ill, or even die.
In medieval times, your physician would decide
which was your dominant humour by analysing your behaviour.
But today, we're doing an NHS questionnaire.
So, we've got your results.
Sue, you've come out as being relatively sane, you'll be pleased to hear. Good.
But tending to melancholia. Oh!
But as a comic, you know, a bit of humour, maybe a
bit of underlying sadness, the tears of a clown and all that.
This is a questionnaire which said, "How do you feel?"
You say, "I'm generally happy but a bit sad,"
and you're diagnosed as melancholy. That is rocket science.
You say, "I'm all right, but sometimes
I want to hit people in a supermarket queue." You're choleric!
And you are, in fact, choleric!
I'm not... What do you... what's choleric about me?
Tend, tend, tend... Angry.
Easily angered. Rubbish! Nonsense!
My new manor, Penshurst Place in Kent, is the largest hall in medieval England.
It's my reward from the king for killing so many of Sue's relatives.
And it's mine so long as I supply him with troops and taxes from my peasantry.
So I'll be ruling with an iron fist.
My hair! My hair! Not the hair!
What are you going to do? I've just done my hair!
The chain mail weighs 40 pounds.
That's like carrying 20 bags of sugar.
Not that anybody in medieval England would know what a bag of sugar looked like.
My God! Excalibur!
But do you see how it's got this runnel here for, so that when I
thrust it, the blood just oozes down here and I lick the blood
of the infidel.
'I'm not sure Sue is looking forward to her week as much as I am.'
I owned all that until the Normans came and ruined everything.
And now, instead of being Lady of the Manor, I'm a damsel in distress,
which is a role that I'm very good at.
You know, I'm very good at just looking busty and shouting "help"
in a high-pitch voice from a turret.
It's something that comes second nature to me.
The food on a nobleman's table depended on the land he controlled.
With its 4,000 acres and hundreds of peasant farmers, I'm expecting mine
to provide an enormous quantity and range of seasonal produce.
There would have been more than 100 people working in the kitchens here,
but we're making do with one man - Michelin starred chef, Martin Blunos.
A lot of bread! I see that we're renovating the East Wing! You are.
That is actually your crockery. The food will be served onto this and...
Yeah, and the juices will collect so it doesn't soil the...
Mmm, juicy bread and then eat... Nice! No, no! No!
Sir, you, you would pass this to the less fortunate. Scum.
'Water was considered dangerous, so,
not having any tea or coffee, they drank ale instead.'
Which is which? Is this... Well, that's for you to find out.
I never ask questions.
I just drink it and see who's there with me in the morning. Mmm!
Is that good? Is it?
Hard to say. This is very, very watery beer.
Someone has watered this down, they know what we get like.
'I'm introducing these backward people to one of my favourite Norman delicacies.'
We've got rabbit brought in by the Normans.
They shouldn't have bothered. They really shouldn't. Look at that.
I think it's been skinned, my dear.
I don't think it's a special medieval skinned rabbit.
But they brought them and they dug warrens, caged in the warrens,
had a map to the warrens, knew where they all were. Quite clever!
'Medieval eating was extreme.
'Four days a week, a baron would feast on mountains of meat.
'But gluttony was a mortal sin,
so for the other three days he would detox his soul by eating only fish.
'They called it fasting, but nobody went hungry.'
And what be this exotic looking fruit?
That, sir, is a lemon.
A lemon! A lemon. Who are you calling a lemon?
Back in the day, brought over from the Crusades,
this is like weird and wonderful.
Do you just eat it whole? You could try, but I think you'll find...
She's good at...
'The Crusades had a huge impact on medieval food.
'For the first time, English cooks added
pepper, ginger and cinnamon to their dishes.'
If you've got bland meats like the suckling pig,
put this stuff with it, great.
Very expensive, but it shows off!
So when you entertain some pleasant Frenchmen...
Yes. Well, I haven't entertained any of those so far.
When does the Hoover get invented, because he needs to go and use it?
I wish you'd go back to France.
Damn, I lost! But I won.
You're staying.
I wish you have three sisters and they all come into my bed chamber tonight!
Medieval life was short, with an average life expectancy in the mid 30s.
Anything bad that happened to you was blamed on the sins you had committed,
so it's not surprising that religion was at the heart of medieval life.
There was a written code of sins matched to their appropriate penance.
If you atoned, your sin was cancelled.
So a morning starts, not with food, but with penances.
Has anyone given you liquor, which a mouse or a weasel has drowned in?
Pass. OK, no. No! I have not...
Don't! Those are my testicles!
It's the only bit that isn't covered by chainmail.
No! That's why I'm going for them.
You've gone from conqueror to begging on a floor with
your hands in the praying position, flagellated genitals in 30 seconds.
How the hell did you manage to invade?!
SINGING IN LATIN
Something, something, something, something more!
You can't just go "Something, something, something." Latin, Latin, wibble, wibble.
Aaa-men! Right, that's one.
With heaven a little nearer, we can finally eat.
Dinner was the main meal of the day, served between ten and twelve.
Now, don't do it! You can't touch that!
What, the napkin?
That bread nappy is there for a reason! I might have poisoned you!
That's given me an idea for later.
'Living as a minority elite in the midst of a hostile population
will affect a chap's attitude to his food.
'A Norman baron would eat nothing until it had been tested for poison.'
Mmm. Good? Ah, that's very good.
Your opinions of how it tastes are neither here nor there.
You're not a restaurant critic, nor a lord,
the only people whose opinions anyone cares about.
Could you just give the rabbit a go as well?
I will. I'm hoping this one is, cos I just...
Martin, are you dead yet?
No. Can you try the steak?
The steak.
He's having free grub. Yeah!
I'm a peasant! I'm on the take! You are!
From the stuff that I've read, it said peasants were about eight stone.
Look at him! That's clearly not that kind of peasant.
'Using a slice of old bread as a plate, called a trencher,
takes some getting used to.
'And hefty eaters are still sometimes called trenchermen today.'
Mmm!
Cinnamon and steak!
Mulled steak. Mmm. It is mulled.
Cow. No, it's not bad.
In English we have different words for the animal when it's
walking around in the field and when you're eating it. So that we have...
We talk about an ox in the field, but beef when we're eating it.
And that's because we have all old English Anglo-Saxon words for the animals
when they're walking around, as soon as we eat them we use the French word.
That's because in this exact period, the Anglo-Saxons,
who were all basically peasants, didn't get to eat anything.
They did the farming, then the Normans came and ate it.
So boeuf was beef, mouton was mutton, porc is pork.
And everything, 900 years later on,
we still have an Anglo-Saxon word for the animal when
it's being farmed and a French word for when we're eating it. Absolutely.
We've got rabbit today, because I was reading the latest
Bayeux Tapestry they sent in, and they show William the Conqueror --
your king, not mine, not yet, I'm not ready to accept that --
everyone's knee-deep in battle...
You don't want to believe everything you read in that Bayeux Tapestry.
It's always...
It's got "the stars skinnier than ever",
and pictures of Tostig with suspicious white powder round his nostril.
I don't believe in that kind of journalism.
Edward the Confessor up-skirt shots as he gets out of a cab.
You'd have to lift your skirt a lot longer than
a quick flash, someone's got to do a tapestry of it.
Ever done needlepoint? Takes more than a flash!
Those paparazzi are sitting there for hours getting the first cross-stitch in.
Cockentrice - a fantastical beast.
A cockentrice was believed to hatch from a cock's egg incubated by a
venomous snake and could change base substances into gold.
This is Martin's first mythical beast.
He's going to sew together the rear of a piglet and the front of a turkey.
And that is how it's going to end up.
The skill of the chef was supposed to reflect the wit and power of his
lord, so Martin is putting a lot of effort into the presentation.
You've got to have leather fingers to do this, I tell you.
OK, so there's our mythical beast, our cockentrice, ready now for the stuffing.
It's all sewn up. Look at that.
What is it? So, it's the Loch Ness Monster clearly.
No, you have a cockentrice.
It's a cockerel and it's a piglet, sewn together and stuffed with a stuffing,
again with liver, we've got bread in there, eggs, pine nuts and currants again.
I can't abide a bird-pig hybrid without currants, so I'm glad they're in.
Yeah, they crept into everything, I've noticed, in this period.
It's just like some form of sick, genetic, twisted experimentation
you've been doing in the kitchen.
This is good.
Aw!
I'm expecting to see a sort of flock of birds come out now.
I'm not convinced that this is the only layer of subtlety you're playing.
No, there is the stuffing I need to find as well for you.
This is quite brutal. There we are, look at that, lovely bit of farci.
Lovely! That looks...madness.
Thank you. Thank you.
It looks really succulent.
Amazing. Very delicious.
I feel for that turkey though, getting ram-rodded by that piglet.
'There must have been something in that meal -
- Sir Giles' humours are definitely up.
'I'll have to find him a hobby.'
In the Norman universe, pecking order was everything, especially in falconry.
Only the king was permitted to hunt with an eagle, a prince would have a
peregrine, and knaves and servants would have kestrels.
I'm a baron, so I get a hawk.
If you were caught carrying the wrong bird of prey, you'd lose a hand.
Go get a banquet. We need 101 ox, we need 104 rabbit, 104...
Aw, he's giving me the eye there, as if to say... Hey!
Yes, just having a middle evensong.
Yeah, that's it, my darling. Oh, she likes you!
I shouldn't have worn that Lynx.
Here you go. At what point does she turn around and eat my eye?
How do we catch a rabbit? I can see one down there.
Well, ideally they'd be in a tree to build up more speed.
So shall we put them in a tree first?
You know, give it a try. Come on, into the tree.
Yeah, man. Not bad. Two-one.
'Medieval England was covered with forest rich in game,
which people depended on for food.
'But at the Norman conquest, whole chunks of England became the King's land.
Nobody could hunt or even gather firewood.
Allowing your animals to graze on the King's land
would lead to imprisonment, and if you killed a deer, you'd be blinded.'
So if I was very, very wealthy I'd have a falcon, if I was poor
I'd have what, a blue tit on my arm, just a little...?
No, you'd have a kestrel or something like that.
What, a can of? I feel, that's what I feel like.
Yeah. OK, no it would be a real kestrel that would be...
Mmm, yes! Lovely! Don't eat my hat!
No, he won't. He won't.
Come on! Come on! Come on! Ha-ha.
Tree!
'Hunting was thought to be dangerous for the humours,
'so I've ordered cook to serve some humour-balancing dishes at supper.
'Supper was a light meal served at dusk.
'Boar in sweet and sour sauce is an antidote for an excess of phlegm.
'And fish in sweet sauce is a cheering dish for the melancholic.
'But venison with frumenty,
it's dangerously heating for cholerics like Giles.'
I'm having venison, that's the only thing I like. You can't have venison!
It makes you angry! It doesn't make me angry! It does!
I'm in such a good mood it couldn't make me angry.
That will turn you to the dark side!
You touch that deer and you'll be raging like a nutter! This is mine.
What is that?
It's supposed to be good for the melancholic, but I feel depressed
looking at it, because basically it's fish in sugar. Smell it.
It's medicine! It's not meant to be nice!
The nastier it is, the better it is for you!
I can taste sugar! I can taste sugar and pilchards!
Argh! It's making me really angry!
I've over-balanced. I've become choleric.
They haven't put it in to make the taste good.
Listen, you can lecture me about it once you've tasted it.
If you're going to make comments about it, put it in your mouth!
I don't want it. I was just thinking of... Put it in your mouth!
I'm not allowed to... Put it in your mouth and eat it!
Why are you trying? I'm choleric, I'm not supposed to!
Train in the tunnel. Chemin de fer.
You've had Norman boys round here before that you've played trains with.
Go on, try it.
Ha-ha, pilchards and sugar.
Hmm-mmm. Eat it! OK, I will.
Chew it.
Your jowls have gone dropsied. No, it's good.
That was yummy.
'To combat Giles' choleric furies,
he should eat pork with sweet and sour sauce.'
It's just really bonkers to think they had all this lovely food,
and combined it according to some bogus Ancient Greek medical system
rather than what goes nicely, so you end up with fish and sugar.
But by chance they've got this pork and thing.
Like with pork and apple, it's supposed to have been invented as a
thing of balancing the humours, and in fact it's really nice.
'This plate of venison is the worst thing possible
for the choleric Sir Giles. Shame, venison's his favourite.'
Mmm! Mmm!
But you don't like any medieval food and suddenly,
just cos I can't have it, you're pretending to go, "Yum, yum, yum."
Mmm! It's brown! You don't like brown food!
I love it. Unctuous and sticky.
Now it's making me angry. It's making me furious! Get off it!
It'll do that. It's like Alien!
Um, yum, yum, yum, yum.
Well, I can honestly say that all this food has made me sad.
So the humours, quite frankly, is a lot of old tosh.
Well, you've made me angry.
Can't clean my teeth. What have I got?
A few twigs to scrape in your mouth like that.
Nice. That's dislodged a bit of mutton. Don't know when that came
into the mouth.
I've eaten 80 different kinds of animals,
some of them served the way they were born
and some of them stitched together in the foulest ways.
Incredibly rich, incredibly strong-tasting.
I don't think I could possibly get to sleep if I tried.
Which is just as well, because tomorrow I'm going to be dubbed a knight,
so I have to spend all night kneeling in the crypt praying for my immortal soul.
And frankly, my heart will be right in it.
War was incessant through the Middle Ages,
and glorious violence became an end in itself.
Richard the Lionheart was admired for his ability
to chop his victims' skulls down to their teeth.
Jousts originally had no rules,
and there were so many deaths the King tried to ban them.
But towards the second half of the 13th century,
the character of knighthood began to change.
Codes of honour, based on Arthurian legend, urged knights to be merciful,
graceful, assist maidens in distress, pray regularly and not talk too much.
The chivalrous knight was born.
War heroes got all the best food back then,
so today I'm going to be dubbed a knight.
Welcome to the field of tourney.
Hurrah. Before I give you your helmet and your horse,
you need to swear an oath of allegiance of courage.
So basically I have to promise to be brave? Oh, yes.
Like a child going to the dentist.
Well, I promise that I will attempt to be brave.
Even though I'm rather scared of horses, I'm going to, you know...
It's really the horse more than the opponent.
So I swear that I won't cry. Let me give you your helmet.
Thank you very much.
And I have one more, I've one more cuff,
which won't hurt a lot, but it'll help you to remember your oath.
It is like the dentist. Ah!
Come on then.
'In these new codes, a knight can't be chivalrous without a damsel in distress.
'So here I am, stuck up a tower.'
So one of the big cliches of the medieval era is the damsel in distress.
You don't see "damsel in education"
or "damsel in jodhpurs, haring about being excitable."
She's always in distress! Now why is that?
I suppose it's because she's a stock figure in many medieval romances. Mm.
And she's usually the focus of attention, being young and beautiful.
Mm. And often a villainous character will want to kidnap her. Mmm.
Perhaps keep her away from her true love and have his way with her.
Perhaps he wants to marry her
because she's important and he can get status from her.
Now, he has sent me
a lot of this sort of food.
Now, I understand it's an aphrodisiac meal, this.
What do you think about him sending me this stuff?
I think, honestly, if he can't impress you with his own feats and his physique,
then he really shouldn't be trying to drug you.
Do you want to try some with me?
Yes, I will. OK. Shall we start with this?
This is, this is dizzy corn.
It's actually coriander seed.
Which I've never eaten raw, which is actually really tasty.
But the reason it's called dizzy corn is because if you eat it in
large quantities it has a sort of narcotic effect.
But quite severe quantities.
I mean, I've eaten a bucketful already,
and to be honest, you look like a giant mushroom!
While Sue hallucinates on my aphrodisiacs, I aim to impress on the jousting field.
Heraldry was an important part of combat wear.
Full face helmets meant you couldn't tell who you were fighting,
so your coat of arms identified you.
While Sir Giles fulfils his romantic fantasies,
I'm discovering the realities of medieval sex.
The almonds are to increase sperm production,
so I'm not quite sure why we've got them.
Maybe we should leave them to one side for Lord Giles.
We might want to give them to Lord Giles if he's not quite fulfilling...
Yes. ...his role.
But it was a terrible thing if men didn't fulfil their role, wasn't it?
It was, yes. It could lead to public humiliation, because it was
the grounds for annulling a marriage, if a man couldn't perform sexually.
And there are various accounts of men
having public trials, generally involving midwives.
So is it true that a load of old crones would sort of gather
around the bed with sort of clipboards and sort of watch him?
And I mean, any man, however sort of priapic,
is not really going to be able to...
to raise his game, as it were, with a load of housewives around him,
staring at him, monitoring him, is he?
Well, there are instances where men were able to prove that they could do it.
Perhaps that was what they needed. That was their thing!
But there are instances of marriages being annulled
because the man simply couldn't perform.
Scoring on the field was much more straightforward.
You just had to hit your opponent,
breaking a lance, or knock him off his horse.
Knock his helmet off and he'd be left crestfallen.
Ah!
You've done well. You've done well.
Now go and run me a hot bath, I'm stiff.
I don't fancy a nunnery, although to be fair I have got the face for it.
So what are my other options?
It depends how extreme you're willing to be in your...
Look at this extreme. Look at this desperate face.
Right, because there are...
In many saints' lives, young women, another form of damsel
were keen to avoid marriage with a pagan, an undesirable partner.
And there is one particular case of a saint called Saint Uncumber who was really
not at all keen to marry this suitor that her father wanted her to marry.
Right. And she prayed for deliverance from this. Mm.
And she actually grew a beard, thus rendering herself extremely unattractive.
That would be the sort of thing that would both convince you
of a higher presence and also make you an atheist overnight.
Please, please, please don't make me marry this man.
In the morning you're Brian Blessed.
Maybe her husband-to-be quite liked it!
Unfortunately not, because she did end up being crucified for her pains. So...
Oh, there's always a downside, isn't there?
That did mean she went to her real bridegroom, who was, of course, Christ.
So she went up to heaven and joined him instead. So that's the third way.
So it's drugged and compliant... Mm-hm.
...in a nunnery, or full beard? Yes.
I mean, already I can see that that's probably going to...
draw a crowd, but only the kind that have pitchforks and burning torches.
If I see his pupils dilating, even for a second,
I'll know that this damsel ladyboy is exactly the kind of thing
he wants jumping into the sack with him every night.
According to the traditions of courtly love, if heroism
and drugs don't work, my only hope is to throw myself on Sue's mercy.
Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair!
Well, if you'd said, I wouldn't have had it cut.
I've had an asymmetrical bob!
Come back in 50 years. I've probably got a couple of metres by then.
Rope ladder? Rope ladder?
Hang on a sec, I'll see what I've got.
I haven't got a rope ladder, but I've got that.
I'll climb up that, then. It's Barry Manilow's hankie, Lord Manilow.
Let go! Go!
Remember to hold one... Oh!
I was going to say one end.
Ah!
Well, I tell you, you know, a hard bloody life being a Norman knight.
You've got to be jousting, you've got to be doing
all kinds of physical activities, rescuing damsels and what-not.
Then at the same time you're meant to know poetry, astronomy, philosophy,
you've got to be genteel and parfait, you've got to pray all night.
And then you've got to enjoy cleaving a man's head off, leaving only the jaw.
Serious multiple personality disorders, I shouldn't wonder.
It's 1095, and the Muslim infidel are causing trouble in the Holy Land,
so I've decided to go on a crusade.
The Pope has declared slaughtering Saracens a way to save my soul.
And a little light looting of eastern novelties is an added perk.
While Giles is saving his soul, I'm left to entertain myself.
Even when not off fighting, medieval men and women lived quite separately
within a castle, each with their own companions, servants and entertainment.
I've never played the harp before, but I like it.
And if being lady of the manor doesn't work out,
I could always be a travelling minstrel.
It's a strange transitory period for rich, wealthy women.
You know, Saxon princesses suddenly displaced from their homes
have got, you know, nothing to do!
Formerly they would have been wealthy, looked after and managed their lands,
now they're stuck in towers thinking, "What shall I do with my time?"
That's right and very much the pastime in their chambers,
you would have a lady-in-waiting perhaps playing a harp,
or indeed the ladies themselves would play the harp,
because it was that type of instrument.
They had a very strange idea about silence as well.
The idea that if you were silent sitting in a room with other people,
it was antisocial or melancholy.
So you had to read aloud or be read to,
and have a musical instrument going.
That's right. Sit there doing your tapestry, your needlepoint or whatever.
But noisily. Noisy tapestry. Noisily. Tap, tap, tap.
Telling everyone what you were doing,
otherwise you'd be melancholy. That's right.
Perhaps if I play loudly enough, I'll be able
to avoid the thought of what Giles is up to.
I'm beginning to see why so many crusaders went native.
The crusades had a huge impact on medieval cooking.
Entirely new sour and sweet flavours hit the palates of the unsuspecting
Christians as they carved their way through the unbelievers.
Rice, lemon and sugar had never been tasted before,
and, a bit like Asian food now, the English went crazy for it.
So I've come to Sidi Moorouf on the Edgware Road in London,
centre of all things Middle Eastern, to taste some of those delights.
First course. Tagine al sikbaj, lamb with dates, figs and vinegar.
Maqluba, lamb in mint, pepper and cinnamon.
Aran, yoghurt and mint drink.
Jaleb, date syrup.
This is a medieval stew, which combines savoury and sweet flavours,
because you have the meat, the spices and then the fruit, the dried fruit.
Dates and raisins. A lot of pepper.
Ginger. And use the bread as your scoop.
Or if you use it as a kind of... If you have two, as a kind of mitt.
It's like a bread oven glove.
You'll forgive my table manners, but I am an 11th Century knight and...
And you wouldn't have had any table manners. I wouldn't really have had any.
So, here are in sort of, you know, a medieval world, and suddenly we've
got this exciting spicy, almondy, saffrony type of stuff.
Did they come back, like modern day tourists, with food packages and stuff?
I think, to some extent, they did.
I mean, there's an amazing scene at the end of the First Crusade
where the Genoese capture the city of Caesarea,
and they're paid, not in money, but in pepper.
And they dole it out to the crusaders and they go home with that as their reward!
Do you think they were happy with that as payment?
Yeah, because pepper is so valuable.
But they didn't go on the crusades in the hope of getting pepper?
Not in the slightest. ...some new fusion cuisine.
The reasons why people go on a crusade are religious.
It's a time when religion saturates society, and these knights
who are killing people in western Europe are told that if you carry on doing that,
you'll be condemned to hell.
In 1095, Pope Urban II comes up with the idea that if you go and free the
Holy Land from the Muslims, you're doing something virtuous.
So you go on a crusade, recover the Holy Land,
it's your sort of "get out of hell free" card.
Second course. Syadia tajen, fish in cinnamon with rice,
served with orange blossom sauce or pomegranate and rose water sauce.
Dajaj mousakhan.
This is real Holy Land.
It is THE typical Palestinian dish.
Mousakhan. In Arabic it means heated, heated up.
Which is... And it is hot! And it is hot.
And it's chicken cooked with onion and sumac, the other lemony flavouring agent.
Was this the kind of thing I would have forked into my mouth
just before going into battle?
No, the reverse. If you were a crusader going into battle, you fasted.
You would purify yourself. You'd drive women out of the camp
and you'd fast and you'd sit around praying.
That's how you get God's favour and win a battle.
I know it seems counter-intuitive.
You're about to spend about six or seven hours fighting,
you thought you'd need food and energy inside you.
You'd expect them, like a footballer or rugby player, to have carbohydrates.
Pasta lunch and things. But no, completely the reverse.
But that might take them on another plane, as if they were sort of meditating or...
So a mad, hallucinogenic killing frenzy.
'We end the meal with arrack, an aniseed liqueur a bit like ouzo.'
Presumably, they didn't have ice in the Middle Ages? They did!
When Richard the Lionheart was ill when he was on the third crusade,
Saladin, as a courtesy, sent him some sherbet,
and it was cooled with ice from the Lebanon.
This was a diplomatic courtesy. The mountains of Lebanon.
Yeah. You send down your opponent, your honourable opponent,
a fine drink, but it's got to be cooled.
Bon appetit.
Up yours!
Mmm. It's so good!
In 1215, fed up with King John taking liberties
with their land and shuttles,
a powerful lobby of barons forced him to sign the Magna Carta.
For the first time, the king was not above the law,
and food was central in the power struggle.
A celebration of Magna Carta.
These napkins were placed over our bread to prevent us from being poisoned. Yes.
We're joined for dinner by food historian Colin Spencer,
and Michael Portillo, who's an expert on Magna Carta.
Can I offer you a spot of haslett?
This basically looks like sort of piggy arctic roll. What is this?
This is pressed venison with spices, with a sorrel sauce.
It's basically like a large saveloy,
something you'd get from a medieval fish and chip shop, but it's tasty.
The deep-fried Mars bar of its... It's good.
I think you're going to have to go to the dry cleaner after all this.
Have I? You've just stuck your sleeve in my bird.
This is the terrible thing! Is this a realistic size of meal?
There seems to be an unbelievable quantity of food.
Oh, very realistic. There would have been more.
Because food meant wealth.
And so the more you put on the table,
the grander, more important you were.
With food this good,
I can see why the barons were so keen to get back their forests!
But the Magna Carta became one of the most important documents
in the history of democracy.
For the first time, people had the right to trial by jury
and the right not to be cheated by food sellers.
Measures and weights were set...
...and defined, for the first time.
So you can't imprison a man without being judged by his peers and also,
when you fill up his pint glass you mustn't leave that little gap at the top.
It's quite a long document.
It's many, many clauses long. Actually, the most important clause
was Clause 61, which shows you how long it was.
And that's the one that took away the powers of the king, temporarily.
There was to be a council of 25 barons,
who could overrule the king.
So it was a tremendous loss of face for the king, in signing this thing.
One of the things the king had done
was to increase the amount of England that was royal forest.
And that meant that he had the right to all the game in the forest
and all the plants on which the game fed.
And this was a way of increasing his power and increasing his revenues.
So, as part of the Magna Carta, the barons reign him back.
But a year later he's dead, isn't he? Something like that.
Dies and dysentery, in the Civil War.
It's not a way to go, is it?
While the battles raged, you're on a loo, praying for your lives.
A nuncheon was a dried vegetable stew
that peasants took into the fields and rehydrated with ale -
the first pot noodle.
They had to work all through the day lit hours.
So they had hard labour in the summer for 12 hours.
So they needed something to keep them going.
They ate thousands of calories. 5,000 calories.
It was three pounds of bread a day, which was made of mixed grains.
They used all the seeds that grew in among the wheat and the barley
and the rye, and they used all the weed seeds as well.
So they often got seeds, which gave you a trip!
I mean, which were hallucinogens.
And... Do we have... If I'm going to be a peasant I need to be stoned!
Yes, right! Quite!
And I notice that these vegetables, this cabbage, is very, very overcooked.
Is that a particularly medieval thing?
I'm afraid it was, simply because they cooked that soup
that they had daily, all day.
You make life sound not too bad.
I mean, they had, apparently, plenty of bread,
they had a pot that was on the go all day long,
they had 5,000 calories.
I mean, they're really not exactly starving!
That food was dependent on the harvest.
If they had a bad harvest then they were starving.
And from 1315, the weather changed again,
and it got a lot colder and it rained.
They thought it was the biblical flood back again.
And when it rained as hard as that there was no harvest for years
and they really did starve then.
Quite strange really that the Magna Carta,
so much championed as the idea of the power to the people,
the democracy, the idea of the American Bill of Rights,
all growing out of this lovely charter,
really it was just a lot of selfish toffs, a lot of Barons,
a lot spoilt aristocrats,
wanting to get their hunting lands back off the king,
so that they could shoot the peasants who were poaching on it
and not let him have all the fun.
People in the middle ages were as obsessed with health
as we are today, but they had some rather odd notions about it.
They thought disease was caused by demons, sin and bad smells.
A popular health manual written by Islamic sages
was the Secreta Secretorum - The Secret of the Secrets.
It recommended a wake-up routine of herbs and flowers.
It promised that this recipe would,
"open the closures of the brain after sleep."
So here goes!
It's nice!
Rhubarb was especially recommended, as it was said to purge collar,
withdraw the flame from the mouth of the stomach
and drive away flatulence.
Argh! Wine or vinegar, is that?
Rhubarb seasoned wine, I can exclusively reveal,
is properly minging.
Minging. It is of minging flavour.
Ah, that's better!
Although it's couched in silly 15th-century language about humours,
it's a really civilised way to start the morning.
That smelt really, really nice. It is invigorating.
Flowers make you feel good, like any kind of eau de toilette.
And that kind of sour-sharp, it's like a citron presse in the morning.
Ping! I do feel ready to start a medieval day.
I think they knew a thing or two about breakfast.
Sadly, medieval quacks knew nothing at all
about how disease was really caused.
In 1348, the Black Death hit Britain
and nearly half the population died of bubonic plague.
In some villages, it was as many as 90% of the inhabitants.
But there is a silver lining for those who survived...
there was a shortage of labour. So, for the first time in history,
women were encouraged to take up a trade.
And as nobody ever drank water,
brewing ale was one of the favourites.
'Richard Fox, master brewer, has come up with a recipe
'for medieval ale using yeast, water and grain.'
Are you all right with that?
Yeah, they were quite beefy the old medieval women.
Oh, yeah. Can you smell that already?
Oh, it's like evil Horlicks! It is!
Absolutely! It's Ovaltine! Aw!
Ooohh!
So I have read that, that some women would adulterate their beer
in order to get the fermentation process going and they'd do this.
SHE CLEARS THROAT AND SPITS
Just a little bit.
I cannot believe you've just gobbed in our beautiful beer, Sue!
This is history! This is a piece of history I'm creating!
That's what they did!
That might make the difference between an average brew
and an absolutely outstanding one!
They did do weird things. There was a story,
a poem, written about a woman who let her hens run around in it.
Chickens that roosted on top of the beer while it was fermenting.
Right, go on then, get a little handful of that into there.
Go on, let's have one more for good luck.
Maximum yeast action. Yep.
That, I'm afraid, is now going to sit there
for five days before we've got alcohol.
Luckily for me, here's one Richard made earlier.
The moment of truth.
Excellent. Sue's Dirty Brew, as it says on the label. Yeah.
I think this could catch on. Ooh!
I'm quite excited, because this is the first time I've ever tasted
a medieval brew. Me too! Yeah, for sure.
This one looks like it's got diabetes.
I mean it's not the clearest pint in the world!
It looks like a muddy sample. But let's do a proper tasting,
cos you can taste beer just like you can taste wine.
A good swill 'round. Yeah. Release the aromas.
This is why you shouldn't drink out of the bottle.
Get it over the olfactory bulb.
And then a good sip.
Good swill around there.
Well, I tell you what...
Shall we have some more? Come on, load up.
Load up. Don't be shy now, Richard.
To you, good sir.
Cheers, and to you. Good work.
It's actually taken away my motor skills already.
I'd love to test the alcoholic...
It doesn't actually taste that alcoholic, that's the...
remarkable thing. Aw!
I'm getting honey and phlegm.
I'm getting these wonderful zesty, herbal, sort of earthy elements,
wonderful balance, exquisite, exquisite flavours,
and I think that's going to be fabulous
with some slow-cooked belly pork. What do you think, Sue?
Sorry, Richard, everything's gone a little bit Dark Ages.
Give me a minute, will you?
HE CHUCKLES
Today we're off on a pilgrimage to save our souls.
We're following in the footsteps of the most famous pilgrims
in all literature from the Canterbury Tales,
started by Chaucer in 1387.
I'm hoping they sell saint's bones onboard. I've lost mine.
I think we're doing it a slightly easy way round.
We're supposed to be on bended knee, crawling all the way there.
That's creeping to the cross. That's really hardcore stuff... Yeah!
The English ones were never like that.
I feel a bit lazy doing it on a day trip return.
Chaucer's pilgrims do a lot of eating on their journey
and many of the dishes can be found in the first English cookbook,
The Form of Cury, commissioned by King Richard II.
And as they go, they compete with each other by telling tales
to win a free pub meal on their return.
The thing about the Canterbury Tales, the reason, theoretically,
they're all telling these stories, is cos they'll win a meal.
It's like the beginning of English literature,
the first important poem, is all for food.
If the meal I'll win is this meal, then I'll keep schtum, trust me.
Ooh, I'm fasting again.
Just had a whiff of that.
The chopped liver comes from The Rabbi's Tale,
which is one of the lost manuscripts. That smells quite nice actually.
That's got stewed parsley, which comes from The Cook's Tale.
There's an awful rhyme about people complaining none too sparsely... Argh!
...at the taste of his 'orrible parsley.
It looks like something from Winnie The Pooh.
It looks like a little nun, look. A giant Lego nun. Need a body there.
Oh, well blessed are you?
So...
Oh, my God!
You've looked inside a nun's head and not liked what you've seen.
Brain?
No, yes, I think that's Kentucky boiled chicken...
in saffron. Why don't we put that back? Yeah.
And then they look throughout the nation,
for the nearest service station.
Oh, the Museum of Kent Life!
Unfortunately, Chaucer died before he finished the tales,
so his pilgrims never made it to Canterbury, and neither do we.
Monks were meant to live the purest of lives to keep them closer to God.
But under William the Conqueror, a system was set up
whereby the rich could pay monks to do their penances for them.
So monasteries got richer and richer
and became notorious for the huge amounts of food the monks ate.
We've come to Aylesford Priory to recreate a monastic fast.
As nobility, we would have fasted for three days a week,
but Brother Brendan would have done it all the time.
Here.
Look, it's fish! Fish that will eat from your hand! It's fish!
It's as good as fish.
Some of the dishes they counted as fish are really peculiar.
Rabbit foetuses were said to be fish,
beaver's tails, because they were scaly,
and barnacle geese counted as fish,
because they grew on trees and came alive
when they fell off the branches into water.
So I'm off to do a spot of fishing for lunch.
Come on, little fish!
Fish is off I'm afraid!
There's no fish today.
Benedictus Benedicato. Amen. ALL: Amen.
Fig roll with eel and salmon.
Yum. They're not too bad! Yeah! Complicated!
Well, I'd imagine if this turned up after you'd been eating vegetables
and sort of plain food for the rest of the week you'd be delighted!
I'm just going to try it. I'll let you know.
May the Lord make you gastronomically strong.
SUE LAUGHS
That was the one we've had. And he's not allowed to swear.
This is so delicious!
This John Dory is marvellous!
Of course, I can only have a mouthful cos I'm on a fast.
So, why specifically is it fish on a fast day?
I think it's because it doesn't bleed. Right.
Therefore, you're not associating it with the body of Christ,
which you do associate all meat with.
The other side of it is that meat is seen as something
which is the more dangerous of the two,
because it builds up your strength
and obviously, strength towards sort of sexual potency
and things like that.
There are various reasons to abstain, one reason for abstaining
is in order to devote yourself to a life of prayer.
So you don't want anything that will get in the way of prayer.
So you don't want to be tempted by food
and be worried about what you're eating all the time.
So you DISCIPLINE your appetite.
I've never felt less tempted in my life!
Appetite for worldly pleasure entirely gone!
The system works!
Incredibly depressing food.
It really, really... Yes. What a miserable...
hundreds and hundreds of years until anyone will produce
a plate with anything worth eating. I know.
Only living to 30 would have been a consolation.
It's our last day in the Middle Ages and it's a feast day.
So tonight, we're recreating a medieval feast
in the Great Hall at Penshurst Place.
Preparation in the kitchen starts early.
Feasts were the highlight of medieval life.
They were enormous and appearance was everything.
Even with a kitchen staff of a hundred,
it would have taken weeks to prepare.
And the centrepiece to a meal had to be spectacular.
Peacock was adored by medieval gastronomes for its gorgeous plumage.
Martin must skin the bird whole.
The medieval chef would have roasted the meat and then stitched it back
into its feathers to arrive at the table looking as if it were alive.
It's going to be interesting to see what this tastes like.
But as I don't want to be the Lord of Listeria,
Martin's going to serve them separately.
You've got the skin and there's our beastie.
Just as they would have been 700 years ago,
our guests for the feast tonight
are the people who work and live at Penshurst today.
Feasts were magical events where the Lord of the Manor
was expected to let rip with entertainment and lavish excess.
But the magic had to be carefully judged.
The Lord De Pulteney of Penshurst
once laid on such a lavish feast for the King
that the King felt threatened by his power and had him beheaded.
Welcome, everybody! Please go ahead and enjoy the feast!
Our top table guests are food historian, Nicola Fletcher,
and Medievalist, John Goodall.
The peacock is brought to the top table in a theatrical procession
to delight the guests and fill them with awe.
Oh, whoa! Look at that!
This is food as power.
Dish after dish was served, sweet and savoury mixed together,
in a show of luxury that laughed in the face of everyday hardship.
And tonight the showstopper is the extraordinary coq heaume,
or helmeted cock - a fully clothed turkey
riding a suckling pig into battle,
complete with lance and cape in the colours of the Lord of the Manor.
So, pigs can fly, that's all I can say. Look at that. Unbelievable.
If the peasants don't know who the boss is now, they never will.
It seems to be some sort of turkey superhero.
It's got a spear that it's carrying and a superhero helmet and a cape.
So, is that a bird, is it a plane?
No, it's super-turkey having it off with a pig.
Before their happy union on our table,
the pig and turkey are roasted separately.
This is going to be the saddle that it's actually riding.
So, we're just going to tie the legs to this...
using a little bit of wire.
The medieval imagination defies modern comprehension,
but Martin seems to be taking all this madness in his stride.
There's our bird ready for the oven.
So once that's roasted, then we will dress it on top.
I mean, really you've done us proud. Thank you.
It's like a sort of gastronomic freak show. I love it.
It's just marvellous.
I'll carve you a bit of peacock. You've got to try peacock.
Yeah, for sure. Yeah, we'll try the peacock.
The lower orders will eventually be thrown our leftovers
and our used trenchers, and be grateful for them.
All this food is going to go to your gates
and be handed out to the poor, the remains.
So this is showing who you are,
how powerful you are, what money you possess.
That's expressed in your clothes and the quality of the people at these tables.
The grander your followers were, the grander you were.
Please don't judge me on this motley crew that are eating down there.
They're the people who couldn't get into the audience of Countdown.
OK, Giles, white meat, dark meat. Marvellous.
I've eaten rooster's testicles, sow's udders and sheep's eyes,
but this is my first taste of peacock.
And some lovely green sauce!
One gets bored of peacock, coming from Croydon, but I will endeavour to try it.
Does this peacock come from Croydon?
Oh, yeah. Thank you very much. I'll take a piece of meat.
Got loads of cumin in it. It's very dry.
It's not as gamey as I thought. It's like...
Yes. Like dried pheasant.
It's very dense meat, isn't it?
Very, very...like turkey that's been compressed into a...
This pheasant needed a drink of water. It died thirsty.
So peacock is a triumph of style over taste.
The plebs can have it as far as I'm concerned.
Right, you've had your fun. Uh! Uh!
Aw, that's terrible!
Flee, piggy! Flee!
I'll have that.
Here's looking at you.
This bird looks disappointed it's not on the pig any more.
It's thinking, "Who's this?"
That's one of the reasons the peasants revolted.
Anyone care to mention another?
Food. More food.
In-between each course came what were known as subtleties -
food designed to make you laugh.
Anything brightly coloured was rare and very special.
MEDIEVAL MUSIC PLAYS
Gingerbread was not just gingerbread.
It was gilded gingerbread.
Date leches were full of that priceless new import, sugar.
Lech means they were for licking.
It's where the word letch comes from.
I've seen those before. And these eggs won't just be eggs.
How subtle is that jelly?
I mean, that is, that is screaming subtlety, isn't it?
That's absolutely brilliant because it's got all the use of colour.
They loved jellies.
They would use things like spinach or burnt toast or...
Burnt toast and spinach jelly!
Oh, I can't wait.
Well, burnt toast gave you a sort of black colour.
It's basically lime and pig's trotter. Delicious.
For yellow they would use saffron,
if you could afford it, or marigold petals.
If you're rich enough to afford this kind of thing in the Middle Ages,
you want to have a hell of a time.
Edward III, when this hall was being built,
was appearing at a Christmas feast dressed as a pheasant.
These were people who lived for their own pleasure. It's a very visual culture.
These are subtleties cos they're playful!
They dazzle you. You're meant to admire them!
Thank you. Are you dazzled by this? I am dazzled by that egg.
I sense it's going to be a joke.
I sense a joke. There's something inside that.
It'll be a boar's head or something that they crammed in there.
Now let me pass one down. That was subtle!
The eggs are stuffed with marzipan...
one of the most expensive luxuries on the table.
It's a beautiful egg with a yolk.
That is delicious! It's a Cadbury's Creme Egg!
It's yellow and white. Clever. I love that!
It's just a sort of packet of marzipan.
Really sweet and delicious.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
Feasts could go on for days and as they progressed,
the subtleties would become evermore extravagant and theatrical.
Burn him! Burn him!
There might be battles enacted between Saracens and Christians,
mechanical animals might strut up the table,
and once a dwarf called Geoffrey was served up to his Queen inside a pie.
Thank you.
Ah, that looks nice. Thank you!
To the peasants. May your lives be nasty, brutish and very, very short.
THEY ALL CHEER
God, they are thick, aren't they? They've just hoorahed that!
Hoosah!
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
Well, you know, I started off melancholy
in a sort of rather drab sort of peahen outfit and look at me now.
I'm basically a damsel in distress with a paunch,
with an imminent hangover,
having eaten three or four mythical creatures,
and playing something that looks like a crowbar.
This could be your lucky night.
I only fancy men with curly slippers. Come on. OK.
SHE PLAYS LORD OF THE DANCE
Quicker. Quicker. Wah!
I have a new respect for the medieval table.
The modern era, we just have to feed ourselves,
entertain our fat little faces.
There, they had a short journey
from the cradle to the grave,
and along the line just a little bit of fun, a little bit of a laugh.
Doesn't really matter what it tastes like.
They were an extraordinary bunch.
Are you sure about this?
After a week of medieval gluttony,
we're off to the doctor's to see what it's done to us.
So, you two, did you notice your moods changing
as you chomped through half the country's calories?
The diet was probably more different for me,
I don't really eat meat at home.
And there you do get a happy rush of that much protein,
so I do feel quite happy.
If you looked at me, the way I was at the beginning and the way I was at the end,
you would observe that I had become miserable and call it melancholia.
It could be because with medieval cooking the banqueting hall is
a long way from where the food's being cooked.
All the food's cold and therefore sort of leaden and sort of congealed
and not nice. Relatively nutrient-free as well, I suspect.
One thing that this has shown is the importance of balance in the diet,
whether it's now or in the Medieval Ages.
And what you've had this week has been essentially a full-on
but fairly unbalanced diet,
and that's partly why you've been feeling like you've been feeling.
What about booze? Were you up to your eyes in short ale?
No, this is the first era in which I've not been drunk even once.
It's probably why I was miserable.
Or it felt like misery, maybe I was just sober.
That's what the real world's like, Giles.
That's how awful it is when you don't have beer goggle.
I have now eaten peacock.
No other restaurant critic has, almost no people.
No-one can ever, ever, ever beat me on that.
So any discussion that ever comes to any meal
I can just say, "It's actually not as good as the peacock I had."
So for me, it's just worked perfectly.
And I've found out that really I'm, I'm just a knight
a charger and a pointy hat away from being a proper lady.
So I'm now off to buy a penthouse
and buy a My Little Pony and try and recreate it at home.
I'm going to the corner shop to see if they do peacock.
Skinless, boneless breasts.
They do peacock kebab up the road. It's really good actually.
Next time we go back to the 1950s,
where we'll be stumbling through the smog,
pigging out on pizza...
Now that is... That's quite small. ...groovy!
And quaffing cocktails on the motorway.
Cheers!