Records of the medieval coronation feasts show of what a truly magnificent meal was expected to consist. Sweet and savoury were mixed, and visual splendour and royal symbolism was carefully considered, in Henry VI’s Coronation Feast, when the first course consisted of:
Frumenty [boiled, cracked wheat] with Venison
Meat royal, planted with lozenges of gold
Boars’ heads in castles armed with gold
Beef
Mutton
Cygnet
Stewed capon
Heron
Great pike
A red leach of sliced meats, eggs, fruits and spices, with lions carved therein in white
Custard royal with a leopard of gold sitting therein
Fritter like the sun, with a fleur-de-lis therein
Job description of a medieval waiter
‘Look that your napery be sweet and clean, and that your table-cloth, towel and napkin be folded exactly, your table-knives brightly polished, and your spoon fair washed – ye wot well what I mean … Put the salt on the right hand of your lord; on its left a trencher or two. One their left a knife, then white rolls, and beside, a spoon folded in a napkin … Do not pick your nose or let it drop clear pearls, or sniff, or blow it too hard, lest your lord hear’.
The Tudors drank beer instead of water because it was free from the risk of dysentery, and provided them with necessary calories. ‘Small beer’ was weak beer for the servants, while the more important courtiers drank ‘strong beer’. ‘If any man do perceive that he is dronke’, wrote a Tudor doctor, ‘let him take a vomit with water and oyle, or with a feather, or a rosemary braunch, or else with his finger, or else let him go to his bed to slepe’.
