What was a tudor banquet like

Henry VIII in particular is famed for his elaborate banquets; displaying a powerful dynastic image was everything to the Tudors and a banquet was the perfect opportunity for Henry to show off, this was especially true if there was a foreign monarch or dignitary present. France led the way when it came to banqueting, a Tudor cook would have been only too aware of their high standards and would have tried hard to provide a banquet with a similar level of luxury and content.

A royal banquet would often be accompanied by a fair amount of pomp and ceremony too, especially if it proceeded a great event like a coronation, marriage or christening. It was written by the Tudor chronicler Edward Hall. Each noble and lord proceeded to his allotted place arranged earlier according to seniority. At the sound the duke of Buckingham entered riding a huge charger covered with richly embroidered trappings, together with the lord steward mounted on a horse decked with cloth of gold.

The two of them led in the banquet which was truly sumptuous, and as well as a great number of delicacies also included unusual heraldic devices and mottoes. How can I describe the abundance of fine and delicate fare prepared for this magnificent and lordly feast, produced both abroad and in the many and various parts of this realm to which God has granted his bounty.

Or indeed the exemplary execution of the service of the meal itself, the clean handling and distribution of the food and the efficient ordering of the courses, such that no person of any estate lacked for anything.

You could expect a great number of dishes to be served at a banquet, sometimes up to six courses. These courses were not served in the same way as today with one course being served up after another, instead, all the food would have been laid out on the table at once.

An abundance of food meant that everyone could get to eat the foods they particularly enjoyed, it also ensured there was enough food left over for the servants who ate later. There may also have been an elaborate centrepiece on the banquet table; perhaps to add a little theatrics or simply so the host could show off to his guests.

The pastries represented stags and swans, to the necks of which were suspended the arms of the Count of Anjou Tudor Food for a Banquet or Feast Each section of this Tudors website addresses all topics and provides interesting facts and information about Tudor Food for a Banquet or Feast. The Sitemap provides full details of all of the information and facts provided about the fascinating subject of the Tudors! Tudor Food The Tudors Index. The crust of the large ones was silvered all round and gilt at the top; each contained a whole roe-deer, a gosling, three capons, six chickens, ten pigeons, one young rabbit T o serve as seasoning or stuffing, a minced loin of veal, two pounds of fat, and twenty-six hard-boiled eggs, covered with saffron and flavoured with cloves.

There was a roe-deer, a pig, a sturgeon cooked in parsley and vinegar, and covered with powdered ginger; a kid, two goslings, twelve chickens, as many pigeons, six young rabbits, two herons, a leveret, a fat capon stuffed, four chickens covered with yolks of eggs and sprinkled with powder de Duc spice , a wild boar The Tudor Third Course..

Some wafers darioles , and stars; a jelly, part white and part red, representing the crests of the main guests The Tudor Fourth Course.. Tudor Food for a Banquet or Feast. However, as everyone had to have known, banqueting was actually a voidee reimagined as a Renaissance Italian collation, and critics looking to ferret out insinuations from decadent, depraved Italy had no difficulty finding them, starting with the banqueting houses.

Most privileged English had to content themselves with banqueting in their dining parlors. But, when the occasion demanded, the super-privileged could conduct the affair in a specialized banqueting house. These houses variously perched atop towers, or jutted from manor rooftops, or were nestled in a leafy bower on the manor grounds, providing banqueters with the delightful natural views enjoyed by diners at an outdoor Italian collation, without the risk of being rained on in perpetually rainy England.

If the views included formal gardens, which they often did, banqueters even saw what the Italians saw, for the gardens were Renaissance Italian imports. Theobalds was demolished during the Interregnum, but Italianate banqueting houses, or the remnants of them, still survive in several stately houses in the UK, including Lacock Abbey and Longleat, both of which I visited during a recent trip to the UK.

Located in the top story of a tower, the Lacock banqueting house is now occupied by bats and can no longer be toured. Befitting their different functions, the two rooms are otherwise quite different. The walls of the counting house are thick and have just a few narrow windows, while the walls of the banqueting house are thinner and filled with windows, enlarging the room and giving it degree views.

Longleat, astonishingly, boasts seven rooftop banqueting houses, several of which I was privileged to see. They are intimate spaces that could accommodate no more than six or eight seated at a table. The windows have been bricked up, the interiors have been painted over, and all furnishings have been removed, but the Italian influence is nonetheless unmistakable.

Four of the houses are domes, a characterizing feature of Renaissance Italian architecture. Looking out over the Longleat rooftop, one can almost imagine seeing the skyline of Venice in miniature.

Banquet table with marchpane centerpiece by Ivan Day. The early banquet always included hippocras and nearly always included wafers, and its most numerous dishes were the nutraceutical conceits of the voidee, namely plain and candied spices and sugared plant materials of all kinds.

However, Italian borrowings were numerous, and while most of these had therapeutic value, they strike us today as more geared toward pleasure than cure. Of special importance was the Arabic confection marzipan, a favorite of the Italians since the thirteenth century but unrecorded in England until , where it came to be called marchpane.

Any banquet worth its sugar featured a marchpane centerpiece. As typically outlined in period recipes, a marchpane was a thin disc of white-iced marzipan about fourteen inches broad that was decorated with comfits and, on important occasions, surmounted by fanciful sugar statuary.

The footed dishes in the photo are likewise of sugar paste, as is the playing card. Another favorite Italianate banqueting cake was jumbles , from the Italian gemello , or twin. Also from Italy were the spice-studded and thus putatively healthful banqueting bisket breads, whose Latin-derived name denoted that they were baked twice, first to set the dough or batter and then, at a lower temperature, to render the bisket, or biscuit, dry and crisp through and through.

The preserved sweet potatoes and eryngo roots sea holly referenced in the line were believed to have the same warming effects on the nether regions. One suspects that Aquinas would not have approved. Sugared fruit preserves were not specifically Italian but they were starring attractions of the Italian collation, so they inevitably became star attractions of the early English banquet too.

The fruit most commonly preserved throughout early Europe, including England, was quince, in part because quince was believed to have many health benefits, and in part because its high pectin content made possible all manner of jellied conceits. Whole quince and quince pieces preserved in thick syrups appeared on early English banquet tables in myriad hues, from gold, to rosy pink, to ruby red, depending on how the fruit was cooked.

Even more fashionable was the quince preserve called marmalade , which the English initially imported from Portugal, where it was invented and hence its name, from the Portuguese marmelo , or quince , but which the English soon learned to make themselves.

Like modern quince paste, often called by its Spanish name membrillo , quince marmalade was a smooth, stiff confection that could be picked up with the fingers, not a nubby bread spread.

Quince jelly, or quiddany from the French cotignac , too, was a stiff confection and was often printed. By the seventeenth century, all of these conceits had come to be made with innumerable other fruits, including oranges, which were worked up into a marmalade that had the same smooth solidity as its quince forebear. So fond were the English of these sugared fruit delicacies that they devised a specialized implement to consume them: the sucket fork from succade , candied citrus peel.

It had fork tines at one end and a spoon bowl at the other, facilitating both the spearing of solid preserves and the scooping of wet preserves and their ambrosial syrups.

Rounding out the fare of the early banquet were several sweets that had long been part of elite English fare. Colored gingerbread originated as a medicine, and it tastes like one: its spicing is almost caustic. If the banquet were simply a glorified voidee, fruit and cheese would never have found a place in it, for no medical authority, I believe, would have claimed that these foods served to open up, fire up, and clean out the stomach, as the voidee was supposed to do.

In England imported only about one pound of sugar per capita annually, and most English people consumed far less sugar than that, if any at all. And so they did, liberally, especially when they banqueted, and not only because they believed that sugar was healthful and because they really liked it, but also because they delighted in the conspicuous consumption of a substance denied to most.

The rich employed musicians to play music on flutes and lutes whilst they ate. There were always popular tunes for dancing. Dances were lively with many moves such as turns, spirals and jumps. Recreation for poor people included singing, bowling, cock-fighting and dancing. It may surprise you to learn that some of our favorite traditions of the Christmas season date back to Tudor times, including singing carols, giving gifts, eating turkey—and even kissing under the mistletoe.

One of the games the Tudors would have been familiar with was Blind Mans Buff! The inspiration for this Lord of Misrule was the earlier 11th-century tradition of The Feast of Fools. This tradition was not confined only to Christmas but was also used during summer festivities. A Tudor feast would consist of chicken, rabbit, pork, beef and lamb. A common way of cooking meat in Tudor times was on a spit over an open fire.