Paksworld

As you may have noticed, I also cook…bake bread, make stock and soups.  So the kitchens of Paksworld have always interested me.  What do the people eat, and how do they fix it, and why?

With Midwinter Feast coming up (theirs, not ours) this seemed like a good topic to talk about.We’ll start with a kitchen you’ll meet in the first of the new Paks books,  the kitchen of a large and wealthy estate in Tsaia.   It’s modeled (to some degree) on large kitchens of the late medieval period in Europe–as described in many sources for both secular and ecclesiastical estates, and I’ll contrast it with the kitchens of the Duke’s Stronghold found in the original Paks books.

Food for this manorial kitchen comes from the estate itself, with the exception of some ingredients that cannot be raised locally (mostly herbs and spices from the south.)   The usual grains come from the estate, ground at the manor’s own mill a little distance away (where there’s a natural fall of water to power the mill.)  There’s a kitchen garden producing both leafy and root vegetables, and a small orchard for fruits; a toll is also taken of nearby peasant villages for fruits (especially) and other food products.   The household livestock includes cattle (for dairy products and meat),  sheep (for some dairy products and wool).  Much of the meat eaten is game–in this part of Tsaia, deer is the dominant large game animal and small game (rabbits, squirrels, a variety of birds) also comes to the table.  This particular family is not fond of fish, so although their rivers and streams have fish, they don’t eat much and do not stock the millpond.

Food preservation for the perishable foods consists of salting (meat, fish), drying (meat, fish,  some fruits and vegetables, herbs), preservation in honey (some fruits, as jellies/jams/”candy”), and smoking (meat, fish) and controlled fermentation (such as cheesemaking.)

Dairy products fall under control of the kitchen staff, though the servants who milk the cows, strain the milk, and put it in the dairy (a separate building with cold water running through it) are not kitchen staff.   The making of butter and cheese from milk are considered special skills within the kitchen area.    Skilled cheesemakers from around the estate must contribute a portion of their product to the manor house.

Baking is of course a kitchen activity, and includes the care and propagation of starter to raise the dough.    Baking includes the making of ordinary daily bread and special breads for special occasions, and pastry (non-yeast doughs) for a variety of uses.

Brewing is often (on many estates) separated from kitchen duties (though the brewer and the cook share an interest in yeast!)  but on this estate it is not, since the family do not drink ale–only imported wine.   The kitchen makes ale for servants and staff.

In this (but not all) estates, the house kitchen prepares food for only the family and the household servants, those actually resident in the household compound.   That’s a fair number, in this case–when everyone’s at home, over a hundred.  There’s another “kitchen” preparing food for the “outdoor” staff.  Household servants do not eat what the family eats and their food requires less time in preparation.

The kitchen itself is a series of rooms: the main kitchen (large) with the big cooking fireplaces (two)  for food preparation and cooking, the pantries (for storing the different kinds of preserved food and those cooking tools used only occasionally), the scullery (for cleaning up the pots and utensils.)

What’s prepared is determined by the head of the family.   The head cook (at the moment an irascible woman of  middle age) presides over a staff that includes both male and female subordinates.   She hands out the tasks, and is responsible for having the right food ready on time.    She’s an excellent baker, not so good at brewing (and rather resents having to brew ale.)    Her assistants do the prep work (cleaning, chopping, mixing, etc.) to her direction.

The adults in the family enjoy elaborate meals.   Breakfast in winter will include at least two meats (one fried, one baked),  with appropriate sauces and “winter greens,”  fried stuffed pastries,  fresh warm bread with butter and honey, and a bowl of steamed grain (on which some pour cream and others a meat sauce.)   Midday, baked pasties stuffed with meat, spices, and herbs, and usually two soups.   In the evening,  two or three roast meats of some sort (often in a pastry crust),  roasted and boiled vegetables in elaborate combinations, baked spiced fruits,   bread both stuffed and unstuffed.

The family likes elaborate food and fancy presentation, so the cook is busy day-long making sure that the the family’s preferences are met.  This estate has (prior to the beginning of the book) a reputation for keeping a very fine table wherever they are (they have other estates and a large house in the capital. )

Servants get bread, ales, a small amount of meat, stewed vegetables and grains, small amounts of dairy products (cheese, mostly) and fruit when in season.

At the Duke’s Stronghold, it’s quite different.  The largest kitchen serves the military personnel and is organized to provide abundant, but relatively simple, food for many people three times a day.  There’s no fancy cooking here, no fancy sauces, no fancy pastries.   There is a brewmaster separate from the kitchen staff, responsible for supplying ale, though as there are now brewers in both Duke’s East and Duke’s West,  Kieri was considering asking the stronghold’s brewmaster to consider moving there (better water supply for one thing.)   The Duke’s own kitchen,  in the inner court, is much smaller, needing to provide for fewer than a dozen people, and only part of the year.  The food is only slightly more elaborate than that for the Company, though over the years the Duke did develop a liking for certain fancier foods and for some ingredients from Aarenis.   Like the family at the other estate, he has a wine cellar, but he also drinks ale and beer at times.  Servants get approximately the same food the soldiers get, plus leftovers from the Duke’s table, so they get a lot more meat and dairy than the servants at the other estate.  (Treatment of servants varies a great deal from family to family.)

As in our kitchens, cleanliness and organization are important to the good cooks in these books–be they innkeepers or estate cooks.   Even without a modern germ theory, it’s obvious that dirty kitchens lead to more  disease, so the head cooks everywhere insist on “chasing away the demons” with scrub brush, water, and soap.   The kitchens come to life early in the morning, and the lowest-ranking kitchen staff are still working late at night, scouring the pots and scrubbing the work tables so that everything’s ready for Cook in the morning.    In households where the head cook is trusted,  Cook ends the day by locking up the pantries; otherwise, it’s the duty of  someone in the family (sometimes the lord, sometimes the lady.)

If you’ve ever looked at a medieval cookbook, you realize just how complicated and fancy their cooking could be.   Yes, a lot of poor serfs survived on boiled grains and some root vegetables day after day, but anyone with resources had a varied (if not, by our standards, perfectly balanced) diet.