Pottage- Medieval Research

Recently, I’ve been trying to make my fantasy novel realistic as possible (which may seem like quite the oxymoron of a concept!). One of the things I realized though was that I had no firm idea what medieval folk ate. So I decided to take my book’s era to my own kitchen and get a better idea of how food might have been prepared back then.

In my book DRAGON KIN, the characters would often eat bread and stew out on the road, but I didn’t know how this would have been prepared. So I decided to try and replicate this with as much authenticity as I could. And one of the best known stew-type meals back then, I discovered, was pottage.

Pottage is a thickened stew that was popular among the commoners and serfs in the medieval ages. You can find more information on it here. Basically, the peasants would have thrown whatever food they had into a large pot, and just kept adding to it over the course of days, even weeks! Vegetables were considered the poor man’s food back then, so the peasants would put in a lot of ingredients like peas, carrots and onions, rather than a lot of meat the nobility could better afford.

Ingredients

This was all of the information I had going in, and decided to use this philosophy in my own recipe. I only used what I already had at home, but I had the added difficulty of only using vegetables available to English peasants. This was harder than I had anticipated, considering I hadn’t gone shopping all week. But it was a great way to use up some leftover vegetables!

I did some further digging, and discovered corn, tomatoes and potatoes came later to Europe, they wouldn’t have been around in that era, so I had to rethink my menu a little bit. Instead, I included vegetables like carrots, celery, green onion, cauliflower and also chickpeas as well.

To start off, I prepared the chicken. During October, when I originally created the recipe, the harvest would have just come in, which meant the villagers would have just slaughtered the farm animals they used for meat to avoid having to feed them over the winter. So during the fall, their pottage would have been full of fresh vegetables and meats.

Wandering noses!

I cubed a boneless chicken breast. Normally the chicken would have the bone in it, and the bone would have been used for stock, but boneless chicken was what I had in the freezer.

It was also common to thicken things with eggs, and use butter for flavour. In medieval times electric refrigerators didn’t exist, so things like butter were heavily salted to preserve it longer. Of course, not everything kept well. Sometimes the meat or the vegetables became a little off, so the villagers used lots of fresh herbs like rosemary and thyme to mask any odd tastes.

I put the chicken in a pan with 1/4 cup of cubed butter and mixed in 2 tsp of rosemary, 1/4 tsp of salt, 1/2 tsp of garlic powder and 1 egg. I simmered it until the chicken was no longer pink, but rather a pale colour. I made sure not to cook the butter out, which would make the chicken dry.

Raw chicken

Cooked chicken

I peeled and chopped three carrots and two stalks of celery, but I soon realized that this wasn’t enough. I diced more, and ended up with a total of five diced carrots and three celery stalks. I then chopped a head of cauliflower, a green onion stalk and 1/4 cup of fresh parsley.

I boiled four cups of water in the kettle and dissolved in one chicken bouillon cube. Obviously chicken bouillon cubes weren’t around in medieval times, but they would have boiled the chicken bones to make a broth, which as I said I did not have, but lots of salt would have been added to the chicken to preserve it, so I felt this was a fair substitute. I then mixed in herbs to the stock solution. One tsp of each basil, sage and garlic.

Vegetables, stock and chicken

I stirred the vegetables and the stock solution together in a large pot.

I then added the chicken and any butter solution still remaining in the pan.

The common folk had something even more in abundance than vegetables; the very thing that made pottage so distinct. Grains. This is where the thickened part of the stew comes in. They added rye, barley, oats or whatever grains they had on hand, even legumes like chickpeas. Although I’m pretty sure their chick peas didn’t come in a can like mine did!

I added in 3 tbs of both instant oats and chickpeas to the pottage. I simmered the whole pot for about 5 minutes before deciding the stew wasn’t thick enough, so I added in an extra 2 tbs of oats and chickpeas both.

It was at this point I added in 1/2 cup of fresh, chopped spinach. Spinach doesn’t take long to cook, so don’t add this in too early.

I let the whole thing simmer for another 10 minutes, stirring regularly, until the vegetables were tender but not crunchy. The oats disappeared right into the mixture, and it took on a yellowish tint.

The pottage was thick but not paste like, truly more of a stew than a porridge. In the past, they probably added more oats or barley and there would no doubt have been less chicken, but I did consider taste as well as authenticity. I wanted to avoid it taking on a bland paste-like consistency.

 

I served it hot, along with a slice of homemade bread I’d prepared with the bread maker. A bit of a cheat, but bread making would have to come another day!

Pottage and homemade bread!

My two tasters gave it two thumbs up and a score of 4.5/5 stars!

It tasted even better a few days later. During medieval times, they would have kept a pot of pottage going for days, adding a few new things at each meal to stretch the food out. We did find after a few days, although we had the luxury of a fridge, all the seasonings had marinated into the pottage more throughly and actually gave it a fuller and richer taste. Also a note, it freezes well especially since there’s no potato in it.

 

Recipe:

Ingredients

Preparing chicken:

• 1 boneless chicken breast
• 1/4 cup of hard butter
• 2 tsp rosemary
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp garlic powder
• 1 egg (beaten)

Vegetables:

• 5 peeled carrots
• 3 celery stalks
• 1/4 cup fresh parsley
• 1 green onion stalk
• 1 cauliflower head

Stock:

• 4 cups of boiling water
• 1 chicken bouillon cube
• 1 tsp basil
• 1 tsp of sage
• 1 tsp garlic

Extras in Pot:

• 5 tbs instant oats
• 5 tbs canned chick peas
• 1/2 cup fresh, chopped spinach

Directions

1. Cube chicken and butter. Stir in rosemary, salt, garlic powder and beaten egg.
2. Simmer until chicken is pale but not pink. Do not cook out butter entirely.
3. Chop the vegetables and mix in a large pot.
4. Dissolve the bouillon cube in boiling water. Mix in basil, sage and garlic to make stock.
5. Add the stock to the pot of vegetables and stir throughly, coating the vegetables entirely.
6. Stir in the cooked chicken and any butter left in the pan to the vegetable pot.
7. Add instant oats and chick peas. Stir often and bring to a boil.
8. Add the fresh spinach.
9. Simmer for about ten minutes, until the vegetables are tender but not crunchy. The pottage should thicken, like a stew, and will gain a yellow tint.
10. Let sit for a few minutes. Serve hot.

A slice of fresh bread is wonderful addition to this. Can be stored in fridge for later consumption, or put in freezer.

*NOTE: You can also add diced white or yellow onion. Peppers weren’t around in those times though, so that addition will depend on your need for authenticity.

Enjoy! 😀