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Show 000X00XX0X0000 Medieval Dishes That Called for Condiments stringy, beef tough ; and men made use of food from sources that today would be avoided with a shudder. In the hope, then, of securing an aid to digestion, as well as to disguise the exact nature of many dishes, the spice box came frequently to hand as the cook worked. For natural crudeness cried aloud for mitigation, even at the feasts where kings ate crowned and bishops dined in cope and miter. An important reason for the apparent appar-ent vast thirst of the English of medieval me-dieval times, William Edward Mead explains, In his volume, "The English Medieval Feast," is found In the dishes common to their tables, wherein condiments con-diments and spices played a major part. Loaded with pepper, cubebs, mace, saffron, cloves, ginger, cinnamon, cinna-mon, nutmeg, galingale, cummin, licorice, li-corice, aniseed, and other tart ingredients, ingre-dients, they weie prone to inspire the consumer to frequent draughts from the ale keg or beer mug. Here again the element of necessity entered. For, the author points out, fashion had in reality little to do with the extensive use of these elements. Our ancestors, he reminds us, had not yet begun to breed beasts and poultry poul-try for the table, except that the value of the capon was remembered from former days. Mutton was apt to be |