Medieval Peasant’s Meal – Farro and Fava Bean Bread with Radish Salad

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Today we prepare a medieval peasant’s meal, farro and fava bean bread from Pietro de’ Crescenzi’s Ruralia Commoda, written in the 14th century, accompanied by a radish salad.

Ingredients:
farro flour
fava bean flour
sourdough
salt
radish
cured pork fatback
vinegar

Medieval Tuscan Radish Soup https://youtu.be/9ikkQod76RE
The Diet of the Franks – Endive and Pork Jowl https://youtu.be/aextVyMgorc
Ancient Greek Bread with Must and Sesame Seeds – Moustakia Sesamata https://youtu.be/THvI6tE1lBY
Ancient Greek Bread – Artolaganon – Ancient Sourdough https://youtu.be/Z9yGquUy2Ak

For more info about this recipe check out our blog: https://historicalitaliancooking.home.blog/english/recipes/medieval-peasants-meal-fava-bean-and-farro-bread-with-radish-salad

If you liked the music on this video check our music and art channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/LiliumAeris
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Music by Lilium Aeris
Andrea Tuffanelli – lute
Serena Fiandro – gemshorn
Qant amors trobet partit – Peirol (ca. 1160 – 1220s)

#medievalfood #medievalrecipe #middleages #ancienthistory

Welcome to our kitchen. Today we prepare a medieval peasant’s meal, farro and fava bean bread from Pietro de’ Crescenzi’s Ruralia Commoda, written in the 14th century, accompanied by a radish salad. We start with the ingredients. We need farro flour, fava bean flour, vinegar, cured pork fatback, and radish.

We knead three parts of farro flour with one part of fava bean flour adding two pinches of salt, sourdough, and enough water to obtain a soft dough. Then, we let the dough rise overnight. According to Pietro de’ Crescenzi, the author of an important book on agriculture, farro bread is light and temperate.

To make a bread suitable for the servants, familia in the original text, we can mix farro with fava bean flour to make a bread that is not only beautiful but also good, creating a balance between the heaviness of fava beans and the lightness of farro.

The use of legumes to make bread was very common in the Middle Ages and Renaissance, the 15th-century physician Michele Savonarola considered these types of bread unsuitable for the delicate stomach of a noble.

Farro was already used in ancient Greece: according to Galen, who lived in the 1st century, it was a typical cereal for bread, although he considered it scarcely nutritious. If you don’t have fava bean flour, you can use another legume flour and still get an excellent result.

We bake the bread in the oven. Meanwhile, we slice the radish and mince the pork fatback. For our recipe, we used sourdough, which was the most common leavening agent since the Antiquity together with a piece of dough from the previous day, but you can also use fermenting grape must.

You find the links to the videos with recipes for the use of must in bread making and the preparation of ancient sourdough in the description below. Since the Antiquity, radish has always been considered a peasant food. According to Galen, it was typically used by the peasants to accompany bread, sometimes with aromatic herbs.

Typical dressings for the raw root were garum and vinegar, whereas in De Re Coquinaria radish is dressed with garum and pepper. The reputation of radish as a vulgar food is shared by Pliny in the 1st century, who calls it a cibus inliberalis, a food unsuitable for a refined palate.

The information in the Middle Ages is very scarce, except for a couple of recipes in Anonimo Toscano’s Libro de la Cocina, written in the 14th century, in which this vegetable is cooked, but radish was probably used exactly like in the Antiquity and Renaissance and continued to be considered a food for farmers.

In fact, according to Agostino Gallo, the author of a 16th-century treatise on agriculture, radishes are buoni per li mietitori, good for the harvesters. According to Costanzo Felici, an author of the same period, radish was eaten alone with bread or with other vegetables, just like in Galen’s time.

You’ll find the link to Anonimo Toscano’s recipe in the description below. To dress our radish, we used melted cured pork fatback, which substitutes garum, as well as the mixture of olive oil and salt typical of medieval salad dressings, as suggested by Anthimus in De Observatione Ciborum in the 6th century.

Anthimus writes that cured pork fatback can be used instead of olive oil, with the same function. A video that explains Anthimus’ ideas about cured pork fatback is listed in the description below. Cured pork fatback seems particularly suitable to make this meal more filling, since there is only bread and one vegetable.

We melt the pork fatback and use it to dress the radish with a bit of vinegar. To learn more about vegetables and bread in historical cuisine, check out our two books in the series Early Italian Recipes,

The first dedicated to vegetables, fruit, herbs, and flowers, and the second to cereals, bread, pasta, and pies. The books contain recipes from the Antiquity to the early Modern Era accompanied by an introduction and an explanation of the ingredients and basic methods.

For more information on medieval food, we recommend our translations of Anthimus’ De Observatione Ciborum, Anonimo Toscano’s Libro de la Cocina, and Johannes Bockenheim’s Registrum Coquine.

Articles and translations of historical sources can be found on our Patreon page. The list of our books and the links to buy us a beer and purchase our merchandise are in the description below.

This bread was fragrant and delicious, though of a consistency too coarse to be appreciated by the delicate palate of a medieval noble. Its sweetness and richness of flavor balanced very well with the sharpness of the radish, perfectly enhanced by the vinegar and the melted pork fatback.

Not a dish worthy of the richest tables, but certainly a meal appreciated by a farmer during a hard day’s work. If you’re interested in ancient foods and flavors, subscribe our channel and consider supporting us on Patreon.