(photograph © Kiwidutch)
For any self confessed Foodie the most interesting room when visiting anyones home is always the kitchen.
Castles, for Foodies are just “former homes” and even more interesting because they also speak volumes about the Culinary Art of ages past.
When our guide tell us that the next room will be the castle kitchen, my heart soars, when I rounded the corner and saw it …my heart sank… wow, how sparse! and for the number of people that castle would have housed and necessitated feeding, how amazingly small!
The is a massive fireplace with a kind-of-spit-roast-thingy (for want of a better, more accurate technical term) but it’s a huge contraption that’s easily as tall as I am with a quadruple layer of turning spits and handles…. not only a remarkable feat of engineering but also probably an annoyingly delicate balancing act to use in practice.
Most of the articles here today are reproductions of what would have been represented here in centuries past, but two things grab my attention immediately: a less than round barrel that isn’t a reproduction and the source of water: a well.
Yes, literally parked into a recess in the outer wall there is a large cover (closed now for safely reasons) over the large opening, with a pulley system and a wooden bucket above that again.
Even in summer, the task of hauling water up from the depths of the well must have been a thankless enough task. In Winter it must have been pure misery. Water is heavy, and pulling on a rope with your bare hands is harder than it looks. Even with strong arms, the chances are that the water hauler probably got splashed quite often and layers of wet medieval clothes were probably no fun to squelch around in or to get dry.
(photograph © Kiwidutch)
Since invariably, menial kitchen work was done by women, there were probably rather a lot of scullery maids with fabulously toned biceps hidden under their tunics and bodices simply because they hauled water from the well so often. No workout video’s needed in those days!
It appears from the diet depicted here that food was very simple, very seasonal and probably sometimes rather limited.
The Dutch are the tallest people in the world, but it wasn’t always that way… centuries ago they were usually rather short. Look at any preserved suit of armor that’s a few centuries old and you may be shocked at just how short.
My nine year old daughter has a far closer chance height-wise of getting into one of these suit than I ever would, and Himself? Yikes, by medieval standards he’s a Goliath, and towers over the suit of armor like a friendly giant.
The amusing thing about that is that Himself is not considered “especially tall” here in The Netherlands, but yes, does attract comment when we travel. LOL
We have two nephews who are equal in height to Himself, and one of them is still growing!
In little over a century it’s abundantly clear that diet has played a massive role in how tall the Dutch were as a nation, and have become today. Milk and cheese consumption here is wondrously huge and it’s not just Dutch height that has skyrocketed, it’s also longevity. So many people here celebrate their 100th Birthday these days that it’s barely news any more.
So, simple food is a nice thought, but too simple and probably not enough of it, not only stunted growth but also meant short lives. Of course there are many other factors, people dying of the common cold or very small infected wound is thankfully no longer the regular occurrence it once was centuries ago.
(photograph © Kiwidutch)
This kitchen is very small, there are some tables, but other than the oval shaped barrel in the corner, no other furniture remains, I try and envisage some, but it’s hard since the room is irregularly shaped and there’s not really a lot of open space.
At least the wooden doors remain, … beautiful, but nothing can hide the fact that the food cooked here was probably seasonal, very plain and exceptionally repetitious.
If you are well off enough to be sitting reading this on a computer, chances are that you also have food in your fridge, a supermarket or a garden, or a farmers market at hand somewhere close by, and such a selection of foods to choose from that any medieval person walking though a time warp between their kitchen and yours, would be totally overcome at the sheer scale and variety of food items on offer.
We don’t have a dishwasher in the Kiwidutch household, (well, actually we do, since all four of us enjoy the job description of “washer and dryers of dishes“).
Next time my kids complain of the task, or when I look at the pots and pans stacked up in the sink and think “ugh, not really in the mood for this but where shall I start?”
I should at least have a decency to remember the poor medieval scullery maid, who had no instant hot water from the tap, just buckets of cold, nay, oft freezing water to do her dishes in.
If I also remember her fabulous biceps, then I might also see some gain and (gasp!), pleasure, in my household manual labour.
(photograph © Kiwidutch)
(photograph © Kiwidutch)
(photograph © Kiwidutch)
