He wanted his stewards to send him all wolf hides caught and tanned on his estates, feed his hunting dog puppies at their own expense, and use barrels instead of leather bottles. He wanted them to be sure that the workshops turned out watertight carts for the army, shipped to him at Aachen with sacks of flour tucked inside; and he wanted regular shipments of malt. He even specified that stewards make sure the weaving-women should have the three basic colors of yellow, blue and red (woad, madder and vermilion). But let’s look now at the food specifics.
Charlemagne seemed to avoid traveling at Lent, so the manor farms were supposed to collect all Lent-specific food in the weeks before, and send a large portion to Aachen:
“Two thirds of the Lenten food shall be sent each year for our use — that is, of the vegetables, fish, cheese, butter, honey, mustard, vinegar, millet, panic, dry or green herbs, radishes, turnips, and wax or soap and other small items; and as we have said earlier, they are to inform us by letter of what is left over, and shall limier no circumstances omit to do this, as they have done in the past, because it is through those two thirds that we wish to know about the one third that remains.”
It’s interesting to note that cheese and butter make the list; it’s possible that in the 8th and 9th centuries, the church hadn’t yet prohibited dairy products since they were not actually meat. (I don’t understand the word “limier” as used in this translation, but here is the original Latin, in case it helps: “…et quod reliquum fuerit nobis per brevem, sicut supra diximus, innotescant et nullatenus hoc praetermittant, sicut usque nunc fecerunt, quia per illas duas partes volumus cognoscere de illa tertia quae remansit.”)
The last item in the Capitulare tells us the most about European food circa 800. The king provided a list of what must be grown in manor farm gardens:
“It is our wish that they shall have in their gardens all kinds of plants: lily, roses, fenugreek, costmary, sage, rue, southernwood, cucumbers, pumpkins, gourds, kidney-bean, cumin, rosemary, caraway, chick-pea, squill, gladiolus, tarragon, anise, colocynth, chicory, ammi, sesili, lettuces, spider’s foot, rocket salad, garden cress, burdock, penny-royal, hemlock, parsley, celery, lovage, juniper, dill, sweet fennel, endive, dittany, white mustard, summer savory, water mint, garden mint, wild mint, tansy, catnip, centaury, garden poppy, beets, hazelwort, marshmallows, mallows, carrots, parsnip, orach, spinach, kohlrabi, cabbages, onions, chives, leeks, radishes, shallots, cibols, garlic, madder, teazles, broad beans, peas, coriander, chervil, capers, clary. And the gardener shall have house-leeks growing on his house.”
Most of these plants are herbs, in our classification; edible plants tended to be classed together in medieval lists, not carefully differentiated by type. Let’s pull out the modern vegetables: cucumbers, pumpkins, gourds, kidney-beans, chick-peas, lettuce and garden cress, celery, beet, carrot, parsnip, spinach, kohlrabi, cabbage, onion, leek, radish, shallot, broad beans, and peas. Most of these vegetables were closer to wild herbs than to our modern hybrids. Lettuce was small and bitter; cabbage was loose-leaf, not a tight round head. Carrots were purple and not as sweet as modern carrots, more like parsnips. Peas included a variety of legumes that were dried for later use.
Charlemagne’s farms included orchards:
“As for trees, it is our wish that they shall have various kinds of apple, pear, plum, sorb (?), medlar, chestnut and peach; quince, hazel, almond, mulberry, laurel, pine, fig, nut and cherry trees of various kinds. The names of apples are: gozmaringa, geroldinga, crevedella, spirauca; there are sweet ones, bitter ones, those that keep well, those that are to be eaten straightaway, and early ones. Of pears they are to have three or four kinds, those that keep well, sweet ones, cooking pears and the late-ripening ones.”
Notice his care about types of pear and apple: I think his cooks certainly had some input on this list. Fruit was rarely eaten raw in the later Middle Ages, but the king’s list seems to suggest that some apples and pears, and perhaps plums or peaches, could be “eaten straightaway (subito comessura).”
We can assume that most farms of the time were lucky to have even a few of these orchard trees and bushes. The king’s model farms set the standard, and for the next few centuries, estate farms copied them. By the later Middle Ages, prosperous farms attached to castles could be assumed to have most of Charlemagne’s dainties.