Planning for an average wedding

It’s the late 13th century and you’re a prosperous cooper in a mid-sized town in Flanders. Your daughter, age 17, is getting married in the spring, and you need to put on a feast for 100. You live in/above your shop; the largest room seats about 8.

You’ll have to rent a hall, since the weather is still iffy a week after Easter. (Of course, you can’t put on a wedding feast during Lent, since it’s a fast season by definition.) The church has a smallish hall, and the Coopers’ Guild hall is bigger, seats about 50. You think very hard about the Guild hall and try to imagine cramming more people on benches, but it just won’t work. Fortunately, the Coopers have an agreement with the larger Blacksmiths that guild members can rent the Blacksmiths hall for a small fee, if no blacksmiths need it that day. By shifting the day from Tuesday to Wednesday, you’ll be able to get the larger hall, so that’s settled.

The hall has an outdoor kitchen shed with a few cauldrons and skillets. Since you’re a cooper, you won’t have any problems getting any wooden containers your cooks might need, like barrels, buckets and tubs. But you’ve decided to hire a cookshop to cater the meat pies, and it turns out that they also rent kitchen equipment for feasts. The cookshop can help hire a few cook assistants, too. They promised that these guys will show up with clean hands, but you’ll make sure that a stout bucket with soap and water is standing by. Some of these hired day workers can be filthy and even sick.

As the day approaches, two bakers agree to supply you with trencher loaves two days in advance. The loaves will have time to dry up and harden, so that their slices will make good plates. A poor man who sweeps the baker’s shop for a small loaf hears these plans, and he will spread word among his friends so that they can be first in line to get the used trenchers. Trencher bread isn’t prime stuff; it’s made from flour that has any old weed mixed in. But once it’s soaked up a lot of meat sauce, it’s the best thing the beggars will get for a few days. The saucer lets you know that cinnamon and pepper have both dropped in price lately and you will be able to afford a spiced sauce for the meat.

So the staff at the guildhall, overseen by the cookshop and your wife, will stew mutton and pork in light brown sauce, and they’ll also make frumenty, which is like rice pudding made with Cream of Wheat cereal. You want the feast to have three courses, since this is your only daughter and you want it done right. Each course will be the same type of array of meats and side dishes; the fashion for separating courses into different types of food hasn’t arrived yet. Now all that’s left is to get the alewives to brew extra pots of ale and fill up some of your barrels the day before. A barrel of wine will arrive from the local vintner who was late on barrel payments, too.

This entry was posted in Medieval cycle of life and tagged , . Bookmark the permalink.

Leave a Reply