Le Festin du troubadour: Nourriture, société et littérature en Occitanie (1100–1500) by Wendy Pfeffer (review)

Wendy Pfeffer's latest book, which is a veritable banquet, opens with a fore-matter—"À propos des illustrations," "Abréviations," and especially a most congenial "Avant-Propos" where she acknowledges an abiding love of cooking and names a host of friends and colleagues with whom she has shared memorable culinary experiences—that fittingly offers an array of light amuse-bouches before she subsequently serves up a series of far more substantial courses steeped in serious scholarly language in which the familiar je disappears and is replaced by a far more weighty editorial nous.

As a first course (Part I: Le Cadre: Ch.1: "Des témoins oculaires," Ch. 2: "L'Alimentation d'un point de vue socioéconomique et régional"), Pfeffer fleshes out an inclusive view of Occitan language and culture introduced in previous articles (e.g., "Lifting a Glass in Medieval Occitania," alluded to in the "Avant-Propos," but absent in the Bibliographie complète). That language and culture is distinct from, and certainly not subservient to, those of northern France even in the centuries following French victories in the Albigensian Crusade and, in consideration of the fact that much of Occitania had been subject to the Anglo-Norman Empire following Eleanor of Aquitaine's marriage to Henry II, until the end of the Hundred Years' War. Pfeffer's cogent arguments are based in an impressive command of primary sources, which include various travel accounts, investigations by the Inquisition, a late fourteenth-century Languedocian recipe book (Modus viaticorum preparandorum et salsarum), even Le Mesnagier de Paris, and registers from the Papal court at Avignon. She is equally adept in her use of secondary sources and leaves no doubt that she has surpassed her predecessors, among them Carole Lambert, Linda Paterson, and co-authors Geneviève Brunel-Lobrichon and Claudie Duhamel-Amado, in solidifying her arguments.

The second course (Part II: Les Matériaux: Ch. 3: "Les Matières premières," Ch. 4: "Les Boissons") discloses, contrary to modern notions of a highly restricted diet in the Middle Ages, that a wide variety of cereals, fruits, and vegetables both wild and cultivated, as well as fresh-water and salt-water fish and mollusks, were exploited for the tables not only of the wealthy, who also enjoyed wild game, but also of the humbler classes, who often consumed protein-rich small game and pork. Vineyards, which were prominent throughout the Midi, produced wine both for local and regional consumption and for exportation. Of special interest, due to the prominence of olive oil in the region today, is a section in Ch. 3 (pp. 90–110) in which Pfeffer discusses her predecessors' views concerning the use of oils and fats in medieval Occitan cuisine: olive oil replaced animal fat on days of fasting (as many as 150 days per year), when it competed with oils derived from nuts. As for drinking, soft water was a staple, a healthy substitute for wine, but wine was the nobler preference and, along with bread, was a basic component of meals at tables of all classes. In Gascony, which was known for its apples, cider was an appealing option.

The third course (Part III: Les outils, le menu: Ch. 5: "Le Chef en sa cuisine," Ch. 6: "La Carte et l'organisation du repas") traces the advancement in the status of cuisine from the early thirteenth century through the fifteenth. At the beginning of the period, a cook's position ranked at the bottom of the social ladder. Pfeffer points to the motif of the defeated knight who is forced to work in the kitchen, which occurs in Aliscans and Rigomer (p. 130), as well as La Chanson de Roland, and she also cites the Rule of St. Benedict that members of his Order must do the same. She notes also the proliferation of...