Animals and food at Rochester Priory
/Dr Christopher Monk explores details about animals and animal products consumed at Rochester Priory emerging from a section in Custumale Roffense concerning the monastery’s lay servants (folios 53r-60v).
Despite the sixth-century Rule of Saint Benedict requiring all monks, ‘except those gravely ill’, to ‘abstain entirely from the consumption of the meat of quadrupeds’,* the monks of Rochester Priory did consume meat from oxen and cows, pigs (including suckling pigs) and sheep. In addition, the Rochester records show the monks also ate chicken, geese, salmon and other fish.
Their diet reflected the seismic shift by the thirteenth century in attitudes towards meat-eating across religious houses. By the 1230s, it appears the Rochester monks were having a choice of two meat dishes at their main meal, cooked and served by two of their four cooks, the senior cook named R. Fichet and his assistant Ernulf. They would not have eaten meat every day, however, since it would have been avoided on the three ‘fish days’ of late medieval England, namely, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday.
*Translation from Bruce L. Vernarde (ed. & trans.), The Rule of Saint Benedict.
The roles of the four cooks
Custumale records the duties of four cooks – named R. Fichet, Ernulf, G. Toterel and S. Calchepalie – who were responsible for providing meals for three groups of people: the monks in the refectory, the sick in the infirmary, and guests.
In addition, Calchepalie’s ‘office’ carried out the slaughtering of sheep and pigs on St Martin’s Day (11th November) – the traditional medieval day of slaughtering fattened animals. Presumably, this must have been carried out, if not onsite, close to the monastery grounds.
Fichet, the senior cook, was paid seven shillings annually; Ernulf was paid five shillings; Toterel and Calchepalie, four shillings each. But they were also paid ‘the cooks’ fees’ – probably referring to them keeping some of the offcuts of meat – about which the record goes into quite some detail:
‘They [the cooks] also have, when the cellarer makes his larder, all necks of oxen and cows and all pieces from the knee to the foot, so that the sinews of the aforesaid pieces will remain attached. They have the heads for their skinning, and the cellarer keeps the tongues. They have at the same time, to be sure, all necks and tails of pigs, attached to a single joint from the backbone. They have also all heads of fish except salmon, from which they have the tail.’
The cellarer, a senior monk, had oversight of food provisions. One of his responsibilities was to ‘make his larder’ which refers to the preserving of large cuts of meat and fish through a process of salting. The offcuts of meat were not prepared this way, but handed over to the cooks.
Though not made explicit, the cooks would surely have turned some of the offcuts – from both meat and fish – into jellied dishes and other delicacies, or broths. Cows’ – or calves’ – feet and pigs’ trotters are ideal for this, as they are high in gelatinous collagen. A thirteenth-century English recipe collection (written in Anglo-Norman French) refers to pig’s trotters being served with a sage sauce, spiced with ginger, cloves, cinnamon, and galingale, spices that would have been available to the Rochester Monks.
The wives of the cooks also played a role in food production using the offal left over from the larder butchery. The offal would have included such things as liver, heart, kidneys, and diaphragm, but also the intestines of the animals were likely used:
‘For the offal of the prepared oxen, cows and pigs, the cooks will fetch their wives and the cellarer will supply them. […] [A]nd for prepared offal they have charity, namely bread and ale, but by the goodwill of the cellarer. They also get to take all the feathers of all the types of birds which come into the kitchen for eating.’
Documentary evidence from medieval England supports the idea that women were often viewed as experts in offal preparation. Like the cooks’ wives at Rochester, women were also employed at St Augustine’s Abbey in Canterbury, in the mid-thirteenth century, ‘to clean the entrails of the pigs and cattle, and to make the puddings (like black pudding, ‘boudin’) from them’.**
The cooks’ wives likely prepared similar puddings, or sausages. They were, as with their husbands, given bread and ale whilst at work; and, as a payment of sorts, it seems they were also given all the poultry feathers (at least those during the time of their visit), which would have been deployed in making home furnishings.
** C. M. Woolgar, The Culture of Food in England 1200-1500, p. 69.
A luxury dish for the monks
‘And if the cellarer wishes, when, instead of one pig, two or three sucklings are slaughtered for the [monastic] court, the swineherd has a tale and neck from the cook’.
The monks evidently ate fresh suckling pig, perhaps on a special feast day, or if honoured guests were visiting. The swineherd, who is not actually listed as a regular servant of the monks, received offcuts as a token of thanks for providing (and despatching) the young animals.
Food gifts and payments to the servants
Various food ‘gifts’ and renumerations were made to the servants at different times of the year.
At Easter, the master miller received a delicious dairy flan for his services.
The two church attendants were given on the priory’s principal feast days ‘a dish from the kitchen’, probably containing meat or fish, in addition to their normal ale and bread, and on Shrove Tuesday they had lamb. Good Friday was also a day of food gifts for the attendants:
‘From the offering that comes forth on Good Friday, they have bread, eggs, herrings, onions, nuts, garlic, and from the sacristan a silver coin, and the finest piece of fruit.’
All the servants, from the esteemed master miller to the lowliest launderer, received in common a monthly supply of grain, ‘or the equivalent in pennies’, but also various animal food products:
‘All of them have equal grain, namely each one, every month, a mina – that is, the measure which comprises half a seam, and an eighth part of a seam – or the equivalent in pennies. In Lent, indeed, herrings or eels, namely 31 to the master and 23 to the second-rank for each week. They have, indeed, a gift at Christmas and at Easter, the master a penny, the second-rank a halfpenny. They have cheese three times a year, to each one in turn two pounds, and they must distribute accordingly as they are great or small, namely, to the master one from the mature cheeses, one from the medium and one from the young; to the second-rank two from the medium. All have meat equally at Christmas or one penny, and on the Tuesday before Lent and at Easter.’
Dr Christopher Monk
