The medieval kitchen
With the exception of some kitchen noble, princely, or monastic, a few spaces and systems for the preparation and cooking of food, came to our eyes. The essential information comes from iconography fragmented and limited to areas of major social classes . The progress of the archaeological research on sites of the Middle Ages have come gradually to fill some gaps, in particular those concerning the rural world.
texts, such as the iconography, the richest and many relate to the privileged classes, but from the thirteenth century and especially in the XIV and XV, there are documentary series that span different environments.
clarify texts, as well as preparations for the funeral banquet, took into account only items of kitchen table or that it was worth to bequeath, and only in exceptional cases, securities inventories makes little to provide some descriptive elements of fireplace and kitchen. But their long list of items often located precisely in one of the rooms, or even a mobile home equipment show set the stove, cooking utensils, crockery, furniture and table linen, habits household food. Only rarely describes these objects and the inventory is limited to indicating what material they are made and the use of images is often necessary to rebuild their appearance. The contribution of archeology is, from this point of view, certainly more decisive, because although they may be deprived of some parts, furniture or structures are reconstructed with their shapes and materials to be located in its context of use.
Information from written sources complement each other and then with those provided by the archaeological and allowing the organization to understand the location of the places where foods were prepared.
The fireplace in a medieval house was housed and was installed on the dirt floor, it was an open fire, in fact in the homes of peasants, the fireplace wall was almost absent . Even in the case of small rural lords often had a fireplace that provision even though it was larger, but the fires in urban areas were more frequent, but their presence in the bedroom shows that held an exclusive feature of heating.
The domestic oven instead remained a rarity in the city houses the richest just had one, but the citizens did appeal to bakers to bake bread kneaded at home while in the countryside the peasants had to use the oven bannale .
Regarding the equipment placed near the fire's main objects were made from wrought iron tripod, and an iron hoop suspended over the fire, which served as a support for containers without handles, who lit the fire must also be adept at govern without special tools, because the palette and pokers were rare . If
few houses were equipped with oven, some in the city had a place used for the preparation of food called "coquina", if it was systematic in the mansions of the nobles, was rarer in the homes of artisans and merchants who prefer to reserve large part of their domestic space to the professional activities . The great princely families but had huge kitchen, located far from the apartments for fear of possible fire .
kitchen utensils, which are one of the most frequent findings of archaeologists, can be divided into three large families, those of ceramics that were used to transport liquids or simmer soups or vegetables, such as those in iron pans , pans, molds and the mess in the homes of the rich grills and rotisseries, and finally the tools made of wood such as salt shakers, cutting boards and ladles .
