Archive for November, 2014

At Pearson’s Renaissance Shoppe, we don’t just sell medieval costumes. We love learning about the medieval era in history, and we aren’t alone! We’re finding great articles online every day all about some of the quirkier aspects of life during the medieval period. Recently, we came across an interesting article from GIZMODO about the connection between modern logos and medieval bakers.

According to Gizmodo, London in the 13^th century came alive when pipes were installed to deliver clean water to the citizenry. As life became easier as a result of the clean water, businesses flourished. However, with booming businesses comes the business of swindlers.  

In order to protect the population of London from the shady practices of huckster bakeries, Henry III created a law that regulated food, called the Assize of Bread and Ale. This law regulated the size and weight of bread, flour purity, and pricing of said items. This law also protected the bakers themselves. Bad bakers could have easily raised the price of their bread out of proportion to grain prices. The result would have punished other bakers and lead to mass starvation. 

How did bakers let people and authorities know that their bread was up to snuff? Logos! A law was developed that required bakers to imprint their products with a unique symbol to make it easier to trace the bread to the baker. Hence, the start of logos!

Now that the holidays are in full swing and you can’t seem to go anywhere without hearing Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas is You.” At Pearson’s Renaissance Shoppe, the holidays are really special to us. Not only do we get to be festive and celebrate with our friends and family, we also take some time to learn a little bit about medieval and Renaissance era holiday traditions. Today, we found some great information about what exactly people in the medieval era ate during this festive time.

Did you know that people in medieval times actually celebrated twelve days of Christmas? That’s a lot of celebrating! Wealthy people and people of nobility were able to feast upon fresh meat and flavor them with cloves, nutmeg, cinnamon, and pepper from India and Indonesia. Wealthy people were also able to afford sugar, so sweets were plentiful for the upper class people in the medieval period during the holidays.

Less fortunate people would still celebrate with food, but the food wouldn’t be as luxurious. Less expensive meat like sausage and bacon were eaten, and while sugar may not have been plentiful, poorer people still indulged in dried apples and honey.

No matter how you celebrate the holiday this year, keep some medieval style in mind. Take a look at The Forme of Cury, a cookbook written around 1390. This will give you some inspiration and who knows – maybe you’ll find your next holiday tradition!