At the 12th-century papal court, meals were not divided into starter-main-dessert but were governed by the Church and the liturgical season. One distinguishes the *pulmentum* (the basic porridge or pottage of bread and legumes), the *ferculum* (the dish brought to table—fish on lean days, meat on fat days), and the final collation (fruits, cheese, honey sweets). Fasting days—Wednesday, Friday, Advent, Lent—banned meat; wine was always mixed with water according to the monastic custom inherited by the Roman curia.

The wealth of a papal table was measured by spices arriving from the East through Italian ports—pepper, cinnamon, ginger, saffron, cloves—and by the acidity of verjuice (green grape juice) which replaced the rare lemon. These were markers of rank, of the medieval taste for pungent sweet-and-sour, and of the Mediterranean trade that Rome dominated.