Gutenberg at the table

In the home of a well-to-do townsman in 15th-century Mainz, the meal is not divided into starter-main-dessert but revolves around three pillars: *Mus* (thick cereal porridge) or *Suppe* that satisfies hunger, the ubiquitous rye bread, and a side of salted meat or fish from the Rhine. The whole is washed down with Rhine wine or beer. Honey sweets and spiced wine seal feast days or the fatigue of a journey to the Frankfurt fair.

Mainz and Strasbourg residents have at hand, through the merchants of the nearby great Frankfurt fair, ginger, cinnamon, saffron, and pepper. This handful of spices from afar transforms a cuisine of rye and cabbage into a table of a literate bourgeois: they perfume wine, gingerbread, and sauces on feast days.