Philippe Auguste at the table

At the royal table of the 12th-13th centuries, meals were not served as starter-main-dessert but as a succession of 'dishes': at each service, several dishes (roasts, stews, fish, entremets) were brought together and diners helped themselves. White bread served as a plate (the trencher), spiced sauces dominated, and the meal ended with 'chamber spices' (sugared almonds, hippocras) meant to aid digestion. The Church-imposed 'lean' days replaced meat with fish.

The hallmark of medieval seigneurial cuisine was not cream but spices from the East arriving through Italian ports: cinnamon, ginger, cloves, long pepper, saffron. Bound with bread and soured with verjuice, they marked the table of a king who could afford such costly goods. Cameline (based on cinnamon) was THE sauce-king of the Middle Ages.