AN APPETITE FOR POWER

Wine, song and the finest food money could buy made medieval feasts a highlight of the courtly calendar. Yet more often than not, writes Charlotte Palmer, a thirst for influence and prestige lay behind the carousing

- Charlotte Palmer

THE MENU
If you've got it... flaunt it

In 1491, Ercole I d'Este, Duke of Ferrara in northern Italy, threw a feast for his son's wedding. Among the highlights of this culinary extravaganza was a series of elaborately designed sugar sculptures. Yet before the guests could tuck in to them, attendants picked up the sweet artworks and promptly threw them into the diners' laps. Not to worry: another round of similar treats was served immediately.

To modern eyes, this may seem like a strange way to treat wedding guests. Yet the duke was making a statement: that he had the wealth to throw away eye-wateringly expensive delicacies and, in the blink of an eye, replace them with more of the same.

The duke's prank may strike us as extravagance at its very worst, yet it shines a light on to medieval attitudes to feasting. For the elite, food was seen as a tool for flaunting wealth and power - and, as such, serving (or merely displaying) highly elaborate dishes was a feature of banquets in the Middle Ages. The 14th-century English cookbook The Forme of Cury includes recipes for chickens dressed as knights and a cockatrice - a mythical dragon-like creature, in this case created by combining body parts from a pig and a cockerel. "Take a whole roasted cockerel, pull his guts and skin him all in one piece, save for the legs," run the instructions. "Take a piglet, cut him in half from the middle downwards. Sew them firmly together."

Other dishes might demonstrate that the host was dialled in to new tastes and trends - for example, the growing influence of Arab or other cuisines seen in foods and ingredients such as pasta or aubergine.

MUSIC
Flutes, bells and trumpets