Everything you need to know about French-style tableware in the Middle Ages: this is what the Couvent des Jacobins de Toulouse pendant offers during the Christmas holidays.

If the white tablecloth already existed on the large tables of medieval feasts, the dishes that were placed on them for special occasions were not quite the same. And what we know about it, quite little to tell the truth, comes to us from the writings.

“All we know is we ate a lot of pain“, explains Adrien Fabre, cultural mediator at the Couvent des Jacobins.”That we drank a mixture of water and wine, because the water was not drinkable. So we mixed water and wine, there was less alcohol, and everyone drank a liter, a liter and a half a day, even the children.“.

Spices, brought back from the East, were essential. Perhaps to mask the taste of pheasant meats a little. “I made pâtés that actually look like pastillas», Says Marie Bonnabel, curator of the Couvent des Jacobins
and deputy director of the museums of the city of Toulouse. “It’s stuffed with chicken, raisins, onions, cinnamon, ginger. It’s not very strong but it’s really very fragrant, a symphony of scents“.

Did you know that the word buddy comes from the fact that we to divide the bread in half to share it with his neighbor at the table (co-bread)?

During the Christmas holidays, the Convent of the Jacobins, a medieval jewel of Toulouse, offers discovery workshops in medieval gastronomy. Next sessions mWednesday December 29 at 11 a.m. and Friday December 31 at 11 a.m. and 3 p.m.