25 Traveling to the Middle Ages 025

Jeanne delivered Louisa’s afternoon tea. At this time, the common people prioritized lunch, as only a full stomach provided the strength to continue working; dinner was merely a perfunctory affair before sleep. The nobility, however, were different—possessing both wealth and leisure, they placed the greatest importance on their evening meal.

A dinner party lit by candlelight often lasted late into the night, ensuring everyone was thoroughly satisfied.

Because dinner was served quite late, the growing Louisa often found herself unable to hold out, so she usually took afternoon tea around four o'clock. She didn't worry about adolescent weight gain from an extra meal; besides, the castle's fare was rarely to her taste, and she hardly ate anything at dinner anyway.

Helena was quite pleased to see Jeanne arrive with the tea refreshments. If one were to ask what made serving as a lady-in-waiting to Louisa enjoyable—aside from Louisa herself being a fascinating person—it was these treats brought by Jeanne.

Helena was not a woman of limited experience. The places she had lived previously, whether in the East or in Roland, were famous for their culinary arts. By comparison, while the culinary traditions of Vason were not weak, they paled in contrast. She had even lived in Cité, the capital of the Vason Kingdom, for a time, yet had encountered no food that truly astonished her.

However, after arriving at the Bludo court, the dishes prepared by the royal chefs failed to satisfy her, yet the food served by a little kitchen maid brought her a level of deliciousness she had never known before.

Louisa glanced at the tea service. The beverages were rose-apple tea and wine. She had no intention of drinking, of course, so the wine was meant for others—as Louisa began taking afternoon tea, those around her adopted the same habit, and she was never stingy about letting the kitchen prepare more.

In truth, for those accustomed to a hearty dinner, this afternoon tea was optional, especially for women, for whom an extra meal might appear gluttonous. But since the food Jeanne brought out was simply too delicious, everyone tacitly agreed never to discuss the virtues of dietary restraint.

It might seem strange to have "wine" at afternoon tea, but Louisa accepted it readily. This was not only because everyone drank wine at this time, but also because the "English afternoon tea," a hallmark of later eras, offered the choice of champagne or other spirits instead of tea.

Of course, Louisa was not interested in that; she chose to drink "tea." Even though there was no tea in the West at this time, floral and fruit teas were her final compromise—actually, there were tea leaves and tea bags in her portable space, but it was inconvenient to use them openly. So, aside from drinking them secretly on occasion, Louisa would not bring them out for daily meals.

Apple-rose tea was quite wonderful, too. One simply boiled fresh apple chunks in water for about twenty minutes and then added rose petals. After that, there was no need to keep boiling; it was meant to be steeped. It was a pity she couldn't produce black tea; otherwise, adding a bit to the rose petals would have created an apple-rose black tea, which would be even better and better suited for pairing with pastries.

After distributing a portion of the tea to the others, Louisa sat at the small table and invited Helena to sit opposite her. Beyond the drinks, the table was laden with various snacks to satisfy one's hunger—though, in principle, afternoon tea was not meant to be filling, a little sugar was sufficient. But since Louisa took afternoon tea precisely because she wanted to skip dinner, satiety was necessary.

Exquisite silver and glass plates held six kinds of treats, three sweet and three savory: waffles, biscuits, egg tarts, finger sandwiches, mustard-fried zucchini, and bacon-herb veal rolls. With a mix of sweet and savory, meat and vegetables, carbohydrates and protein, the selection was perfectly to Louisa's liking.

"This is 'wafer'..." Helena tasted a palm-sized waffle, her eyes lighting up. "Although it is a 'wafer,' it is sweeter and fluffier than the ones from the Notre Dame in Cité! People say the wafers from Notre Dame are the best, but compared to this, they are nothing."

"Waffles," by classification, belonged to the category of "wafers"—the representative pastries distributed to the public during religious festivals. This specialty pastry had been refined over time, now specifically referring to a cake that required no leavening, made by adding water and red wine to high-quality flour, then baked between two circular iron molds.

Common "wafers" were thinner and crispier, lacking the fluffy interior of later waffles, and the batter recipes differed somewhat. However, for people of this era, the waffle was not unfamiliar and certainly fell into the "wafer" category—as for the differences, one could simply consider it a proprietary recipe.

In this day and age, many things that would later be standardized were not yet consistent. After all, with limited means of communication, even if one wanted to unify them into some "authentic" version, it was impossible.

Louisa also ate a waffle. Under her guidance, it was made with a batter of flour, starch, eggs, milk, sugar, and melted butter (baking powder would make it fluffier, but it was fine without). There was no wine or water added, so it was purely the sweet fragrance of eggs, milk, and butter. The freshly baked waffle was crispy on the outside and soft on the inside; each bite was a harmonious blend of sweetness, rich yet not "cluttered" like so much of the food at this time.

There was jam and honey on the side, which Helena added, but Louisa felt the waffle's own sweetness was sufficient and declined.

"How is this done? The wafers I've eaten in the past, even if they were just off the griddle, would shrink and lose their fluffiness..."

Wafers were common snacks; although once made only by monasteries and churches, street vendors now baked them for sale. Thus, Helena had eaten many kinds and knew how to make them herself, which was why she immediately noticed the difference.

"There is a little trick: the batter, once sifted to be finer, must be left to rest for ten minutes before baking." Louisa was not one to hoard her secrets.

Sipping the apple-rose tea to cleanse her palate, Louisa moved on to the savory finger sandwiches (so named because they were two fingers thick and one finger long; also called "tea sandwiches," they were originally meant to accompany tea and were a staple of afternoon tea). There were two classic flavors: refreshing cucumber and flavor-packed salmon.

The cucumber sandwich used white bread, layered with peeled cucumber, butter, and cream cheese. The salmon sandwich used dark bread, layered with thin slices of smoked salmon—at this time, dark bread was undoubtedly true peasant food, rarely touched by the nobility. However, when used for salmon sandwiches, its hearty, slightly coarse texture complemented the smoky aroma and texture of the salmon perfectly.

Of course, this also had to do with how the dark bread was made. At this time, dark bread was usually very coarse, as it was peasant food; when grinding the flour, no one bothered to sift it, and it was baked as soon as it was ground. Louisa, however, had hers prepared with the same refinement as white bread.

Trusting Jeanne and Louisa, Helena tried the snack made of dark bread and found it unexpectedly delicious. She couldn't help but remark, "I never imagined I would see dark bread on a great noble's table, and that it would be so delicious... perhaps people's prejudices about food have no basis at all."

"I think so too." Louisa had been dissatisfied with the "food discrimination" of this era for a long time. How could food be divided into noble and common? It was people who assigned such value to them.

"Because fruit grows high up, it is considered nobler than root vegetables that grow in the ground—what kind of logic is that? Because of this, garlic has always been a lowly ingredient. Yet now, it seems even the diet of great nobles cannot do without garlic. If food truly had a hierarchy, it should be based on whether or not it is delicious."

Louisa ate another piece of mustard-fried zucchini. It was a very simple snack; she had eaten it in an Italian restaurant in her previous life and it had left a deep impression.

At that time, the Italian restaurant offered two kinds of fried zucchini: anise-fried and mustard-fried. It was said that the anise version was the original, but since some could not get used to the licorice flavor of anise seeds, mustard was introduced as a substitute.

A pot of salted water was brought to a boil, the sliced zucchini added, and then removed as soon as the water boiled again. After patting the slices dry with a cloth and coating them evenly with fine flour and a pinch of salt, they were fried slowly over medium-low heat. Once golden brown on both sides and drained of excess oil, they were sprinkled with mustard and lemon juice before serving.

This snack used ordinary ingredients and restrained seasoning, but it required precise oil temperature, strictly following the principle of moderation and a fresh, simple flavor. It formed a sharp contrast to the culinary style of the time, which piled on heavy spices and complex seasonings that left flavors muddled. Tasting such food felt as if one's tongue, after enduring various "shocks," was being treated with gentleness.

*Crunch, crunch.* After eating several zucchini slices, Louisa paused to drink more tea.

Helena had been observing the egg tart for a while. Although it was a rather unfamiliar food, the aroma could not lie, so she cautiously took one to taste—ah, delicious! Her eyes narrowed in satisfaction.

As she ate, her gaze fell upon the "unassuming" biscuits. She asked uncertainly, "Are these... biscuits?"

Biscuits were a very ancient food, the name meaning "twice-baked bread." Originally, it meant taking baked bread and baking it further to remove moisture for long-term storage. Such a purpose clearly had nothing to do with taste; it was often a last resort for the poor, or sustenance for soldiers on marches or sailors on long voyages.

It wasn't until the early to mid-Middle Ages that Arab nobles began to enjoy biscuits made with sugar, soaked in almond oil, and sprinkled with sesame seeds or almonds. It took about two hundred years for the West to learn this method, which was the kind of biscuit the nobility ate at this time.

But to be honest, even those biscuits were hardly delicious to the palate of a modern person like Louisa.

The biscuits themselves remained hard and dry, and adding sugar could not change the coarse texture. Later attempts to improve the flavor by soaking them in almond oil were effective, but inevitably greasy.

The biscuits for this afternoon tea, however, were "Marguerite biscuits," which only appeared after the Middle Ages:

Softened butter was added to a mixture of flour, chestnut flour, and sugar, with a pinch of salt. Then, cooked egg yolks were pressed through a sieve and mixed into the dough. Finally, the dough was rolled into long strips, cut into small pieces, pressed flat, and baked. That was all it took.