Bukkanade and Big Macs
Some things don't change
Americans tend to date the beginnings of fast food to the McDonald brothers in the 1950s, later refined into an industry by the entrepreneur Ray Kroc (although White Castle opened in Wichita, Kansas, in 1916). In reality, fast food is almost as old as humanity itself.
While homo sapiens began cooking more than one million years ago using hot stones, it was impossible to store food until the appearance of clay pots around 20,000 B.C. The clay pot allowed people to create stews and keep them edible for days or weeks, thus providing a meal on demand. The practice of smoking meat and fish emerged about 4,000 B.C., which added a vital layer of convenience to the food supply.
When the Roman Empire rolled around, the culinary scene was already established: there was a developed style of cooking for the upper classes, who could afford servants and equipment, while the masses living in cramped housing depended on bakeries and food stalls for sustenance (sounds familiar, doesn’t it?). A cooking pot was a luxury in the Roman era, and a dangerous one: you could easily burn yourself or set your dwelling on fire, along with those of your neighbors. For the ancient Greeks and Romans, the forerunner of the restaurant was the thermopolium, which sold ready-to-consume food and beverages.
The pattern solidified during the Middle Ages. Members of the nobility (royals and retainers, large landowners, prelates of the Church) had chefs to prepare meals and domestic staff to serve them, but those situations were scarce. According to a study of Colchester, England by the University of Pennsylvania, only 3% of tax-paying households (11 out of 389) had kitchens in the 14th century.
Where did everyone else eat? The cookshops had blossomed into an indispensable pillar of society; by the late 12th century, there was a fast-food area on the banks of London’s River Thames, where the shops were open all night and functioned as the equivalent of a drive-through franchise. The indigent who couldn’t afford the cookshops subsisted on bread, lard and vegetables, while the working poor snacked on meat pies, pancakes and pastries. Sanitation and hygiene in the cookshops were notoriously poor, and many proprietors cut corners by using tainted meat in their recipes.
Travelers as well as working people took their meals at inns, alehouses and taverns, where the fare might range from simple bread and cheese to more elaborate cooked dishes, accompanied by beer or wine. The emphasis was on drinking in alehouses and taverns, but the inn was really the forerunner of the modern restaurant. The centerpiece of a popular tavern was the hunter’s pot or perpetual stew, which was replenished as required. While the ingredients depended on what was available locally, one of the most popular dishes was the bukkenade, a variation on beef stew.
I looked at numerous bukkenade recipes and was going to replicate one here but realized that no one’s life would be enriched by the addition of another recipe for beef stew. What stood out was the number of herbs and spices: sage, mace, saffron, ginger, parsley, cloves, hyssop (good luck finding that in your neighborhood supermarket) and verjuice (ditto). Many other medieval dishes would look familiar to us today: deviled eggs, frittatas, sausages and kabobs, chopped liver, meatloaf, pastries such as fruit tarts, and meat pies of all sorts. Every time you reach for a Swanson’s Chicken Pot Pie, you’re channeling your inner medieval self.
Even though there were noodle shops and dim sum eateries in 12th century China, and the kaiseki or omakase meal was invented in Japan 300 years later, Paris is usually credited with the creation of the modern restaurant. It all started with the table d’hôte, which first appeared in the 15th century. These were establishments that served a communal meal at lunchtime, but there were no choices; you ate whatever the proprietor had prepared that day. By the 1760s, the bouillon shops had arrived. As the name suggests, they served meat in broth and were regarded as purveyors of health foods. The bouillons were patterned on the café model: customers were seated at tables and presented with a menu offering different choices. By the 1780s, the bouillon shops had blossomed into full-blown restaurants as we know them today. The Vefour Restaurant, aka The Grand Vefour, opened in 1784 and still operates today. The golden age of the French restaurant occurred after the Revolution, when chefs who had cooked full-time for the nobility suddenly found themselves out of work.
From a nutritional and caloric standpoint, how did medieval fast food compare to its modern equivalent? According to research conducted by Stanford University, diets were high in carbs, with most of the calories provided by grains, cereals and alcohol. The average person consumed between two and three pounds of bread each day. Working males ate 2,900 calories, with females requiring 2,150 (compared to 2,000 and 1,600 respectively today). Members of the upper classes averaged 4,000 to 5,000 calories daily; monks consumed 6,000 on a normal day, and 4,500 when “fasting.”
At McDonald’s, a Big Mac, small order of fries and a large Coke comes in at 1,150 calories. That meal also contains 28 grams of protein (about 30% of the minimum daily requirement), 176 grams of carbs (63%), 45 grams of fat (57%), and 1,345 mg of sodium (54%). Most fast-food outlets are similar, with Shake Shack about 25-30% higher. Those pale in comparison to places such as Olive Garden, Outback, Red Lobster, Applebee’s and Chili’s. The grand prize goes to The Cheesecake Factory, which serves the unhealthiest dishes in America. Their Louisiana Chicken Pasta contains 2,270 calories, 132 grams of fat, 4,340 mg of sodium, 176 grams of carbs, and 98 grams of protein, and at least a half-dozen similar choices are sprinkled throughout the menu.
In a final twist of irony, the diet of our poverty-stricken citizens remains as bad as ever. Even though most people now have kitchens, there are few supermarkets in poor neighborhoods, leaving residents with little access to fresh produce and fruit—or anything other than high-calorie, nutritionally worthless processed food. Despite significant advances in medicine and nutrition, the working poor are prone to obesity, diabetes, and early death. The more it changes, the more it stays the same.
