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Pottage or potage (, ; ) is a term for a thick soup or stew made by boiling , , and, if available, meat or fish. It was a staple food for many centuries. The Oxford Companion to Food, p. 648 The word pottage comes from the same Old French root as potage, which is a dish of more recent origin.
Pottage ordinarily consisted of various ingredients, sometimes those easily available to . It could be kept over the fire for a period of days, during which time some of it could be eaten, and more ingredients added. The result was a dish that was constantly changing. Pottage consistently remained a staple of poor people's diet throughout most of 9th to 17th-century Europe. The pottage that these people ate was much like modern-day soups. When wealthier people ate pottage, they would add more expensive ingredients such as meats.
In the Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition translation of the Bible, the prophet Elisha purifies a pot of poisoned pottage that was set before the sons of the prophets (38–41).
The earliest known cookery manuscript in the English language, The Forme of Cury, written by the court of King Richard II, contains several pottage recipes including one made from cabbage, ham, onions and leeks. Google Books and Internet Archive. A slightly later manuscript from the 1430s is called Potage Dyvers ("Various Pottages"). During the Tudor period, a good many English ' diets consisted almost solely of pottage and self-cultivated vegetables, such as carrots. An early 17th-century British recipe for pottage was made by boiling mutton and oatmeal with violet leaves, endive, chicory, strawberry leaves, spinach, Picris echioides, Calendula flowers, and parsley.
Potage was a common dish in the medieval cuisine of northern France, and it increased in popularity from the High Middle Ages onward. The word " potage" as a culinary term appears as early as the mid-13th century, describing a wide variety of boiled and simmered foods. Some potages were very liquid, others were relatively solid with ingredients like bread, pulses, or rice that fully absorbed the liquid. Other potages resembled [[ragoût|Ragout]]s and other dishes that would be recognized as entrées in the 17th century and later. Still others were porrées
of vegetables.
In the Petit traicté, in a collection of menus at the end of the book, potages compose one of the four stages of the meal. The first stage is the entree de table (entrance to the table); the second stage consists of potaiges (foods boiled or simmered "in pots"); the third consists of one or more services de rost (meat or fowl "roasted" in dry heat); and the last is the issue de table (departure from the table). These four stages of the meal appear consistently in this order in all the books that derive from the Petit traicté.
The terms entree de table and issue de table are organizing phrases, "describing the structure of a meal rather than the food itself". The terms potaiges and rost indicate cooking methods but not ingredients. The menus, though, give some idea of both the ingredients and the cooking methods that were characteristic of each stage of the meal.
The essential element of the potages was broth from meat, fowl, fish, or vegetables. Some potages were simple broths; others included veal, boar, furred game, boiled fowl and game birds of all sorts, and fish; others included only vegetables like leeks, marrows, and lettuce. The many types of potages are similar to those of the menus in the Ménagier de Paris, written 150 years before the Petit traicté.
In the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries, potages on meat days were broths made from all sorts of butcher’s meat, fowl, and feathered game, but not furred game. Additions to the broth included the meat or fowl used to make the broth; other meats, including ; vegetables; and bread or pasta. Common types of potages included bouillon (clear broth from poached meat or fowl); soupe (bouillon mixed with finely grated bread); ( potages of root vegetables and varied meats); and bisques ( potages of the finest delicacies - not the smooth, creamy bisques of modern cuisine).
On lean days, fish replaced meat and fowl in every stage of the meal other than dessert. Meat and fowl broths were replaced by fish broth, vegetable purées, milk or almond milk, and juices of various vegetables like asparagus, artichokes, and mushrooms. Animal fats were replaced with butter and sometimes with oil. Additions to the broth included a wide variety of fish, shellfish, crustaceans, turtles, frogs, and even (a seaduck, not a fish).
Vegetable potages were also common on lean days, many made of vegetables that appeared almost exclusively on lean days, such as cabbage, lettuce, onions, leeks, carrots, lentils, pumpkin, turnips, and white and black salsify. Other vegetables in potages on lean days were of a finer quality of the sort served as or Lenten entrées, including cauliflower, spinach, artichokes, cardoons, chard, celery, Paris mushrooms, and skirrets. Out of Lent, potages on lean days sometimes also included eggs.
In the cuisine of New England, pottage began as "bean porridge" vegetables, seasonings and meat, fowl or fish. This simple staple of early American cuisine eventually evolved into the and typical of New England's cuisine. A version of "scotch barley broth" is attested to in the 18th century colonial recipe collection called Mrs Gardiner's Family Receipts. Pottages were probably served at the First Thanksgiving.Muse Magazine
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