title: Pale Fire

text: Pale Fire is a 1962 novel by Vladimir Nabokov. The novel is presented as a 999-line poem titled "Pale Fire", written by the fictional poet John Shade, with a foreword, lengthy commentary and index written by Shade's neighbor and academic colleague, Charles Kinbote. Together these elements form a narrative in which both fictional authors are central characters. Nabokov wrote "Pale Fire" in 1960–61, after the success of "Lolita" had made him financially independent, allowing him to retire from teaching and return to Europe. It was commenced in Nice and completed in Montreux, Switzerland.


title: Pale Fire

text: "Pale Fire" has spawned a wide variety of interpretations and a large body of written criticism, which Finnish literary scholar estimated in 1995 as more than 80 studies. The Nabokov authority Brian Boyd has called it "Nabokov's most perfect novel", and the critic Harold Bloom called it "the surest demonstration of his own genius ... that remarkable tour de force". It was ranked 53rd on the list of the Modern Library 100 Best Novels and 1st on the American literary critic Larry McCaffery's "." Its title is taken from William Shakespeare's Timon of Athens.


title: Pale Fire

text: Starting with the epigraph and table of contents, "Pale Fire" looks like the publication of a 999-line poem in four cantos ("Pale Fire") by the fictional John Shade with a foreword, extensive commentary, and index by his self-appointed editor, Charles Kinbote. Kinbote's commentary takes the form of notes to various numbered lines of the poem. Here and in the rest of his critical apparatus, Kinbote explicates the poem very little. Focusing instead on his own concerns, he divulges what proves to be the plot piece by piece, some of which can be connected by following the many cross-references. Espen Aarseth noted that "Pale Fire" "can be read either unicursally, straight through, or multicursally, jumping between the comments and the poem." Thus, although the narration is non-linear and multidimensional, the reader can still choose to read the novel in a linear manner without risking misinterpretation.


title: Pale Fire

text: The novel's unusual structure has attracted much attention, and it is often cited as an important example of metafiction; it has also been called a poioumenon. The connection between "Pale Fire" and hypertext was stated soon after its publication; in 1969, the information-technology researcher Ted Nelson obtained permission from the novel's publishers to use it for a hypertext demonstration at Brown University. A 2009 paper also compares "Pale Fire" to hypertext.


title: Pale Fire

text: The interaction between Kinbote and Shade takes place in the fictitious small college town of New Wye, Appalachia, where they live across a lane from each other, from February to July 1959. Kinbote writes his commentary from then to October 1959 in a tourist cabin in the equally fictitious western town of Cedarn, Utana. Both authors recount many earlier events, Shade mostly in New Wye and Kinbote in New Wye and in Europe, especially the "distant northern land" of Zembla.


title: Pale Fire

text: Shade's poem digressively describes many aspects of his life. Canto 1 includes his early encounters with death and glimpses of what he takes to be the supernatural. Canto 2 is about his family and the apparent suicide of his daughter, Hazel Shade. Canto 3 focuses on Shade's search for knowledge about an afterlife, culminating in a "faint hope" in higher powers "playing a game of worlds" as indicated by apparent coincidences. Canto 4 offers details on Shade's daily life and creative process, as well as thoughts on his poetry, which he finds to be a means of somehow understanding the universe.


title: Pale Fire

text: In Kinbote's editorial contributions he tells three stories intermixed with each other. One is his own story, notably including what he thinks of as his friendship with Shade. After Shade was murdered, Kinbote acquired the manuscript, including some variants, and has taken it upon himself to oversee the poem's publication, telling readers that it lacks only line 1000. Kinbote's second story deals with King Charles II, "The Beloved", the deposed king of Zembla. King Charles escaped imprisonment by Soviet-backed revolutionaries, making use of a secret passage and brave adherents in disguise. Kinbote repeatedly claims that he inspired Shade to write the poem by recounting King Charles's escape to him and that possible allusions to the king, and to Zembla, appear in Shade's poem, especially in rejected drafts. However, no explicit reference to King Charles is to be found in the poem. Kinbote's third story is that of Gradus, an assassin dispatched by the new rulers of Zembla to kill the exiled King Charles. Gradus makes his way from Zembla through Europe and America to New Wye, suffering comic mishaps. In the last note, to the missing line 1000, Kinbote narrates how Gradus killed Shade by mistake.


title: Pale Fire

text: Towards the end of the narrative, Kinbote all but states that he is in fact the exiled King Charles, living incognito; however, enough details throughout the story, as well as direct statements of ambiguous sincerity by Kinbote towards the novel's end, suggest that King Charles and Zembla are both fictitious. In the latter interpretation, Kinbote is delusional and has built an elaborate picture of Zembla complete with samples of a constructed language as a by-product of insanity; similarly, Gradus was simply an unhinged man trying to kill Shade, and his backstory as a revolutionary assassin is also made up.


title: Pale Fire

text: In an interview, Nabokov later said that Kinbote killed himself after finishing the book. The critic Michael Wood has stated, "This is authorial trespassing, and we don't have to pay attention to it", but Brian Boyd has argued that internal evidence points to Kinbote's suicide. One of Kinbote's annotations to Shade's poem (corresponding to line 493) addresses the subject of suicide at some length.


title: Pale Fire

text: As Nabokov pointed out himself, the title of John Shade's poem is from Shakespeare's "Timon of Athens:" "The moon's an arrant thief, / And her pale fire she snatches from the sun" (Act IV, scene 3), a line often taken as a metaphor about creativity and inspiration. Kinbote quotes the passage but does not recognize it, as he says he has access only to an inaccurate Zemblan translation of the play "in his Timonian cave", and in a separate note he even rails against the common practice of using quotations as titles.


title: Pale Fire

text: Some critics have noted a secondary reference in the book's title to "Hamlet", where the Ghost remarks how the glow-worm "'gins to pale his uneffectual fire" (Act I, scene 5).


title: Pale Fire

text: The title is first mentioned in the foreword: "I recall seeing him from my porch, on a brilliant morning, burning a whole stack of [index cards of drafts of the poem] in the pale fire of the incinerator...".


title: Pale Fire

text: According to Norman Page, "Pale Fire" excited as diverse criticism as any of Nabokov's novels. Mary McCarthy's review was extremely laudatory; the Vintage edition excerpts it on the front cover. She tried to explicate hidden references and connections. Dwight Macdonald responded by saying the book was "unreadable" and both it and McCarthy's review were as pedantic as Kinbote. Anthony Burgess, like McCarthy, extolled the book, while Alfred Chester condemned it as "a total wreck".


title: Pale Fire

text: Some other early reviews were less decided, praising the book's satire and comedy but noting its difficulty and finding its subject slight or saying that its artistry offers "only a kibitzer's pleasure". Macdonald called the reviews he had seen, other than McCarthy's, "cautiously unfavorable". "TIME" magazine's 1962 review stated that "Pale Fire does not really cohere as a satire; good as it is, the novel in the end seems to be mostly an exercise in agility – or perhaps in bewilderment", though this did not prevent "TIME" from including the book in its 2005 list of the 100 best English-language novels published since 1923.


title: Pale Fire

text: The first Russian translation of the novel, one created by Véra Nabokov, its dedicatee, was published in 1983 by Ardis in Ann Arbor, Michigan (Alexei Tsvetkov initially played an important role in this translation).


title: Pale Fire

text: After Nabokov's reputation was rehabilitated in the Soviet Union (his novels started being published there in 1986 and the first book composed entirely of Nabokov's works was printed in 1988), "Pale Fire" was published in 1991 in Sverdlovsk (in Sergei Ilyin's Russian translation).


title: Pale Fire

text: Some readers concentrate on the apparent story, focusing on traditional aspects of fiction such as the relationship among the characters. In 1997, Brian Boyd published a much-discussed study arguing that the ghost of John Shade influenced Kinbote's contributions. He expanded this essay into a book in which he also argues that, in order to trigger Shade's poem, Hazel Shade's ghost induced Kinbote to recount his Zemblan delusions to Shade.


title: Pale Fire

text: Some readers, starting with Mary McCarthy and including Boyd, Nabokov's annotator Alfred Appel, and D. Barton Johnson, see Charles Kinbote as an alter-ego of the insane Professor V. Botkin, to whose delusions John Shade and the rest of the faculty of Wordsmith College generally condescend. Nabokov himself endorsed this reading, stating in an interview in 1962 (the novel's year of publication) that "Pale Fire" "is full of plums that I keep hoping somebody will find. For instance, the nasty commentator is not an ex-King of Zembla nor is he professor Kinbote. He is professor Botkin, or Botkine, a Russian and a madman." The novel's intricate structure of teasing cross-references leads readers to this "plum". The Index, supposedly created by Kinbote, features an entry for a "Botkin, V.," describing this Botkin as an "American scholar of Russian descent"—and referring to a note in the Commentary on line 894 of Shade's poem, in which no such person is directly mentioned but a character suggests that "Kinbote" is "a kind of anagram of Botkin or Botkine". In this interpretation, "Gradus" the murderer is an American named Jack Grey who wanted to kill Judge Goldsworth, whose house "Pale Fire's" commentator—whatever his "true" name is—is renting. Goldsworth had condemned Grey to an asylum from which he escaped shortly before mistakenly killing Shade, who resembled Goldsworth.


title: Pale Fire

text: Other readers see a story quite different from the apparent narrative. "Shadeans" maintain that John Shade wrote not only the poem, but the commentary as well, having invented his own death and the character of Kinbote as a literary device. According to Boyd, Andrew Field invented the Shadean theory and Julia Bader expanded it; Boyd himself espoused the theory for a time. In an alternative version of the Shadean theory, Tiffany DeRewal and Matthew Roth argued that Kinbote is not a separate person but is a dissociated, alternative personality of John Shade. (An early reviewer had mentioned that "a case might be made" for such a reading.)


title: Pale Fire

text: "Kinboteans", a decidedly smaller group, believe that Kinbote invented the existence of John Shade. Boyd credits the Kinbotean theory to Page Stegner and adds that most of its adherents are newcomers to the book. Some readers see the book as oscillating undecidably between these alternatives, like the Rubin vase (a drawing that may be two profiles or a goblet).


title: Pale Fire

text: Though a minority of commentators believe or at least accept the possibility that Zembla is as "real" as New Wye, most assume that Zembla, or at least the operetta-quaint and homosexually gratified palace life enjoyed by Charles Kinbote before he is overthrown, is imaginary in the context of the story. The name "Zembla" (taken from "Nova Zembla", a former latinization of Novaya Zemlya) may evoke popular fantasy literature about royalty such as "The Prisoner of Zenda". As in other Nabokov books, however, the fiction is an exaggerated or comically distorted version of his own life as a son of privilege before the Russian Revolution and an exile afterwards, and the central murder has resemblances (emphasized by Priscilla Meyer) to Nabokov's father's murder by an assassin who was trying to kill someone else.


title: Pale Fire

text: Still other readers de-emphasize any sort of "real story" and may doubt the existence of such a thing. In the interplay of allusions and thematic links, they find a multifaceted image of English literature, criticism, or glimpses of a higher world and an afterlife.


title: Pale Fire

text: The first two lines of John Shade's 999-line poem, "Pale Fire", have become Nabokov's most quoted couplet:


title: Pale Fire

text: Like many of Nabokov's fictions, "Pale Fire" alludes to others of his. "Hurricane Lolita" is mentioned, and Pnin appears as a minor character. There are many resemblances to "Ultima Thule" and "Solus Rex", two short stories by Nabokov intended to be the first two chapters of a novel in Russian that he never continued. The placename Thule appears in "Pale Fire", as does the phrase "solus rex" (a chess problem in which one player has no pieces but the king).


title: Pale Fire

text: See also "The Ambidextrous Universe", a later book referencing "Pale Fire" which in turn triggered a reciprocal response in a subsequent Nabokov novel ("", 1969).


title: I before E except after C

text: "I before E, except after C" is a mnemonic rule of thumb for English spelling. If one is unsure whether a word is spelled with the digraph "ei" or "ie", the rhyme suggests that the correct order is "ie" unless the preceding letter is "c", in which case it may be "ei".


title: I before E except after C

text: The rhyme is very well known; Edward Carney calls it "this supreme, and for many people solitary, spelling rule". However, the short form quoted above has many common exceptions; for example:


title: I before E except after C

text: The proportion of exceptions can be reduced by restricting application of the rule based on the sound represented by the spelling. Two common restrictions are:


title: I before E except after C

text: Variant pronunciations of some words (such as "heinous" and "neither") complicate application of sound-based restrictions, which do not eliminate all exceptions. Many authorities deprecate the rule as having too many exceptions to be worth learning.


title: I before E except after C

text: The Middle English language evolved from Old English after the Norman conquest, adding many loanwords from Norman French, whose sounds and spellings changed and were changed by the older English customs. In French loanwords, the digraph <ie> generally represented the sound , while <ei> represented ; <ie> was later extended to signify in non-French words. In the Great Vowel Shift, sounds and were raised to and respectively. Later, the "meet"–"meat" merger saw the vowel in many words change to , so that "meat" became a homonym of "meet", while "conceive" now rhymed with "believe". Early Modern English spelling was not fixed; many words were spelled with <ie> and <ei> interchangeably, in printed works of the seventeenth century and private correspondence of educated people into the nineteenth century.


title: I before E except after C

text: The mnemonic (in its short form) is found as early as 1866, as a footnote in "Manual of English Spelling", edited by schools inspector James Stuart Laurie from the work of a Tavistock schoolmaster named Marshall. Michael Quinion surmises the rhyme was already established before this date. An 1834 manual states a similar rule in prose; others in 1855 and 1862 use different rhymes. Many textbooks from the 1870s on use the same rhyme as Laurie's book.


title: I before E except after C

text: The restriction to the "long e" sound is explicitly made in the 1855 and 1862 books, and applied to the "I before E except after C" rhyme in an 1871 manual. Mark Wainwright's FAQ posting on the alt.usage.English newsgroup characterises this restricted version as British. The restriction may be implicit, or may be explicitly included as an extra line such as "when the sound is e" placed before or after the main part of the rhyme.


title: I before E except after C

text: A longer form excluding the "long a" sound is found in Rule 37 of Ebenezer Cobham Brewer's 1880 "Rules for English Spelling", along with a list of the "chief exceptions":


title: I before E except after C

text: "Dr Brewer" is credited as the author by subsequent writers quoting this form of the rhyme, which became common in American schools.


title: I before E except after C

text: "A Dictionary of Modern English Usage" discusses "i before e except after c". Henry Watson Fowler's original 1926 edition called the rule "very useful", restricting it to words with the "long e" sound, stating further that "words in which that sound is not invariable, as "either", "neither", "inveigle", do not come under it", and calling "seize" "an important exception". The entry was retained in Ernest Gowers's 1965 revision. Robert Burchfield rewrote it for the 1996 edition, stating 'the rule can helpfully be extended "except when the word is pronounced with "', and giving a longer list of exceptions, including words excluded from Fowler's interpretation. Robert Allen's 2008 pocket edition states, "The traditional spelling rule ' "i" before "e" except after "c" ' should be extended to include the statement 'when the combination is pronounced -ee- '". Jeremy Butterfield's 2015 edition suggests both "when ... pronounced "-ee-"" and "except when ... pronounced "-ay-"" as extensions to the rhyme, as well as listing various classes of exception.


title: I before E except after C

text: In 1932 Leonard B. Wheat examined the rules and word lists found in various American elementary school spelling books. He calculated that, of the 3,876 words listed, 128 had "ei" or "ie" in the spelling; of these, 83 conformed to I-before-E, 6 to except-after-C, and 12 to sounded-like-A. He found 14 words with "i-e" in separate syllables, and 2 with "e-i" in separate syllables. This left 11 "irregular" words: 3 with "cie" ("ancient, conscience, efficiency") and 8 with "ei" ("either, foreign, foreigner, height, leisure, neither, seize, their"). Wheat concluded, "If it were not for the fact that the jingle of the rule makes it easy to remember (although not necessarily easy to apply), the writer would recommend that the rule be reduced to '"I" usually comes before "e",' or that it be discarded entirely".


title: I before E except after C

text: Sandra Wilde in 1990 claimed the sounded-like-E version of the rule was one of only two sound–letter correspondence rules worth teaching in elementary schools. The rule was covered by five of nine software programs for spelling education studied by Barbara Mullock in 2012.


title: I before E except after C

text: Edward Carney's 1994 "Survey of English Spelling" describes the ["long-e" version of the] rule as "peculiar":


title: I before E except after C

text: The converse of the "except after c" part is Carney's spelling-to-sound rule E.16: in the sequence ⟨cei⟩, the ⟨ei⟩ is pronounced . In Carney's test wordlist, all eight words with ⟨cei⟩ conform to this rule, which he thus describes as being a "marginal" rule with an "efficiency" of 100%. Rarer words not in the wordlist may not conform; for example, in "haecceity", "ceilidh", and "enceinte" the "ei" represents , , and respectively.


title: I before E except after C

text: Mark Wainwright's FAQ posting interprets the rule as applying only to the FLEECE vowel, not the NEAR vowel; he regards it as useful if "a little common sense" is used for the exceptions. The FAQ includes a 1996 response to Wainwright by an American, listing variations on the rule and their exceptions, contending that even the restricted version has too many exceptions, and concluding "Instead of trying to defend the 'rule' or 'guideline', "'i' before 'e' except after 'c'", why don't we all just agree that it is dumb and useless, and be content just to laugh at it?"


title: I before E except after C

text: Kory Stamper of Merriam-Webster has said the neighbor-and-weigh version is "chocked with tons of exceptions", listing several types. On Language Log in 2006, Mark Liberman suggested that the alternative "i before e, no matter what" was more reliable than the basic rule. On the same blog in 2009, Geoff Pullum wrote, 'The rule is always taught, by anyone who knows what they are doing, as "i before e except after c when the sound is 'ee'."'


title: I before E except after C

text: "Teaching English Spelling" (Cambridge University Press, 2000) provides a system of sound–spelling correspondences aimed at correcting common spelling errors among native and ESL students. The chapter "The sound 'e' (/iː/)" has sections on spellings "ee", "ea", "-y" and "ie and ei", the last of which uses "I before E except after C" and lists five "common exceptions" ("caffeine, codeine, protein, seize, weird").


title: I before E except after C

text: The 2009 edition of "Support for Spelling", by the English Department for Education, suggests an "Extension activity" for Year Five (10-year-olds):


title: I before E except after C

text: The "Oxford Dictionaries" website of Oxford University Press states "The rule only applies when the sound represented is ‘ee’, though. It doesn't apply to words like "science" or "efficient", in which the "–ie-" combination does follow the letter "c" but isn't pronounced ‘ee’."


title: I before E except after C

text: David Crystal discusses the rule in his 2012 history of English spelling. He first restricts it to the vowel, then accounts for several classes of exception. He states that, while the exceptions are fewer and rarer than the words that follow the rule, there are too many to learn by heart; the factors are "too great to reduce to a simple rule", but "a basic knowledge of grammar and word-history" can handle them.


title: I before E except after C

text: Educationalist Greg Brooks says the long-e qualification "is hardly ever mentioned, perhaps because it is difficult to explain to children"; the except-after-C part "works very poorly"; and the mnemonic "should be consigned to oblivion".


title: I before E except after C

text: The following sections list exceptions to the basic form; many are not exceptions to the augmented forms.


title: I before E except after C

text: Words that break both the "I before E" part and the "except after C" part of the rule include cheiromancies, cleidomancies, eigenfrequencies, obeisancies and oneiromancies.


title: I before E except after C

text: Some large groups of words have "cie" in the spelling. Few common words have the "cei" spelling handled by the rule: verbs ending "-ceive" and their derivatives ("perceive", "deceit", "transceiver", "receipts", etc.), and "ceiling". The BBC trivia show "QI" claimed there were 923 words spelled "cie", 21 times the number of words that conform to the rule's stated exception by being written with "cei". These figures were generated by a QI fan from a Scrabble wordlist. The statistic was repeated by UberFacts.


title: I before E except after C

text: The vowel represented by "ie" in words spelled "cie" is rarely the "long e" vowel of FLEECE (), so few words are exceptions to the version of the rule restricted to that sound. Among them are "specie", "species".


title: I before E except after C

text: For those with "happy"-tensing accents, the final "y" in words ending "-cy" has the FLEECE vowel, and therefore so do inflected forms ending "-cies" or "-cied" ("fancied", "policies", etc.).


title: I before E except after C

text: If the vowel of NEAR () is considered as "long e", then words ending "-cier" may also be exceptions. Possible examples include: "fancier", if pronounced with two rather than three syllables; or "financier", if stressed on the final syllable or pronounced with a "happy"-tensing accent.


title: I before E except after C

text: These are exceptions to the basic and "long a" versions of the rhyme, but not to the "long e" version.


title: I before E except after C

text: Many words have "ei" not preceded by "c". In the sections that follow, most derived forms are omitted; for example, as well as "seize", there exist "disseize" and "seizure". Words are grouped by the phonemes (sounds) corresponding to "ei" or "ie" in the spelling; each phoneme is represented phonetically as at and, where applicable, by the keyword in John C. Wells' lexical sets.


title: I before E except after C

text: An asterisk* after a word indicates the pronunciation implied is one of several found. Some have an variant more common in America than Britain (e.g. "sheikh", "leisure", "either" have , , respectively).


title: I before E except after C

text: Words where "ei", not preceded by "c", represents the vowel of FLEECE (), are the only exceptions to the strictest British interpretation of the "long e" version of the rhyme. Less strict interpretations admit as exceptions those words where "eir", not preceded by "c", represents the vowel of NEAR ().


title: I before E except after C

text: There are many words where "ei", not preceded by "c", represents the vowel of FACE (). There are a few where "eir", not preceded by "c", represents the vowel of SQUARE (). These groups of words are exceptions only to the basic form of the rhyme; they are excluded from both of the common restricted forms.


title: I before E except after C

text: The rhyme is mentioned in several films and TV episodes about spelling bees, including "A Boy Named Charlie Brown", "The Simpsons" episode "I'm Spelling as Fast as I Can", The Pen Is Mightier Than the Pencil episode of "The Odd Couple", and an episode of "Arthur"; and also in the musical "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer", when Huckleberry Finn is being taught how to read. The rhyme was used as a climactic plot device in the 1990 "TaleSpin" episode "Vowel Play" when Kit corrects Baloo's spelling by reciting the second half ("or when sounding like A, as in neighbour or weigh") of the mnemonic.


title: I before E except after C

text: "I Before E (Except After C): Old-School Ways To Remember Stuff" was a miscellany released in the UK for the Christmas 2007 "stocking filler" market, which sold well.


title: I before E except after C

text: "I Before E Except After C" is a song on Yazoo's 1982 album "Upstairs at Eric's". The Jackson 5's 1970 hit "ABC" has the lyric "I before E except after C". "I before E except after C" was a 1963 episode of the TV series "East Side/West Side".


title: I before E except after C

text: "I Before E" is the name of both a short-story collection by Sam Kieth and a music album by Carissa's Wierd, in each case alluding to the unusual spelling of the creator's name. Until the 1930s, Pierce City, Missouri was named "Peirce City", after Andrew Peirce. A 1982 attempt to revert to the original spelling was rejected by the United States Census Bureau.


title: I before E except after C

text: Comedian Brian Regan employs the rule in a joke on his debut CD "Live" in the track "Stupid in School".


title: Siddique (actor)

text: Siddique (born 1 October 1962) is an Indian actor and producer, who works mainly in Malayalam cinema. Along with appearing in over 350 Malayalam films, he has also acted in a few Tamil, Telugu and Hindi language films. He is known for having played a wide range of starring and supporting roles, including comic characters, romantic leads, anti-heroes and villains.


title: Siddique (actor)

text: Siddik made his acting debut with the film "Aa Neram Alppa Dooram" (1985). He got a break with the comedy film "In Harihar Nagar" (1990). Due to its success, Siddik acted in a variety of comic roles during the early-1990s in films such as "Godfather", Manthrikacheppu, Simhavalan Menon, "Kasargode Khadarbhai", "Thiruthalvaadi", "Mughamudra", "Kunukkitta Kozhi", and "Welcome to Kodaikanal". Siddik turned to more serious roles with "Asuravamsam" and "Lelam" (both 1997). He also did a notable villain role in "Sathyameva Jayathe" (2001), which led to a succession of similar roles.


title: Siddique (actor)

text: In 2004, he was awarded the Kerala State Film Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performances in "Sasneham Sumitra" and "Choonda". Siddik ventured into production by co-producing the film "Nandanam" (2002) under Bhavana Cinema. In 2013, he received the Nandi Special Jury Award for "Naa Bangaaru Talli".


title: Siddique (actor)

text: Siddique was born on 1 October 1962 at Edavanakkad, in Ernakulam, Kerala, India. He was the youngest child in a family of three with an elder brother and a sister. He did his primary schooling in his hometown, Edavanakkad and completed a Diploma in Electrical Engineering from Government Polytechnic College, Kalamassery.


title: Siddique (actor)

text: He then worked as an Electrical Engineer at Kerala State Electricity Board division at Thrissur, Kerala. After a few years of service at KSEB, he flew abroad to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia and worked there for a few more years. Later he quit his job and came back. He started discovering his acting talents during his academic years at Government Polytechnic College, Kalamassery. He started his career as a mimicry artist from there.


title: Siddique (actor)

text: He is married to SHIULI, after the suicide of his first wife and has three children (Rasheen, Shaheen and Farheen). He has a son Rasheen Siddique from his previous marriage. His second son Shaheen made his debut as an actor in the movie "Pathemaari". His elder brother Adbul Majeed is also an actor who appears in Malayalam films.


title: Siddique (actor)

text: Siddik babu started his career in the late 1980s with minor roles. His major break came in 1990 when, along with Mukesh, Jagadeesh, and Asokan, he was cast as one of the heroes in "In Harihar Nagar". The movie, directed by Siddique (director) and Lal, went on to become a huge box office success, starting a streak of similar low-budget comedy movies featuring the cast. Siddique became an essential part of such movies along with Mukesh and Jagadeesh. Films in the genre included "Manthrikacheppu" (1992), "Simhavalan Menon", "Kasargode Khadarbhai" (1992), "Thiruthalvadi" (1992), "Mughamudra" (1992), "Kunukkitta Kozhi" (1992), "Mookkillarajyathu" (1991), "Mimics Parade", "Grihapravesam", "Welcome to Kodaikanal", "Kavadiyattam", KaattilethadiTheverude Aana, Marupuram, Vaarafalam", Mughachithram" and "Kinnaripuzhayoram". He was cast alongside leading actresses of the time like Parvathy, Shobana, Sunitha, Mathu, and Suchithra. His performance in "Godfather" by Siddique-Lal was positively received by Malayalam movie viewers. Siddique also did action roles in some films. For example, there is the case of "Ayalathe Adheham", where he was actually the villain only to be revealed at the climax of the movie. In "Ekalavyan" he played the role of Sarath, a young police officer, supporting Suresh Gopi.


title: Siddique (actor)

text: His talent lies in how an actor should keep reinventing to be in Malayalam movie biz - learning from his experience and mistakes. His career curve shows a good inclination towards adapting to a variety roles - comedy, villain, character roles and so on. He is one among the artists who rose from junior artist level to a major actor with his talent and hard work.


title: Siddique (actor)

text: The mid-1990s did not go well for Siddik as a number of personal problems affected his career. He made a comeback in the late 1990s with supporting roles in "Asuravamsam" with Manoj K. Jayan, and in "Lelam" and "Crime File" (both with Suresh Gopi). These films ensured his return to the mainstream. In "Sathyameva Jayathe", he played a cold-blooded villain with Suresh Gopi. Following the success of this film, Siddique was offered a number of opportunities to play villains.


title: Siddique (actor)

text: During this period, he also acted in television serials. His role in "Sthree" with Vinaya Prasad was a huge hit among Malayalam television audiences. He also anchored a musical programme called "Sallapam" on Doordarshan. Siddique has also anchored other musical programmes including "Sangeetha Samagamam" in Amrita TV and "Symphony" in Kairali TV, in the 2000s.


title: Siddique (actor)

text: In 2002, he produced "Nandanam", directed by Ranjith. The movie featured young actors Prithviraj Sukumaran and Navya Nair. Siddique appeared in a small but completely different role in the film. This was a box-office hit despite the absence of major stars.


title: Siddique (actor)

text: Siddique started appearing in a number of different looks in his later films. This can be seen in films such as "Chota Mumbai", "Hallo", "Nadiya Kollappetta Rathri", "Udayon", "Vellinakshatram", "The Tiger", and "Alibhai".


title: Siddique (actor)

text: He encouraged director Lal to create the sequel to "In Harihar Nagar". The movie "2 Harihar Nagar" was released in 2009 with the middle-aged actors Jagadeesh, Mukesh, and Asokan coming together. Again in 2010, he appeared in the series' third installment, "In Ghost House Inn".


title: Siddique (actor)

text: In April 2011, Siddique launched Kerala's first family magazine "Family Facebook". Siddique is the editor of the monthly magazine that is rich with stories of the players in the Malayalam film industry – actors, directors, playback singers and others.


title: Women's Tennis Association

text: The Women's Tennis Association (WTA) is the principal organizing body of women's professional tennis. It governs the WTA Tour which is the worldwide professional tennis tour for women and was founded to create a better future for women's tennis. The WTA's corporate headquarters is in St. Petersburg, Florida, with its European headquarters in London and its Asia-Pacific headquarters in Beijing.


title: Women's Tennis Association

text: The Women's Tennis Association was founded in June 1973 by Billie Jean King, and traces its origins to the inaugural Virginia Slims tournament, arranged by Gladys Heldman, sponsored by Joe Cullman, CEO of Philip Morris, and held on 23 September 1970 at the Houston Racquet Club in Houston, Texas. Rosie Casals won this first event.


title: Women's Tennis Association

text: When the Women's Tennis Association was founded, Billie Jean King was one of nine players that comprised the WTA, also referred to as the Original 9, that included Julie Heldman, Valerie Ziegenfuss, Judy Dalton, Kristy Pigeon, Peaches Bartkowicz, Kerry Melville Reid, Nancy Richey, and Rosie Casals. Today, the WTA has more than 2,500 players from nearly 100 countries competing for $146 million in prize money.


title: Women's Tennis Association

text: In December 2021, following Peng Shuai's endangerment by the Chinese government, the WTA suspended its operations in China and Hong Kong.


title: Women's Tennis Association

text: Tennis's Open Era, in which professional players were allowed to compete alongside amateurs, began in 1968. Billie Jean King was a high ranking tennis player in the late 1960s who won several titles and was interviewed in the media. The first Open Tournament was the British Hard Court Championships in Bournemouth. Later that year at the first Open Wimbledon, the prize fund difference was 2.5:1 in favor of men. King won £750 for taking the title, while Rod Laver won £2,000. The total purses of both competitions were £14,800 for men and £5,680 for women. Confusion also reigned as no one knew how many Open Tournaments there were supposed to be. The tournaments that did not want to provide prize money eventually faded out of the calendar, including the US Eastern Grass Court circuit with stops at Merion Cricket Club and Essex county club.


title: Women's Tennis Association

text: There were two professional tennis circuits in existence at the start of the Open Era: World Championship Tennis (WCT), which was for men only, and the National Tennis League (NTL). Ann Jones, Rosie Casals, Françoise Dürr, and Billie Jean King joined NTL. King was paid $40,000 a year, Jones was paid $25,000, and Casals and Durr were paid $20,000 each. The group played established tournaments, such as the US Open and Wimbledon. But the group also organised their own tournaments, playing in the South of France for two months. The International Tennis Federation (ITF) then imposed several sanctions on the group: the women were not allowed to play in the Wightman Cup in 1968 and 1969 and the USLTA refused to include Casals and King in their rankings for those years.


title: Women's Tennis Association

text: By the 1970s the pay differential had increased. King said "Promoters were making more money than women. Male tennis players were making more money. Everybody was making more money except the women". In 1969, ratios of 5:1 in terms of pay between men and women were common at smaller tournaments. By 1970 these figures had increased to up to 12:1.


title: Women's Tennis Association

text: Billie Jean King and Cynthia Starr wrote in their book, "We Have Come a Long Way", in 1988, "The women were being squeezed financially because we had no control in a male-dominated sport. Men owned, ran and promoted the tournaments, and because many of them were former players themselves, their sympathies lay with the male players, who argued vociferously that most of the money should be theirs." The low point in women's pay inequality came before the US Open in 1970. The Pacific Southwest Championships directed by Jack Kramer, had announced a 12:1 ratio in the prize money difference between what males and females would win. This tournament provoked the top 9 woman tennis players to take a stand for equality. "These woman became known as the Original 9". They did not play in the Los Angeles tournament and instead wanted to create their own tennis tournament.


title: Women's Tennis Association

text: Several female players contacted Gladys Heldman, publisher of "World Tennis Magazine", and stated that they wanted to boycott the event. Although Heldman advised against it, she did help them put together their own tournament in Houston which would not take place until after the US Open. The 1970 Houston Women's Invitation for nine women players was formed. Heldman was friends with Joseph Cullman, CEO and chairman of Phillip Morris, who secured the new tournament. The tournament was a success and the women found footing, "so, at the bidding of the Original 9, Heldman – who had secured backing from Philip Morris's Virginia Slims cigarette brand for her Houston Invitational – went back to her friend, Philip Morris chairman Joe Cullman III, to see if the company would support a circuit of some kind. Delighted by the publicity splash from Houston, Cullman was only too keen to give the women what they needed: financial backing, to the tune of a quarter of a million dollars, and the Virginia Slims name as title sponsor for a circuit in 1971."


title: Women's Tennis Association

text: The International Lawn Tennis Federation (ILTF) began dropping several women's competitions from the tournaments it presided over. For example, in 1970, the ILTF sanctioned 15 men-only tournaments, all of which had previously been combined events. The Virginia Slims Circuit, which would later absorb the ILTF's Women's Grand Prix circuit, and eventually become the WTA Tour. The circuit was composed of 19 tournaments, all based in the United States (one in Puerto Rico), and prize money totalled $309,100.


title: Women's Tennis Association

text: In 1973 the US Open tennis tournament became the first Grand Slam tournament to award the same prize money for women as men. The Australian Open would become the second Grand Slam offering equal prize money following suit in 1985 although the tournament awarded men more money from 1996-2000 before equal prize money returned in 2001. The French Open offered equal prize money for champions in 2006. In 2007 both Wimbledon and the French Open both offered equal prize money.


title: Women's Tennis Association

text: The momentum that began in the 1970s blossomed into the 1980s. By solidifying television contracts to broadcast tournaments allowed tennis to come into everyone's home. You didn't need a ticket to see the spectacle of players that represented countries around the global. The sport became increasingly more popular as coverage spread."The '80s energized the popularity base, taking tennis out of country clubs and landed estates into public parks and arenas. It became a sport, in contrast to an amenable pastime."


title: Women's Tennis Association

text: "From those first steps in Houston in 1970 to the current WTA Tour, with tournaments in 33 countries and total prize money of $139 million (in 2018); from a prize pot 10 times lower than the men at the Grand Slams in 1970 to parity in 2007 and ever since, women's tennis has become (almost) the equal of its male counterpart. And they did it themselves, which also explains why their governance is still independent today."


title: Women's Tennis Association

text: The WTA was founded at a meeting organised by Billie Jean King, a week before the 1973 Wimbledon Championships. This meeting was held at Gloucester Hotel in London. In 1975, the WTA increased its financial stature by signing a television broadcast contract with CBS, the first in the WTA's history. Further financial developments ensued. In 1976, Colgate assumed sponsorship of the circuit from April to November. In 1979, Avon replaced Virginia Slims as the sponsor of the winter circuit, and in its first year offered the largest prize fund for a single tournament, $100,000 for the Avon Championships, in the WTA tennis history. The "Colgate Series", renamed the "Toyota Series" in 1981, included tournaments in all parts of the world, whereas the Avon sponsored events took place solely in the US. The two circuits merged beginning with the 1983 season, when Virginia Slims returned to take full sponsorship rights of the WTA Tour. Every tournament under the administration of the WTA now became part of the "Virginia Slims World Championships Series".


title: Women's Tennis Association

text: In all, Virginia Slims (Philip Morris) sponsored women's tennis from 1970 to 1978 and again from 1983 to 1994. The sponsored has received such criticism as the following from the Stanford [University] Research Into the Impact of Tobacco Advertising: "Virginia Slims cleverly sponsored the WTA Tour Championships at the time to increase connections between cigarettes and healthy female athletes."


title: Women's Tennis Association

text: In 1977, women's tennis was the first professional sport opened to transgender women. The New York Supreme Court ruled in favour of Renée Richards, a player who underwent male-to-female sex reassignment surgery. Eligibility of transgender players is officially regulated under the current WTA official rulebook.


title: Women's Tennis Association

text: In April 1977, the "Washington Post" published an article entitled "Social Variety Is Slim On Women's Tennis Tour" which looked at some of the downside and difficulties faced by touring tennis pros, not unlike the problems of traveling musicians performing a whole series of tour dates and gigs. The article included the phrase "comradeship that falls short of camaraderie", because fellow members were also competitors who usually felt they needed to maintain a certain amount of distance. One player was quoted as saying, "But if you are not playing well, it is very hard."


title: Women's Tennis Association

text: In 1984, The Australian Open joined the US Open in offering women equal prize money, but temporarily did not between 1996 and 2000. After a 30-year campaign, 2007 marked the historic achievement of equal prize money at Roland Garros and Wimbledon. This meant all four major tournaments offered parity.


title: Women's Tennis Association

text: The WTA circuit continued to expand during these years. In 1971, King became the first female athlete to surpass $100,000 in earnings for a single year. Chris Evert became the first female athlete to win over $1,000,000 in career earnings in 1976. By 1980, over 250 women were playing professionally, and the circuit consisted of 47 global events, offering a total of $7.2 million in prize money. These increased financial opportunities allowed for groundbreaking developments not only in tennis, but across women's sports.


title: Women's Tennis Association

text: In 1982, Martina Navratilova became the first to win over $1,000,000 in a single year. Navratilova's single year earnings exceeded $2 million in 1984. In 1997, Martina Hingis became the first to earn over $3 million during a single year. In 2003, Kim Clijsters surpassed $4 million in earnings for a single year. In 2006, Venus Williams and the WTA pushed for equal prize money at both the French Open and Wimbledon. Both of these Grand Slam events relented in 2007 and awarded equal money for the first time. This enabled Justine Henin, who won the French Open in 2007, to earn over $5 million that year, becoming the first woman in sports to do this. In 2009, Serena Williams went over the six million mark by earning over $6.5 million in a single year. Then in 2012 both Serena Williams and Victoria Azarenka became the first players to exceed $7 million in prize money in a single season. In 2013 Serena Williams went over the twelve million dollar mark, winning $12,385,572 in a single year.


title: Women's Tennis Association

text: American sports entrepreneur Jerry Diamond (1928–1996) served as executive director of the women's association from 1974 to 1985. He was instrumental in negotiating business deals with Avon, Colgate-Palmolive, and Toyota, and worked out the deal that made Virginia Slims the titular sponsor of the WTA tour.


title: Women's Tennis Association

text: Larry Scott became chairman and CEO of the WTA on 16 April 2003. While at the WTA, Scott put together the largest sponsorship in the history of women's sports, a six-year, $88 million sponsorship deal with Sony Ericsson. On 24 March 2009, Scott announced that he was resigning as WTA chief to take up a new position as the Commissioner of the Pacific-10 Conference, now the Pac-12 Conference, on 1 July 2009.


title: Women's Tennis Association

text: Scott pointed to Korn Ferry to headhunt his replacement but "with no decision made" on 13 July 2009, WTA Tour announced the appointment of Stacey Allaster, the Tour's president since 2006, as the new chairman and CEO of the WTA. Allaster was named as one of the "Most Powerful Women in Sports" by Forbes Magazine and led the WTA through significant growth and under her leadership, she secured a media agreement that would maximise fan exposure to women's tennis globally. During her time with the WTA, she generated an estimated $1 billion in diversified contract revenues, built the brand globally, and was a strong advocate for gender equality. She announced her retirement as chief executive of the WTA on 22 September 2015 citing a personal change in priorities.


title: Women's Tennis Association

text: On 5 October, Steve Simon, the Tournament Director of the BNP Paribas Open, was announced to succeed Stacey as the new WTA chairman and CEO.


title: Women's Tennis Association

text: Ranking points are also available at tournaments on the ITF Women's Circuit organised by the International Tennis Federation, which comprises several hundred tournaments each year with prize funds ranging from US$15,000 to US$100,000, and at the Olympic Games.


title: Women's Tennis Association

text: In 2020, the tournament naming was simplified to align with the ATP system of naming – WTA 1000, WTA 500, and WTA 250 – with at least one tournament, the Cincinnati Masters, moved up in status from the middle category to the top.


title: Women's Tennis Association

text: The Players' Council is a group or sub-committee under the WTA board of directors, consisting of eight selected players on the tour that advocate player interest, handles grievances, changes in the tennis schedule and other concerns.


title: Women's Tennis Association

text: The WTA rankings are based on a rolling 52-week, cumulative system. A player's ranking is determined by her results at a maximum of 16 tournaments for singles and 11 for doubles and points are awarded based on how far a player advances in a tournament. The basis for calculating a player's ranking are those tournaments that yield the highest ranking points during the rolling 52-week period. The period must include:


title: Adobe Creative Cloud

text: Adobe Creative Cloud is a set of applications and services from Adobe Inc. that gives subscribers access to a collection of software used for graphic design, video editing, web development, photography, along with a set of mobile applications and also some optional cloud services. In Creative Cloud, a monthly or annual subscription service is delivered over the Internet. Software from Creative Cloud is downloaded from the Internet, installed directly on a local computer and used as long as the subscription remains valid. Online updates and multiple languages are included in the CC subscription. Creative Cloud was initially hosted on Amazon Web Services, but a new agreement with Microsoft has the software, beginning with the 2017 version, hosted on Microsoft Azure.


title: Adobe Creative Cloud

text: Previously, Adobe offered individual products as well as software suites containing several products (such as Adobe Creative Suite or Adobe eLearning Suite) with a perpetual software license.


title: Adobe Creative Cloud

text: Adobe first announced the Creative Cloud in October 2011. Another version of Adobe Creative Suite was released the following year. On May 6, 2013, Adobe announced that they would not release new versions of the Creative Suite and that future versions of its software would be available only through the Creative Cloud. The first new versions made only for the Creative Cloud were released on June 17, 2013.


title: Adobe Creative Cloud

text: The Adobe Creative Cloud retains many of the features of Adobe Creative Suite and introduces new features; foremost is the instant availability of upgrades, saving to the cloud, and easier sharing. In June 2014, the company announced 14 new versions of the Creative Cloud essential desktop tools, four new mobile apps, and the availability of creative hardware for enterprise, education and photography customers.


title: Adobe Creative Cloud

text: The video disc authoring program Adobe Encore and the web-focused bitmap editor Adobe Fireworks were both discontinued by Adobe in 2013, but were still available as downloads via Creative Cloud until May 2019.


title: Adobe Creative Cloud

text: Adobe offers four tiers of the Creative Cloud subscription service for individuals (there are other types for Business and Schools):


title: Adobe Creative Cloud

text: The change from perpetual licenses to a subscription model was met with significant criticism. Although Adobe's cloud-based model caused disagreement and uncertainty, and incited annoyance and conflict, a survey by CNET and Jefferies revealed that despite complaints most of its 1.4 million subscribers plan to renew.


title: Adobe Creative Cloud

text: Shifting to a software as a service model, Adobe announced more frequent feature updates to its products and the eschewing of their traditional release cycles. Customers must pay a monthly subscription fee. Consequently, if subscribers cancel or stop paying, they will lose access to the software as well as the ability to open work saved in proprietary file formats.


title: Adobe Creative Cloud

text: Although investors applauded the move, many customers reacted negatively. This shift has been met with mixed reviews by both corporations and independent designers, with many people expressing their displeasure on the web and through multiple Internet petitions. Among these was a Change.org petition which reached over 30,000 signatures within a few weeks of the announcement.


title: Adobe Creative Cloud

text: Creative Cloud has been criticized for broken file syncing, one of its core features. In May 2013 Adobe announced that it was suspending the file-sync desktop preview "for the next couple of weeks". Reviewers of Creative Cloud were disappointed with the functionality of the cloud storage and were "far from convinced by Adobe's subscription model". Some users were concerned that they would be forced to upgrade their computer hardware when it is no longer supported by the current version of the Creative Cloud software.


title: Adobe Creative Cloud

text: Some of their customers experienced a loss of trust in Adobe as a company and an attendant rise in anxiety. Despite significant customer criticism over Adobe's move to subscription-only pricing, the company announced that it would not sell perpetual licenses to its software alongside the subscriptions: "We understand this is a big change, but we are so focused on the vision we shared for Creative Cloud, and we plan to focus all our new innovation on the Creative Cloud".


title: Adobe Creative Cloud

text: In May 2014 the service was interrupted for over a day due to a login outage leaving graphics professionals locked out of Creative Cloud. Adobe apologized for this global Creative Cloud failure. When initially asked whether customers would be compensated, the company's Customer Service responded: "We cannot offer compensation for the outage. I'm so sorry again for the frustration." Adobe later announced that it would review compensation on "a case by case basis". The outage was heavily criticized, as was Adobe's software as a service model in general.


title: Adobe Creative Cloud

text: Online articles began offering examples of replacements of Adobe products, with competing products directly offering alternatives, and launching promotions for dissatisfied Adobe customers. Adobe, however, claimed that Creative Cloud is its "highest customer satisfaction product in the creative space" and that even prior to Adobe's move to a pure subscription model, "more than 80 percent of customers who bought products from Adobe's Web site picked CC over CS."


title: Adobe Creative Cloud

text: Although Creative Cloud was expected to curtail the piracy of Photoshop, which is one of the most pirated pieces of software, Creative Cloud was hacked and its applications made available via unauthorized means a day after it officially launched. Adobe claimed that the subscription payment plan would make its software more accessible to users who previously pirated it.


title: Adobe Creative Cloud

text: On May 14, 2019, some Creative Cloud users received emails from Adobe stating that licenses to previous versions of Creative Cloud applications had been terminated and that users could face civil action from third parties if they did not update the software on their personal computers. A representative from Adobe confirmed the letter's authenticity. The situation prompted renewed criticism of Adobe's subscription-only business model.


title: American IV: The Man Comes Around

text: American IV: The Man Comes Around is the sixty-seventh studio album by Johnny Cash. It was released on November 5, 2002, by American Recordings and Universal Records. It is the fourth in Cash's "American" series of albums, and the last album released during his lifetime, and is considered some of his finest work towards the end of his life. The album was also included in the book "1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die".


title: American IV: The Man Comes Around

text: The majority of songs are covers which Cash performs in his own sparse style, with help from producer Rick Rubin. For instance, for the song "Personal Jesus", Rubin asked Red Hot Chili Peppers guitarist John Frusciante to re-work an acoustic version of Martin Gore's song, which featured a simple acoustic riff that stripped down the song to a blues style. He receives backing vocal assistance from various artists, including Fiona Apple, Nick Cave, and Don Henley.


title: American IV: The Man Comes Around

text: "American IV" was the final album Johnny Cash released during his lifetime, though the "Unearthed" box set was compiled prior to his death, with Cash choosing the tracks and writing liner notes. "American IV: The Man Comes Around" was Cash's first non-compilation album to go gold in thirty years. Additionally, the album won "Album of the Year" award at the 2003 CMA Awards. It was certified gold on March 24, 2003 and platinum on November 21, 2003 by the Recording Industry Association of America, the first non-compilation album of Cash's to do so since the early 1970s.


title: American IV: The Man Comes Around

text: The video for "Hurt," a song written by Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails and originally released in 1994, was nominated in seven categories at the 2003 MTV Video Music Awards and won the award for Best Cinematography. In 2003, mere days before his 71st birthday, Cash won a Grammy for "Give My Love to Rose", a song Cash had originally recorded in the late 1950s. Cash was also nominated that year for Best Country Collaboration with Vocals for his "Bridge over Troubled Water" cover with Fiona Apple. The music video for "Hurt" also won the award for Best Short Form Video in 2004.


title: American IV: The Man Comes Around

text: Nine Inch Nails frontman Trent Reznor admitted that he was initially "flattered" but worried that "the idea of Cash covering 'Hurt' sounded a bit gimmicky," but when he heard the song and saw the video for the first time, Reznor said he was deeply moved and found Cash's cover beautiful and meaningful, going as far as to say "that song isn't mine anymore."


title: American IV: The Man Comes Around

text: Graeme Thomson, in "The Resurrection of Johnny Cash: Hurt, Redemption, and American Recordings," has discussed concern about Cash's health during the recording. Cash was suffering from multiple health problems and had lost most of his vision, with recording sessions interrupted by hospital stays. Thomson quotes singer Will Oldham: "We should turn and switch off the tape when our listening energy would be better spent "helping" a living songwriter/performer."


title: American IV: The Man Comes Around

text: The original double LP release features a different track order than the 2014 LP release as well as two additional songs: "Wichita Lineman", which was released on the compilation album "Lost Highway: Lost & Found Volume 1", and "Big Iron", which was later released on "Unearthed". The version of "Wichita Lineman" differs from the version that appears on the "Unearthed" collection.


title: Medieval cuisine

text: Medieval cuisine includes foods, eating habits, and cooking methods of various European cultures during the Middle Ages, which lasted from the fifth to the fifteenth century. During this period, diets and cooking changed less than they did in the early modern period that followed, when those changes helped lay the foundations for modern European cuisine.


title: Medieval cuisine

text: Cereals remained the most important staple during the Early Middle Ages as rice was introduced late, and the potato was only introduced in 1536, with a much later date for widespread consumption. Barley, oats, and rye were eaten by the poor. Wheat was for the governing classes. These were consumed as bread, porridge, gruel, and pasta by all of society's members. Cheese, fruits, and vegetables were important supplements to the cereal-based diet of the lower orders.


title: Medieval cuisine

text: Meat was more expensive and therefore more prestigious. Game, a form of meat acquired from hunting, was common only on the nobility's tables. The most prevalent butcher's meats were pork, chicken, and other domestic fowl; beef, which required greater investment in land, was less common. A wide variety of freshwater and saltwater fish was also eaten, with cod and herring being mainstays among the northern populations.


title: Medieval cuisine

text: Slow transportation and food preservation techniques (based on drying, salting, smoking, and pickling) made long-distance trade of many foods very expensive. Because of this, the nobility's food was more prone to foreign influence than the cuisine of the poor; it was dependent on exotic spices and expensive imports. As each level of society imitated the one above it, innovations from international trade and foreign wars from the 12th century onward gradually disseminated through the upper middle class of medieval cities. Aside from economic unavailability of luxuries such as spices, decrees outlawed consumption of certain foods among certain social classes and sumptuary laws limited conspicuous consumption among the nouveaux riches. Social norms also dictated that the food of the working class be less refined, since it was believed there was a natural resemblance between one's labour and one's food; manual labour required coarser, cheaper food.


title: Medieval cuisine

text: A type of refined cooking developed in the Late Middle Ages that set the standard among the nobility all over Europe. Common seasonings in the highly spiced sweet-sour repertory typical of upper-class medieval food included verjuice, wine, and vinegar in combination with spices such as black pepper, saffron, and ginger. These, along with the widespread use of honey or sugar, gave many dishes a sweet-sour flavor. Almonds were very popular as a thickener in soups, stews, and sauces, particularly as almond milk.


title: Medieval cuisine

text: The cuisines of the cultures of the Mediterranean Basin since antiquity had been based on cereals, particularly various types of wheat. Porridge, gruel, and later bread became the basic staple foods that made up the majority of calorie intake for most of the population. From the 8th to the 11th centuries, the proportion of various cereals in the diet rose from about a third to three quarters. Dependence on wheat remained significant throughout the medieval era, and spread northward with the rise of Christianity. In colder climates, however, it was usually unaffordable for the majority population, and was associated with the higher classes. The centrality of bread in religious rituals such as the Eucharist meant that it enjoyed an especially high prestige among foodstuffs. Only olive oil and wine had a comparable value, but both remained quite exclusive outside the warmer grape- and olive-growing regions. The symbolic role of bread as both sustenance and substance is illustrated in a sermon given by Saint Augustine:


title: Medieval cuisine

text: This bread retells your history … You were brought to the threshing floor of the Lord and were threshed … While awaiting catechism, you were like grain kept in the granary … At the baptismal font you were kneaded into a single dough. In the oven of the Holy Ghost you were baked into God's true bread.


title: Medieval cuisine

text: The Catholic and Orthodox Churches, and their calendars, had great influence on eating habits; consumption of meat was forbidden for a full third of the year for most Christians. All animal products, including eggs and dairy products (during the strictest fasting periods also fish), were generally prohibited during Lent and fast. Additionally, it was customary for all citizens to fast before taking the Eucharist. These fasts were occasionally for a full day and required total abstinence.


title: Medieval cuisine

text: Both the Eastern and the Western churches ordained that feast should alternate with fast. In most of Europe, Fridays were fast days, and fasting was observed on various other days and periods, including Lent and Advent. Meat, and animal products such as milk, cheese, butter, and eggs, were not allowed, and at times also fish. The fast was intended to mortify the body and invigorate the soul, and also to remind the faster of Christ's sacrifice for humanity. The intention was not to portray certain foods as unclean, but rather to teach a spiritual lesson in self-restraint through abstention. During particularly severe fast days, the number of daily meals was also reduced to one. Even if most people respected these restrictions and usually made penance when they violated them, there were also numerous ways of circumventing them, a conflict of ideals and practice summarized by writer Bridget Ann Henisch:


title: Medieval cuisine

text: It is the nature of man to build the most complicated cage of rules and regulations in which to trap himself, and then, with equal ingenuity and zest, to bend his brain to the problem of wriggling triumphantly out again. Lent was a challenge; the game was to ferret out the loopholes.


title: Medieval cuisine

text: While animal products were to be avoided during times of penance, pragmatic compromises often prevailed. The definition of "fish" was often extended to marine and semi-aquatic animals such as whales, barnacle geese, puffins, and even beavers. The choice of ingredients may have been limited, but that did not mean that meals were smaller. Neither were there any restrictions against (moderate) drinking or eating sweets. Banquets held on fish days could be splendid, and were popular occasions for serving illusion food that imitated meat, cheese, and eggs in various ingenious ways; fish could be moulded to look like venison and fake eggs could be made by stuffing empty egg shells with fish roe and almond milk and cooking them in coals. While Byzantine church officials took a hard-line approach, and discouraged any culinary refinement for the clergy, their Western counterparts were far more lenient. There was also no lack of grumbling about the rigours of fasting among the laity. During Lent, kings and schoolboys, commoners and nobility, all complained about being deprived of meat for the long, hard weeks of solemn contemplation of their sins. At Lent, owners of livestock were even warned to keep an eye out for hungry dogs frustrated by a "hard siege by Lent and fish bones".


title: Medieval cuisine

text: The trend from the 13th century onward was toward a more legalistic interpretation of fasting. Nobles were careful not to eat meat on fast days, but still dined in style; fish replaced meat, often as imitation hams and bacon; almond milk replaced animal milk as an expensive non-dairy alternative; faux eggs made from almond milk were cooked in blown-out eggshells, flavoured and coloured with exclusive spices. In some cases the lavishness of noble tables was outdone by Benedictine monasteries, which served as many as sixteen courses during certain feast days. Exceptions from fasting were frequently made for very broadly defined groups. Thomas Aquinas (c. 1225–1274) believed dispensation should be provided for children, the old, pilgrims, workers and beggars, but not the poor as long as they had some sort of shelter. There are many accounts of members of monastic orders who flouted fasting restrictions through clever interpretations of the Bible. Since the sick were exempt from fasting, there often evolved the notion that fasting restrictions only applied to the main dining area, and many Benedictine friars would simply eat their fast day meals in what was called the misericord (at those times) rather than the refectory. Newly assigned Catholic monastery officials sought to amend the problem of fast evasion not merely with moral condemnations, but by making sure that well-prepared non-meat dishes were available on fast days.


title: Medieval cuisine

text: Medieval society was highly stratified. In a time when famine was commonplace and social hierarchies were often brutally enforced, food was an important marker of social status in a way that has no equivalent today in most developed countries. According to the ideological norm, society consisted of the three estates of the realm: commoners, that is, the working classes—by far the largest group; the clergy, and the nobility. The relationship between the classes was strictly hierarchical, with the nobility and clergy claiming worldly and spiritual overlordship over commoners. Within the nobility and clergy there were also a number of ranks ranging from kings and popes to dukes, bishops and their subordinates, such as priests. One was expected to remain in one's social class and to respect the authority of the ruling classes. Political power was displayed not just by rule, but also by displaying wealth. Nobles dined on fresh game seasoned with exotic spices, and displayed refined table manners; rough laborers could make do with coarse barley bread, salt pork and beans and were not expected to display etiquette. Even dietary recommendations were different: the diet of the upper classes was considered to be as much a requirement of their refined physical constitution as a sign of economic reality. The digestive system of a lord was held to be more discriminating than that of his rustic subordinates and demanded finer foods.


title: Medieval cuisine

text: In the late Middle Ages, the increasing wealth of middle class merchants and traders meant that commoners began emulating the aristocracy, and threatened to break down some of the symbolic barriers between the nobility and the lower classes. The response came in two forms: didactic literature warning of the dangers of adapting a diet inappropriate for one's class, and sumptuary laws that put a cap on the lavishness of commoners' banquets.


title: Medieval cuisine

text: Medical science of the Middle Ages had a considerable influence on what was considered healthy and nutritious among the upper classes. One's lifestyle—including diet, exercise, appropriate social behavior, and approved medical remedies—was the way to good health, and all types of food were assigned certain properties that affected a person's health. All foodstuffs were also classified on scales ranging from hot to cold and moist to dry, according to the four bodily humours theory proposed by Galen that dominated Western medical science from late Antiquity until the 17th century.


title: Medieval cuisine

text: Medieval scholars considered human digestion to be a process similar to cooking. The processing of food in the stomach was seen as a continuation of the preparation initiated by the cook. In order for the food to be properly "cooked" and for the nutrients to be properly absorbed, it was important that the stomach be filled in an appropriate manner. Easily digestible foods would be consumed first, followed by gradually heavier dishes. If this regimen were not respected it was believed that heavy foods would sink to the bottom of the stomach, thus blocking the digestion duct, so that food would digest very slowly and cause putrefaction of the body and draw bad humours into the stomach. It was also of vital importance that food of differing properties not be mixed.


title: Medieval cuisine

text: Before a meal, the stomach would preferably be "opened" with an "apéritif" (from Latin "aperire", "to open") that was preferably of a hot and dry nature: confections made from honey- or sugar-coated spices like ginger, caraway, and seeds of anise, fennel, or cumin, wine and sweetened fortified milk drinks. As the stomach had been opened, it should then be "closed" at the end of the meal with the help of a digestive, most commonly a dragée, which during the Middle Ages consisted of lumps of spiced sugar, or hypocras, a wine flavoured with fragrant spices, along with aged cheese. A meal would ideally begin with easily digestible fruit, such as apples. It would then be followed by vegetables such as cabbage, lettuce, purslane, herbs, moist fruits, light meats, such as chicken or goat kid, with pottages and broths. After that came the "heavy" meats, such as pork and beef, as well as vegetables and nuts, including pears and chestnuts, both considered difficult to digest. It was popular, and recommended by medical expertise, to finish the meal with aged cheese and various digestives.


title: Medieval cuisine

text: The most ideal food was that which most closely matched the humour of human beings, i.e. moderately warm and moist. Food should preferably also be finely chopped, ground, pounded and strained to achieve a true mixture of all the ingredients. White wine was believed to be cooler than red and the same distinction was applied to red and white vinegar. Milk was moderately warm and moist, but the milk of different animals was often believed to differ. Egg yolks were considered to be warm and moist while the whites were cold and moist. Skilled cooks were expected to conform to the regimen of humoral medicine. Even if this limited the combinations of food they could prepare, there was still ample room for artistic variation by the chef.


title: Medieval cuisine

text: The caloric content and structure of medieval diet varied over time, from region to region, and between classes. However, for most people, the diet tended to be high-carbohydrate, with most of the budget spent on, and the majority of calories provided by, cereals and alcohol (such as beer). Even though meat was highly valued by all, lower classes often could not afford it, nor were they allowed by the church to consume it every day. In England in the 13th century, meat contributed a negligible portion of calories to a typical harvest worker's diet; however, its share increased after the Black Death and, by the 15th century, it provided about 20% of the total. Even among the lay nobility of medieval England, grain provided 65–70% of calories in the early 14th century, though a generous provision of meat and fish was included, and their consumption of meat increased in the aftermath of the Black Death as well. In one early-15th-century English aristocratic household for which detailed records are available (that of the Earl of Warwick), gentle members of the household received a staggering of assorted meats in a typical meat meal in the autumn and in the winter, in addition to of bread and of beer or possibly wine (and there would have been two meat meals per day, five days a week, except during Lent). In the household of Henry Stafford in 1469, gentle members received of meat per meal, and all others received , and everyone was given of bread and of alcohol. On top of these quantities, some members of these households (usually, a minority) ate breakfast, which would not include any meat, but would probably include another of beer; and uncertain quantities of bread and ale could have been consumed in between meals. The diet of the lord of the household differed somewhat from this structure, including less red meat, more high-quality wild game, fresh fish, fruit, and wine.


title: Medieval cuisine

text: In monasteries, the basic structure of the diet was laid down by the Rule of Saint Benedict in the 7th century and tightened by Pope Benedict XII in 1336, but (as mentioned above) monks were adept at "working around" these rules. Wine was restricted to about per day, but there was no corresponding limit on beer, and, at Westminster Abbey, each monk was given an allowance of of beer per day. Meat of "four-footed animals" was prohibited altogether, year-round, for everyone but the very weak and the sick. This was circumvented in part by declaring that offal, and various processed foods such as bacon, were not meat. Secondly, Benedictine monasteries contained a room called the misericord, where the Rule of Saint Benedict did not apply, and where a large number of monks ate. Each monk would be regularly sent either to the misericord or to the refectory. When Pope Benedict XII ruled that at least half of all monks should be required to eat in the refectory on any given day, monks responded by excluding the sick and those invited to the abbot's table from the reckoning. Overall, a monk at Westminster Abbey in the late 15th century would have been allowed of bread per day; 5 eggs per day, except on Fridays and in Lent; of meat per day, four days per week (excluding Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday), except in Advent and Lent; and of fish per day, three days per week and every day during Advent and Lent. This caloric structure partly reflected the high-class status of late Medieval monasteries in England, and partly that of Westminster Abbey, which was one of the richest monasteries in the country; diets of monks in other monasteries may have been more modest.


title: Medieval cuisine

text: The overall caloric intake is subject to some debate. One typical estimate is that an adult peasant male needed per day, and an adult female needed . Both lower and higher estimates have been proposed. Those engaged in particularly heavy physical labor, as well as sailors and soldiers, may have consumed or more per day. Intakes of aristocrats may have reached per day. Monks consumed per day on "normal" days, and per day when fasting. As a consequence of these excesses, obesity was common among upper classes. Monks, especially, frequently suffered from obesity-related (in some cases) conditions such as arthritis.


title: Medieval cuisine

text: The regional specialties that are a feature of early modern and contemporary cuisine were not in evidence in the sparser documentation that survives. Instead, medieval cuisine can be differentiated by the cereals and the oils that shaped dietary norms and crossed ethnic and, later, national boundaries. Geographical variation in eating was primarily the result of differences in climate, political administration, and local customs that varied across the continent. Though sweeping generalizations should be avoided, more or less distinct areas where certain foodstuffs dominated can be discerned. In the British Isles, northern France, the Low Countries, the northern German-speaking areas, Scandinavia and the Baltic, the climate was generally too harsh for the cultivation of grapes and olives. In the south, wine was the common drink for both rich and poor alike (though the commoner usually had to settle for cheap second-pressing wine) while beer was the commoner's drink in the north and wine an expensive import. Citrus fruits (though not the kinds most common today) and pomegranates were common around the Mediterranean. Dried figs and dates were available in the north, but were used rather sparingly in cooking.


title: Medieval cuisine

text: Olive oil was a ubiquitous ingredient in Mediterranean cultures, but remained an expensive import in the north where oils of poppy, walnut, hazel, and filbert were the most affordable alternatives. Butter and lard, especially after the terrible mortality during the Black Death made them less scarce, were used in considerable quantities in the northern and northwestern regions, especially in the Low Countries. Almost universal in middle and upper class cooking all over Europe was the almond, which was in the ubiquitous and highly versatile almond milk, which was used as a substitute in dishes that otherwise required eggs or milk, though the bitter variety of almonds came along much later.


title: Medieval cuisine

text: In Europe there were typically two meals a day: dinner at mid-day and a lighter supper in the evening. The two-meal system remained consistent throughout the late Middle Ages. Smaller intermediate meals were common, but became a matter of social status, as those who did not have to perform manual labor could go without them. Moralists frowned on breaking the overnight fast too early, and members of the church and cultivated gentry avoided it. For practical reasons, breakfast was still eaten by working men, and was tolerated for young children, women, the elderly and the sick. Because the church preached against gluttony and other weaknesses of the flesh, men tended to be ashamed of the weak practicality of breakfast. Lavish dinner banquets and late-night "reresopers" (from Occitan "rèire-sopar", "late supper") with considerable alcoholic beverage consumption were considered immoral. The latter were especially associated with gambling, crude language, drunkenness, and lewd behavior. Minor meals and snacks were common (although also disliked by the church), and working men commonly received an allowance from their employers in order to buy "nuncheons", small morsels to be eaten during breaks.


title: Medieval cuisine

text: As with almost every part of life at the time, a medieval meal was generally a communal affair. The entire household, including servants, would ideally dine together. To sneak off to enjoy private company was considered a haughty and inefficient egotism in a world where people depended very much on each other. In the 13th century, English bishop Robert Grosseteste advised the Countess of Lincoln: "forbid dinners and suppers out of hall, in secret and in private rooms, for from this arises waste and no honour to the lord and lady." He also recommended watching that the servants not make off with leftovers to make merry at rere-suppers, rather than giving it as alms. Towards the end of the Middle Ages, the wealthy increasingly sought to escape this regime of stern collectivism. When possible, rich hosts retired with their consorts to private chambers where the meal could be enjoyed in greater exclusivity and privacy. Being invited to a lord's chambers was a great privilege and could be used as a way to reward friends and allies and to awe subordinates. It allowed lords to distance themselves further from the household and to enjoy more luxurious treats while serving inferior food to the rest of the household that still dined in the great hall. At major occasions and banquets, however, the host and hostess generally dined in the great hall with the other diners. Although there are descriptions of dining etiquette on special occasions, less is known about the details of day-to-day meals of the elite or about the table manners of the common people and the destitute. However, it can be assumed there were no such extravagant luxuries as multiple courses, luxurious spices or hand-washing in scented water in everyday meals.


title: Medieval cuisine

text: Things were different for the wealthy. Before the meal and between courses, shallow basins and linen towels were offered to guests so they could wash their hands, as cleanliness was emphasized. Social codes made it difficult for women to uphold the ideal of immaculate neatness and delicacy while enjoying a meal, so the wife of the host often dined in private with her entourage or ate very little at such feasts. She could then join dinner only after the potentially messy business of eating was done. Overall, fine dining was a predominantly male affair, and it was uncommon for anyone but the most honored of guests to bring his wife or her ladies-in-waiting. The hierarchical nature of society was reinforced by etiquette where the lower ranked were expected to help the higher, the younger to assist the elder, and men to spare women the risk of sullying dress and reputation by having to handle food in an unwomanly fashion. Shared drinking cups were common even at lavish banquets for all but those who sat at the high table, as was the standard etiquette of breaking bread and carving meat for one's fellow diners.


title: Medieval cuisine

text: Food was mostly served on plates or in stew pots, and diners would take their share from the dishes and place it on trenchers of stale bread, wood or pewter with the help of spoons or bare hands. In lower-class households it was common to eat food straight off the table. Knives were used at the table, but most people were expected to bring their own, and only highly favored guests would be given a personal knife. A knife was usually shared with at least one other dinner guest, unless one was of very high rank or well acquainted with the host. Forks for eating were not in widespread usage in Europe until the early modern period, and early on were limited to Italy. Even there it was not until the 14th century that the fork became common among Italians of all social classes. The change in attitudes can be illustrated by the reactions to the table manners of the Byzantine princess Theodora Doukaina in the late 11th century. She was the wife of Domenico Selvo, the Doge of Venice, and caused considerable dismay among upstanding Venetians. The foreign consort's insistence on having her food cut up by her eunuch servants and then eating the pieces with a golden fork shocked and upset the diners so much that there was a claim that Peter Damian, Cardinal Bishop of Ostia, later interpreted her refined foreign manners as pride and referred to her as "...the Venetian Doge's wife, whose body, after her excessive delicacy, entirely rotted away." However, this is ambiguous since Peter Damian died in 1072 or 1073, and their marriage (Theodora and Domenico) took place in 1075.


title: Medieval cuisine

text: All types of cooking involved the direct use of fire. Kitchen stoves did not appear until the 18th century, and cooks had to know how to cook directly over an open fire. Ovens were used, but they were expensive to construct and existed only in fairly large households and bakeries. It was common for a community to have shared ownership of an oven to ensure that the bread baking essential to everyone was made communal rather than private. There were also portable ovens designed to be filled with food and then buried in hot coals, and even larger ones on wheels that were used to sell pies in the streets of medieval towns. But for most people, almost all cooking was done in simple stewpots, since this was the most efficient use of firewood and did not waste precious cooking juices, making potages and stews the most common dishes. Overall, most evidence suggests that medieval dishes had a fairly high fat content, or at least when fat could be afforded. This was considered less of a problem in a time of back-breaking toil, famine, and a greater acceptance—even desirability—of plumpness; only the poor or sick, and devout ascetics, were thin.


title: Medieval cuisine

text: Fruit was readily combined with meat, fish and eggs. The recipe for "Tart de brymlent", a fish pie from the recipe collection "The Forme of Cury", includes a mix of figs, raisins, apples, and pears with fish (salmon, cod, or haddock) and pitted damson plums under the top crust. It was considered important to make sure that the dish agreed with contemporary standards of medicine and dietetics. This meant that food had to be "tempered" according to its nature by an appropriate combination of preparation and mixing certain ingredients, condiments and spices; fish was seen as being cold and moist, and best cooked in a way that heated and dried it, such as frying or oven baking, and seasoned with hot and dry spices; beef was dry and hot and should therefore be boiled; pork was hot and moist and should therefore always be roasted. In some recipe collections, alternative ingredients were assigned with more consideration to the humoral nature than what a modern cook would consider to be similarity in taste. In a recipe for quince pie, cabbage is said to work equally well, and in another turnips could be replaced by pears.


title: Medieval cuisine

text: The completely edible shortcrust pie did not appear in recipes until the 15th century. Before that the pastry was primarily used as a cooking container in a technique known as huff paste. Extant recipe collections show that gastronomy in the Late Middle Ages developed significantly. New techniques, like the shortcrust pie and the clarification of jelly with egg whites began to appear in recipes in the late 14th century and recipes began to include detailed instructions instead of being mere memory aids to an already skilled cook.


title: Medieval cuisine

text: In most households, cooking was done on an open hearth in the middle of the main living area, to make efficient use of the heat. This was the most common arrangement, even in wealthy households, for most of the Middle Ages, where the kitchen was combined with the dining hall. Towards the Late Middle Ages a separate kitchen area began to evolve. The first step was to move the fireplaces towards the walls of the main hall, and later to build a separate building or wing that contained a dedicated kitchen area, often separated from the main building by a covered arcade. This way, the smoke, odors and bustle of the kitchen could be kept out of sight of guests, and the fire risk lessened. Few medieval kitchens survive as they were "notoriously ephemeral structures".


title: Medieval cuisine

text: Many basic variations of cooking utensils available today, such as frying pans, pots, kettles, and waffle irons, already existed, although they were often too expensive for poorer households. Other tools more specific to cooking over an open fire were spits of various sizes, and material for skewering anything from delicate quails to whole oxen. There were also cranes with adjustable hooks so that pots and cauldrons could easily be swung away from the fire to keep them from burning or boiling over. Utensils were often held directly over the fire or placed into embers on tripods. To assist the cook there were also assorted knives, stirring spoons, ladles and graters. In wealthy households one of the most common tools was the mortar and sieve cloth, since many medieval recipes called for food to be finely chopped, mashed, strained and seasoned either before or after cooking. This was based on a belief among physicians that the finer the consistency of food, the more effectively the body would absorb the nourishment. It also gave skilled cooks the opportunity to elaborately shape the results. Fine-textured food was also associated with wealth; for example, finely milled flour was expensive, while the bread of commoners was typically brown and coarse. A typical procedure was "farcing" (from the Latin "farcio" 'to cram'), to skin and dress an animal, grind up the meat and mix it with spices and other ingredients and then return it into its own skin, or mold it into the shape of a completely different animal.


title: Medieval cuisine

text: The kitchen staff of huge noble or royal courts occasionally numbered in the hundreds: pantlers, bakers, waferers, sauciers, larderers, butchers, carvers, page boys, milkmaids, butlers, and numerous scullions. While an average peasant household often made do with firewood collected from the surrounding woodlands, the major kitchens of households had to cope with the logistics of daily providing at least two meals for several hundred people. Guidelines on how to prepare for a two-day banquet can be found in the cookbook "Du fait de cuisine" ('On cookery') written in 1420 in part to compete with the court of Burgundy by Maistre Chiquart, master chef of Amadeus VIII, Duke of Savoy. Chiquart recommends that the chief cook should have at hand at least 1,000 cartloads of "good, dry firewood" and a large "barnful" of coal.


title: Medieval cuisine

text: Food preservation methods were basically the same as had been used since antiquity, and did not change much until the invention of canning in the early 19th century. The most common and simplest method was to expose foodstuffs to heat or wind to remove moisture, thereby prolonging the durability if not the flavor of almost any type of food from cereals to meats; the drying of food worked by drastically reducing the activity of various water-dependent microorganisms that cause decay. In warm climates this was mostly achieved by leaving food out in the sun, and in the cooler northern climates by exposure to strong winds (especially common for the preparation of stockfish), or in warm ovens, cellars, attics, and at times even in living quarters. Subjecting food to a number of chemical processes such as smoking, salting, brining, conserving, or fermenting also made it keep longer. Most of these methods had the advantage of shorter preparation times and of introducing new flavors. Smoking or salting meat of livestock butchered in autumn was a common household strategy to avoid having to feed more animals than necessary during the lean winter months. Butter tended to be heavily salted (5–10%) in order not to spoil. Vegetables, eggs, or fish were also often pickled in tightly packed jars, containing brine and acidic liquids (lemon juice, verjuice, or vinegar). Another method was to seal the food by cooking it in honey, sugar, or fat, in which it was then stored. Microbial modification was also encouraged, however, by a number of methods; grains and fruits were turned into alcoholic drinks thus killing any pathogens, and milk was fermented and curdled into a multitude of cheeses or buttermilk.


title: Medieval cuisine

text: The majority of the European population before industrialization lived in rural communities or isolated farms and households. The norm was self-sufficiency with only a small percentage of production being exported or sold in markets. Large towns were exceptions and required their surrounding hinterlands to support them with food and fuel. The dense urban population could support a wide variety of food establishments that catered to various social groups. Many of the poor city dwellers had to live in cramped conditions without access to a kitchen or even a hearth, and many did not own the equipment for basic cooking. Food from vendors was in such cases the only option. Cookshops could either sell ready-made hot food, an early form of fast food, or offer cooking services while the customers supplied some or all of the ingredients. Travellers, such as pilgrims en route to a holy site, made use of professional cooks to avoid having to carry their provisions with them. For the more affluent, there were many types of specialist that could supply various foods and condiments: cheesemongers, pie bakers, saucers, and waferers, for example. Well-off citizens who had the means to cook at home could on special occasions hire professionals when their own kitchen or staff could not handle the burden of hosting a major banquet.


title: Medieval cuisine

text: Urban cookshops that catered to workers or the destitute were regarded as unsavory and disreputable places by the well-to-do and professional cooks tended to have a bad reputation. Geoffrey Chaucer's Hodge of Ware, the London cook from the "Canterbury Tales", is described as a sleazy purveyor of unpalatable food. French cardinal Jacques de Vitry's sermons from the early 13th century describe sellers of cooked meat as an outright health hazard. While the necessity of the cook's services was occasionally recognized and appreciated, they were often disparaged since they catered to the baser of bodily human needs rather than spiritual betterment. The stereotypical cook in art and literature was male, hot-tempered, prone to drunkenness, and often depicted guarding his stewpot from being pilfered by both humans and animals. In the early 15th century, the English monk John Lydgate articulated the beliefs of many of his contemporaries by proclaiming that "Hoot ffir [fire] and smoke makith many an angry cook."


title: Medieval cuisine

text: The period between c. 500 and 1300 saw a major change in diet that affected most of Europe. More intense agriculture on ever-increasing acreage resulted in a shift from animal products, like meat and dairy, to various grains and vegetables as the staple of the majority population. Before the 14th century, bread was not as common among the lower classes, especially in the north where wheat was more difficult to grow. A bread-based diet became gradually more common during the 15th century and replaced warm intermediate meals that were porridge- or gruel-based. Leavened bread was more common in wheat-growing regions in the south, while unleavened flatbread of barley, rye, or oats remained more common in northern and highland regions, and unleavened flatbread was also common as provisions for troops.


title: Medieval cuisine

text: The most common grains were rye, barley, buckwheat, millet, and oats. Rice remained a fairly expensive import for most of the Middle Ages and was grown in northern Italy only towards the end of the period. Wheat was common all over Europe and was considered to be the most nutritious of all grains, but was more prestigious and thus more expensive. The finely sifted white flour that modern Europeans are most familiar with was reserved for the bread of the upper classes. As one descended the social ladder, bread became coarser, darker, and its bran content increased. In times of grain shortages or outright famine, grains could be supplemented with cheaper and less desirable substitutes like chestnuts, dried legumes, acorns, ferns, and a wide variety of more or less nutritious vegetable matter.


title: Medieval cuisine

text: One of the most common constituents of a medieval meal, either as part of a banquet or as a small snack, were sops, pieces of bread with which a liquid like wine, soup, broth, or sauce could be soaked up and eaten. Another common sight at the medieval dinner table was the frumenty, a thick wheat porridge often boiled in a meat broth and seasoned with spices. Porridges were also made of every type of grain and could be served as desserts or dishes for the sick, if boiled in milk (or almond milk) and sweetened with sugar. Pies filled with meats, eggs, vegetables, or fruit were common throughout Europe, as were turnovers, fritters, doughnuts, and many similar pastries. By the Late Middle Ages biscuits (cookies in the U.S.) and especially wafers, eaten for dessert, had become high-prestige foods and came in many varieties. Grain, either as bread crumbs or flour, was also the most common thickener of soups and stews, alone or in combination with almond milk.


title: Medieval cuisine

text: The importance of bread as a daily staple meant that bakers played a crucial role in any medieval community. Bread consumption was high in most of Western Europe by the 14th century. Estimates of bread consumption from different regions are fairly similar: around of bread per person per day. Among the first town guilds to be organized were the bakers, and laws and regulations were passed to keep bread prices stable. The English "Assize of Bread and Ale" of 1266 listed extensive tables where the size, weight, and price of a loaf of bread were regulated in relation to grain prices. The baker's profit margin stipulated in the tables was later increased through successful lobbying from the London Baker's Company by adding the cost of everything from firewood and salt to the baker's wife, house, and dog. Since bread was such a central part of the medieval diet, swindling by those who were trusted with supplying the precious commodity to the community was considered a serious offense. Bakers who were caught tampering with weights or adulterating dough with less expensive ingredients could receive severe penalties. This gave rise to the "baker's dozen": a baker would give 13 for the price of 12, to be certain of not being known as a cheat.