My gratitude for everyone’s patience as the intervals between posts lengthen; I was miserably sick these past days, but still managed to do one thing I wanted to, which was go to Berlin to deliver a gift and go to the Neues Museum for the Inselfest. The museum collections are quite overwhelming, but a few things especially stuck with me. Some of them are food-related and will go up on my blog in the near future, and this is one.
I wrote before about the value of metal cooking vessels and the way wealthy kitchens were distinguished from poor ones not least by the wider selection of tools. If this lesson needed emphasising, the Neupotz room in the Neues Museum is just the thing.
Probably in 260 CE, a group of most likely Alamannic raiders on their return journey from looting Gaul had a very bad day. We don’t know how – possibly in an encounter with Roman troops, or just through bad luck: Several carts full of valuable loot ended up in the Rhine and lay in the mud and gravel until the remnants were found in the 1990s.
If this looks like a well-assorted kitchenware shop, that is partly the fault of the very traditional presentation. This is, however, a genuine treasure. People risked their lives plundering this in the Roman Empire and carried it home for hundreds of kilometres, expecting it to vearn them fame and status once they got home. If it’s not what our minds may conjure up when we think of the hoard of the Nibelungen, we must blame centuries of media distortion. This was most likely what royal treasure looked like: Part silver and gold, but mostly metal implements of bronze and iron, rich tableware, decorative household gear, and of course weapons, which we do not find much represented here.
Some of these items are familiar from grave finds. Especially the elaborate wine strainers were often interred with the wealthy dead east of the Rhine, as were bronze cauldrons, probably used to serve alcoholic drinks. Note, though, that the looters also took kitchen knives, ladles, and a chain to hang a pot over the fire from. All of this represented wealth.
Cooking, in this world, was not just a common chore. It was a central necessity on any household, one that depended on treasured and valuable possessions. A proper kitchen was a major investment, often the most valuable items in the home, and possibilities expanded in line with the resources you could dedicate to it.