There are few stereotypes about medieval food as persistent as the ‘roast beast’, and like most good stereotypes, it has a bit of truth to it. Being able to serve up an entire roast boar or ox displayed wealth and mastery of resources in a way not many other dishes could. That is why it was a traditional part of many public festivities, most notably the imperial coronations at Frankfurt. Franz de Rontzier’s 1598 Kunstbuch records instructions for going over the top, presenting an entire roast menagerie. This was, after all, Renaissance Germany where playing with food was mandatory and doing weird, outlandish things for status was Tuesday.
Of many roast dishes, and first of a roast ox
I. You scald (brend) an entire ox in water as you scald a pig and leave the head on. You tie the legs together with bast inwards (bent upwards at the knee joint?). Then you cut open the ox underneath the belly or halfway up and gut it, but so that the chest and the Ißbein (shins?) are not cut. Then you stick it in a spit and sew it shut again with bast or with a small rope (einer kleinen Linien). But the spit is made this way: You forge an iron rod that reaches four or five feet (Schuh) beyond the ox on either side. Then you add handles (Wellen) on both sides to turn the ox with. You also make holes through the spit so that the ox can be attached with other, smaller spits in order to roast it properly. Then you lay it on firedogs (Bratböck) that must also be made specifically for this purpose and fixed in the ground. Then you make two large fires on both sides, or you build a wall as high as a man is tall and make a fire (only) on one side. After it has roasted for an hour, three, or four, you are to slice (score?) the skin thinly and then stick it with the following animals and birds such as a lamb, suckling piglets, calves, geese, ducks, chickens or capons, hares, rabbits, and small birds. These latter birds are stuck altogether on small skewers and distributed all over the ox, stuck all around. When the ox is to be stuck (gespicket, ‘larded’) like this, you place it on a wooden table and the things you intend to stick it with is put into a wooden trough (Molden) and stick it between the ribs. You also break some of the ribs that way. But you must affix the large items you want to stick it with to the belly or on top of the back, and also on the hindquarter. But the small things are stuck on little skewers. In addition, you must have two large copper or iron frying pans and long-handled ladles that it is basted with. You also make a table with handles and wheels (Rullen) underneath on which you lay the roast ox and bring it to the table. You serve it on two tinned copper frying pans that must also be made specifically for this purpose, and when you take it off the table again, you you put it back on the aforementioned table and carry it away etc.
But if you do not want to bring it to the table, you serve it to everyone (gibt man ihn zum besten) and attach fools’ maces to it so the common servants can quarrel over it etc.
2 In the same way, you can also arrange and roast a deer or another piece of game.
Of an entire roast pig
I. You scald (brend) a pig in water, gut it, sprinkle the insides with ginger, pepper, and salt, and sew it shut again. But you leave on the trotters (Ißbein), chest and head and bend the feet upwards as you do with a suckling pig. Then you stick it on a spit, set it over half a fire, and after it has roasted for two hours, you stick it with the following birds such as geese, ducks, capons, chickens, pigeons, partridges, hazel grouse, pheasants, turkeys, and others as well as hares, suckling pigs, and other small animals. You also make sausages out of one pig and hang many of them off of it. You have an especially large pan made for this, have it tinned, and bring it to the table on that.
The beginning is not terribly surprising: you need a solid spit. Roasting an entire ox weighing several hundred kilos would have called for task-specific hardware. The ox itself is gutted and sewn uo again, the legs fixed – I think pulled up against the torso to prevent them burning – and once it is affixed to the purpose-build spit and secured with skewers, it is roasted for a lengthy period. No doubt there was a specific skill to basting it that is not mentioned here.
The second step is just weird, though. Once it is nearly done, the ox is ‘larded’ (the word spicken means exactly that though it can also be read more figuratively as sticking something with pointy objects). Numerous smaller animals are inserted under its skin or affixed to it with skewers. At this point, it is possible they were uncooked and would be roasted in position on the ox, preventing the outside from burning or drying out too much while the inner part cooked through. The visual effect must have been striking, a hydra-headed beast slowly roasting over a big fire, staring at you with its many eyes.
Serving these to respectable company must have called for some pomp and ceremony as well as, if we can trust our ever practical-minded writer, a wheeled platform, but in many cases, the roast ox was intended as a gift to the spectators. To that end, de Rontzier suggests providing toy weapons for them to fight over it. Making hungry people fight over food was a popular spectator sport in much of Early Modern Europe, most famously in Naples, where people travelled long distances to see the enormous food fights. But clearly, similar entertainment could be had in Wolfenbüttel.