This page includes translations of excerpts from medieval works that relate to food and cookery.
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Here are the translations:
- The master baker at Rochester Priory, Custumale Roffense, f. 53r, 13th-century
- The cooks at Rochester Priory, Custumale Roffense, folio 54r-v, 13th-century
- Selected Bibliography
- Notes
The master baker at Rochester Priory, Custumale Roffense, f. 53r, 13th-century
(Translated from Latin by Christopher J. Monk © 2026.)
You can find the digitised manuscript page from Custumale Roffense here. You will need to ‘turn the pages’ by either tapping on the edge of the page or using the arrows bottom right. You need 117/164. The text is found at the top of the right-hand folio, numbered 53, top right in pencil; it runs from the first heading in red ink to the next heading. If using a phone, scroll down to 116/164.
This extract commences a fascinating section (folios 53 to 60) of the customs book of Rochester Cathedral priory, all about the lay servants and their duties.
Translation
It begins with the office of the bakers, what they should do.
The master of the bakers ought, in fact, to see and feel the wheat at the door of the granary. And, if he is able or not to make for the monastery the best and finest bread, he should accept or reject it through [or, by means of] his mouth. He weighs the bread. Also, he will make settlement on all the bread at the cellarer’s store. And afterwards he will have one monk’s loaf and at Easter time a flan. His stipend, 7 shillings. It belongs to him to mix and knead the dough of the monastery.
Commentary
through his mouth Lat. per os eius. The phrase may carry two meanings. It may simply signify that he was to give a verbal yea or nay; or it may mean he was to test the grain by means of chewing. Since the baker was establishing whether he was able to make the finest bread, he needed to be sure the grain would be of sufficient quality. Chewing the grain into a kind of dough-ball, and then stretching it between the fingers, is one way of physically establishing the quality of the grain.
He weighs the bread. Though weighing the bread must refer, at least in part, to the predetermined size of the monks’ and servants’ loaves – the sizes are alluded to elsewhere in the record – there is some evidence that the priory’s bread may have been sold to pilgrims and other passersby, making it necessary for the baker to conform to the rules of the Assize of Bread and Ale, i.e. the thirteenth-century law governing the price, weight and quality of bread and ale produced in towns and villages. Indeed, a copy of the Assize relating to bread is included in the Custumale Roffense.
cellarer. One of the senior monks responsible for all the food and drink supplies of the monastery. The ‘cellarer’s store’, or range, is thought to be located along the West side of the present-day ruins of the priory’s cloister. See this post on Rochester Cathedral’s website.
flan Lat. flaco.1 A flan, or flawn, was essentially an open tart made with an egg and dairy custard filling. Versions containing cheese are recorded but more common are sweet milk or cream egg custards, usually sweetened with sugar. Dried and/or fresh fruits were sometimes added. During Lent, almond milk and a thickener, such as rice flour or wheat starch, were substitutes for milk, cream and eggs. Some surviving recipes include saffron and spices such as cinnamon, ginger, and cloves. Since dairy foods and eggs were forbidden fare during Lent, a flan would have been a suitably delicious way of marking the end of abstinence.
The cooks at Rochester Priory, Custumale Roffense, folio 54r-v, 13th-century
(Translated from Latin by Christopher J. Monk © 2026)
You can find the digitised manuscript pages from Custumale Roffense here. On a PC, you will need to ‘turn the pages’, either by tapping the edge of the page or using the arrows bottom right until you arrive at 118/164; the folio is numbered 54 in pencil, top right. The text begins at the red ink heading, halfway down the the right-hand folio, and continues overleaf until the next heading. On a phone, scroll until you arrive at 119/164.
This extract is part of the section (folios 53 to 60) of the customs book of Rochester Cathedral priory which describes the duties of the lay servants.
Translation
Concerning the cooks and those things that pertain to their duties
The office of R. Fichet and Ernulf serves at the [monks’ communal] meal. The office of G. Toterel serves the sick and weak brothers in the infirmary. The office of S. Calchepalie serves the guests, and guards the kitchen door, and carries out the slaughter of sheep and pigs at the Feast of St Martin, and divides the cooks’ fee.
The office of Fichet will portion all the dishes, both meat and fish. He himself makes the first or second dish and then serves the monastery. He himself is witness to the buyer in order that all purchasing may be bought well and faithfully and later accounted for before the cellarer in the cellar. His stipend, 7 shillings. Ernulf’s office, 5 shillings. Toterel’s office, 4 shillings. Calchepalie’s office, 4 shillings.
They have in common daily bread of one monk, and 2 and a half gallons of ale, but this from goodwill; and this was made by joint decision on account of the offenses which used to happen when they were eating at home, because there was no one who might respond to guests arriving. They will also have in the evening, after the reckoning of the dishes, a pot of ale in common to drink.
They also have, when the cellarer makes his larder, all necks of oxen and cows and all pieces from the knee to the foot, so that the tendons [or, sinews] of the aforementioned bones will remain attached to the feet. They have the heads for their skinning; and the cellarer the tongues. They have at the same time, to be sure, all necks and tails of pigs, attached to the backbone in a single joint. They also have all heads of fish, except salmon, from which they have the tail.
For preparing the innards [or, offal] of oxen, cows and pigs, the cooks will find women and the cellarer will supply them. And when the cellarer wishes that one pig, or two or three, should be slaughtered for the nourishment of the court, the swineherd has the tail, the cooks the neck. And for preparing the innards, they [the women] have charity, namely bread and ale, but by the goodwill of the cellarer. They [the cooks or the women is unclear] will also pluck all the kinds of birds that come into the kitchen for eating.
Commentary
the meal, Lat. cena. DMLBS offers ‘meal, dinner, supper’.2 The context implies a meal in general terms, either dinner or supper, not specifically the supper, which is often how cena is used or understood. We should note that Fichet, who serves this meal, is cooking and serving meat or fish, dishes that would certainly be part of the main communal meal of the day. Depending on the calendar, Benedictine monks were to eat either one or two meals per day. (I aim to write a blog post on this subject at a later date.)
Feast of St Martin. St Martin’s Day, 11th November. In England, a key date in the calendar for slaughtering animals for food.
Makes his larder. Prepares his meat for storage by butchery and salting.
all necks and tails of pigs, attached to the backbone in a single joint. The Latin is a little ambiguous at this point: addita una iunctura de spina dorsi eodem tempore may be translated as ‘with one joint added from the backbone’, perhaps meaning each neck and tail bone was attached to a single joint from the spinal column. However, I suggest it makes more sense to understand that the cooks were to receive from each pig the entire joint from neck to tail bone, since the context implies the cellarer is preserving the main muscle joints of both beef and pork, and handing over the minor, bony joints to the cooks, as perquisites.
They have also all heads of fish except salmon, from which they have the tail. The implication is that the cellarer was salting the fish (the main body thereof) as part of his larder. Whether other methods of preservation were used is unclear. No doubt, fresh fish and seafood were also available to the monks.
The fish heads and tail of the salmon were, like the bony pieces of meat, perks or ‘cook’s fees’, and would be useful to supplement pottages or broths of their own, either cooked and eaten at the priory or, failing that, cooked by their wives for their families. However, fish broths must have been needed for cooking fish dishes for the brothers. Perhaps it is reasonable to suggest that such fish broths were made from some of the preserved fish, as meat broths would have been made from preserved meat. Of course, locally available fresh fish may have also been available to make fish broth.
And when the cellarer wishes that one pig, or two or three, should be slaughtered for the nourishment of the court, the swineherd has the tail, the cooks the neck. This appears to relate to a more impromptu slaughtering and eating of fresh pork, as a contrast to the pigs being killed and butchered for salting on St Martin’s Day. In this case, the swineherd, presumably acting as slaughterman, gets to keep the tail for himself as a fee of sorts, the cooks receiving the neck, as they would if the pig was being prepared for the larder. The mention of the nourishment of the court (Lat. curia) rather than of the monastery (conuentus), suggests a meal not of the everyday kind, but rather a feast suitable for noble or distinguished visitors. There may be, too, an inference to be drawn concerning the expression unus porcus, duo uel tres, literally ‘one pig, two or three’: when fresh pork was required at short notice, or an especially illustrious guest was visiting, then two or even three younger pigs – suckling pigs perhaps – may have been substituted for the normal single porker.
Selected Bibliography
Old French-English Dictionary, ed. Alan Hindley, Frederick W. Langley, and Brian J. Levy (Cambridge University Press, 2000) [OF-ED]
Online sources:
Anglo-Norman Dictionary [AND]
Dictionary of Medieval Latin from British Sources [DMLBS]
Notes
- See DMLBS, flado [var. flato, flaco] 1, ‘flawn, custard tart’ [accessed 13 May 2026]; cognate with Old French: see OF-ED, fladon/flaon, ‘flat cake; tart, flan’. See also AND, flaon, ‘flawn, a sort of pie, cake, bun’ [accessed 14 May 2026]. ↩︎
- DMLBS, cena [accessed 14 May 2026]. ↩︎
MONK'S MODERN MEDIEVAL CUISINE 
