The Medieval Feast in Segovia
A medieval feast (cena or banquete medieval) by Fortaleza is a rare opportunity to enjoy the food and drink people enjoyed in Europe 700 to 1,000 years ago. Feasts were a part of court life. These grand meals offered friendship, built relationships, goodwill, displayed the host’s cultivated tastes and marked occasions of importance. The main reason for feasts was to demonstrate the power and wealth of the host.
The Cena Medieval de Segovia is a fun, impressive living history experience with hands-on activities and non-stop entertainment. The Cena Medieval’s quality, accuracy and attention to entertaining details will assure that it satisifies both the curious tourist and the well-informed Spanish. The cena takes full advantage of its special sites in either the Casco Viejo of Segovia or the nearby countryside village.
Before the feast, guests will be dressed in 14th century garb, including chain mail for the men, (as desired) and flowing gowns and assorted hats, headdresses and veils for the ladies.
While diners eat, they enjoy music, dancing and performances. The count’s chamberlain heralds the various activities as the evening proceeds. Guests enjoy a sumptuous feast with only a knife, spoon and the three fingers of one hand! In between each course, and in between the tables, guests are entertained by a juggling jester, exotic dancers and lively medieval music.
• Musicians and dancers: Three or four authentic musicians add a touch, as do dancers. Musicians can demonstrate the various instruments of the medieval period.
• Combat training demonstrations in an open outdoor area with plenty of buffer space can be used to demonstrate fighting with swords, pikes, etc. Fighters would be closely coached and weapons would be secured to their arms to avoid any accidents. Rather than the usual combat, this would be a combat training — so people can see and learn how the knight was trained.
• Juggler / Jester This zany fellow will make the rounds, involving guests in his fun. He is the king’s personal representative at your important feast.
• Trebuchet model demonstration: This three-foot high accurate miniature siege weapon, often incorrectly called a catapult, (one inch to one foot scale) shows people how the huge weapons were once used to batter down castle walls. (This is easy and safe to do – and can involve many of your guests.)
• Hammered coin making: Guests use a sledge hammer to strike dies and make their own coin as a souvenir. This is done in a safe manner so no one will be injured. There is an additional charge per coin struck. This activity in cooperation with Amigos de la Casa de la Moneda de Segovia — the organization that supports the restoration of the old mint of this city.
• Medieval games and sports
Some games created in medieval times still exist today. They created early versions of lawn bowling, tennis and badminton for example. Fortaleza provides a variety of these competitive activities from which you can select. See the list of games provided here.
Suggestion:
In place of the theme gift given to people as they arrive, our craftspeople will demonstrate making small items and will give them to guests. (No items will be offered for sale at picnics)
A note about children:
This is an exclusive dining event. While nothing is unsuitable for children in the program, we do not offer a children’s menu.
Smaller Group (30-50 guests) Cena Medieval
Event Timetable
Guests arrive and are escorted to the patio for light tapas and drinks. Musicians play.
Beverages available: Red wine, white wine, water, beer, cider, mead,
and hypocras (for dessert)
Much of the insights into how to enjoy a cena medieval are provided to small groups of guests by their waiters / squires and ladies in waiting. Technique used is that guests are from a different place rather than a different time.
Guests are escorted to separate men’s and women’s changing room for assistance in putting on period garb. This creates the event’s first great surprise as couples separate for dressing and discover each other 15 minutes or so later as their transformed medieval personages. The guests are assisted by their ‘squires’ and ‘ladies in waiting’ who later become waiters at the cena.
• The feast is announced and opens with a trumpet fanfare. Guests are escorted into
the banquet hall. Noblemen and women arrive with much pomp. These most
important people arrive and are seated first at the head table. (All guests stand until
the ‘nobles’ are seated.)
• Musicians play in the background
• ‘Ordinary’ guests enter and are seated.
• Hands are washed (Either at the dining tables or at a table on the way there)
• The chamberlain provides a brief orientation (in Spanish and/or English) during this process.
• A Latin benediction is said by the priest (optional).
• The salt ceremony: Salt is distributed from the head table grand salt container (a nef)
to all guest tables in small salt cellars.
• Red and white wines and mineral water are served from the buffet.
• Trencher coarse whole wheat bread is sliced by attendants and served.
(Head table first, of course)
• The table is set with the nef, cups, spoons and knives.
A big pellejo full of wine is off to one side with waiters filling jaras from it.
Small loaves of fine white bread are offered from a large basket.
• Guests begin dining on their first course — nobles first, of course.
• The ‘assay’ taster checking the dishes for poison in the nobles dishes.
Little cup with stone in bottom.
Please note that our medieval feasts are prepared for groups of from 20 to more than 300. Unfortunately, we are unable to offer this experience to individual couples or just a few friends.
As you may know, a cena medieval was a nobleman’s gesture in pride, lavish hospitality and, yes, just plain showing off. (bastante fanfaron). As a result these events were not and are not cheap entertainment and dining. Our splended events cost from 130€ to 200€ or more per guest. We provide an unforgettable, often once in a lifetime event.
We recommend that you encourage your company, or a club or association to which you belong to contact us. We would be happy to coordinate a special occasion for any organization.
The menu
The menu appears lavish and exotic, while in reality having plenty of ‘regular’ food such as roast chicken for the less adventurous diner. Little of it is really expensive or difficult to prepare. We can prepare a different selection each time, to see what items are enjoyed the most.
Trenchers: The greatest plate since sliced bread
Instead of a plate, guests had a slab of bread called a trencher at their places. Trencher bread was made a few days before the feast from whole wheat flour. It was sliced with a wide knife the French call a tranchoir, from which the bread gets its name. The bread was trimmed into a rectangle. The only remains of this item today is the more elegant word for a chow-hound: trencherman.
NOTE: After the coarse bread trencher came the rectangular wooden trencher. To save wear and tear on our linens, we will serve the bread trenchers on the wooden ones.
The guests put slices of meat, sauces and other fairly dry items on their trenchers. More fluid food were served in a bowl, with was normally shared by two guests. [we’ll provide a bowl for each diner, if only to avoid fights over what gets put into it and who eats it.]
A focal point on the noble’s tabletop was a silver ship used to mark the place of a prestigious diner. This ship — the French called it a nef — sometimes contained a salt cellar and the honored person’s knife, spoon and napkin.
Order of the menu
La Primera The first course
• Empanadas: Chicken and pork or bacalao turnovers — in a distinctive form
• A salad of fresh greens
• A platter of assorted meats
• A meat stew with a pungent cinnamon sauce
• Buñuelos: Ox marrow or some other sort of fritters
• Fresh water fish (trout) in broth with green sage sauce
• Freshwater fish: Trout en escabeche
• Sauces and mustards laid out on the table
• Breads — made from the finest white flour
La Segunda The second course
• A porridge made from meat broth, enriched with egg yolk.
• Salmigondin A dish of chopped meat and eggs, flavored with onions, anchovies, vinegar and oil. — later called Salmagundi.)
• Cold roast loin of veal with powdered sugar
• Quail roasted golden brown
• Conejo a la parrilla — grilled rabbit
• Roasted chicken basted with pomgranete juice
• Quesos: Trays of cheese from Segovia and Avila
• Home cured olives
• Cameline Sauce, a thick mixture of toasted crumbs, vinegar and cinnamon
La Trecera The third course
• Frumentry Porridge of hulled wheat berries boiled in milk, broth or almond milk.
• Bread oven roasted milk-fed lamb
• A spiced chopped meat dish, garnished with crayfish tails
• Cucumbers pickled in brine.
• Composte of green walnuts, cooked with mustard and horseradish, spices, honey and root vegetables.
• Pork stew
Dessert
Served after trenchers, bowls, and tablecloths have been cleared away.
The cookie castle subtilty SP is shown, then taken away and broken up to be served
• Hypocras — a sweet spiced wine — served with wafers
• Leche Frito: Flavored milk, curdled, pressed, sliced and fried.
Served with a dusting of sugar.
• Membrillo: A popular quince paste (new to most tourists)
• Fresh fruit, dried fruit, candied fruit and nuts
• Assorted candied fruits and spiced comfits
• Melon slices
• Marzipan, a Arab candy of ground almonds and sugar
• Orange rind preserved in honey
Order of the menu
We do not serve food items that came to Europe in the 1500s after the discovery of the Americas: Corn, potatoes, tomatoes, peanuts, chocolate, certain types of beans (pinto and kidney bean types), and tobacco.
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