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All types of medieval cooking was in one way or another done with fire. [[Stove]]s, let alone electric ones, didn't appear until the 18th century, and any cook had to have a minimum of knowledge of how to regulate cooking utensils directly over an open fire. [[Oven]]s were used, but they were expensive to construct and were something that only existed in fairly large households and bakeries. It was common for a [[medieval commune|community]] to have shared ownership of an oven to ensure that the bread baking essential to everyone was made a communal concern, rather than a private one. 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 [[potage]]s and [[stew]]s the most most common dishes.<ref>Adamson, ''Chapter 2: Food Preparation''</ref>
One of the things that sets medieval cuisine apart from modern cooking norms was less (or at least different kind of) prejudices against what type of foods that could be combined. Fruit was readily and without hesitation combined with meat, fish and eggs. The recipe for ''Tart de brymlent'', a fish pie from the recipe collection ''[[Forme of Cury]]'' includes a mix of figs, raisins, apples and pears with fish (salmon, codling or haddock) and pitted damson [[plums]] under the top crust.<ref>Scully pg. 113</ref> It was more important to make sure that the dish agreed with contemporary standards of [[medieval medicine|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. For example, fish was considered to be quite cold and moist and should preferably be 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.<ref>Scully pg. 44-46</ref> In some recipe collections, alternative ingredients were assigned with more consideration to the humoral nature than similarity in taste. In a recipe for quince pie, cabbage is given as working equally well, and in
===Preservation===
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