Nemeton

[gwydion]

My recent trips to Africa have taught me about the use of beans there, where they remain a staple element of the diet. I've brought a number of these West African Recipes back with me and they're published on this site. But these recipes and uses of beans led me to think...

After all, beans were a staple of the diet during the Middle Ages and you will find many bean-based recipes in my collection of Medieval Recipes. Indeed, a diet of beans and grains provide all the essential amino acids. Which is why Mesoamerican cultures were so succesful with their diets of corn, beans and chillies. Beans are also an excellent storage food in that they can be dried and stored over winter and re-constituted simply by boiling.

The archaeological record all over Europe reveals a type of bean that was used throughout the Iron age, from Britain all the way across Northern Europe to Poland. This bean is a cultivar of the broad (fava) bean that's very close in nature to the wold parental form of Vicia faba known as the Celtic Bean. It's smaller and tougher than the modern fava bean, has a higher protein content and is more flavoursome. A related bean, the horse bean is still preferred for making falafel even today.

With this information and using the African recipes I'd gathered as a template, I've re-constructed four ancient recipes for Celtic beans. You can find these recipes via the link below:

Celtic Bean Recipes

Essentially these recipes all use traditional ancient techniques and materials any farming community would have at hand (whether grown or gathered from the wild). But what's best is that these recipes are easy for you to prepare at home even today - And they're tasty!

If you would like more ancient recipes, the you can find them on this site's Ancient Recipes pages.