A meal of some sort must have followed coronations since the earliest times, not the least because the King would normally have fasted all day till then, and so his immediate natural impulse, once he'd finally got the crown on his head, would be to partake of breakfast and have a well-earned drink. This practical meal subsequently developed into the full coronation banquet, with all the lesser players and nobles invited, and which eventually involved as much royal pomp and theatre that could be managed. Duly included into this performance were the number of persons who had ceremonial positions that they held in 'grand serjeanty', that is they held their lands and titles contingent on their performing certain ancient obligations. There were originally a great many of these inherited obligations and services (and some still exist today, at least in theory) but one in particular was that held by the Lord of the manor of Addington in Surrey who had to bring to the coronation of each monarch a specific dish of pottage. This pottage or stew was usually called dillegrout, but at times it was also referred to as, le mess de gyron, girunt, dilgirunt, dilegrout, dillygrout, dilligrout, maupygernon, maupigyrnun, malepigernout, and malpigernoun.

Wikipedia, quoting as its sole reference Janet Clarkson's 2010 book, 'Soup: a global history', claims, on that authority alone that the first occurrence of this dish being served was in 1068 at the coronation banquet of William I's queen, Matilda of Flanders. I think that is just a fanciful bit of story-telling as I can find no records at all to support any of these 'facts'. Nevertheless what is true is that in the Domesday Survey of 1086 the manor of Addington is recorded as being held (as tenant in chief by grant direct from the king) by one "Tezelin, the King's cook", and it is certainly understandable that this 'general serjeanty' as the form of feudal lord/tennant agreement was known, developed into a very specific obligation to provide a ceremonial dish at every coronation thereafter. As the trusted personal cook to William the Conqueror, Tezelin would have been expected to accompany his liege lord as he continually toured his realms in England and Normandy; governing, dispensing justice and suppressing rebellion. As was normal at the time Tezelin would not have been paid a wage or salary however the gift of a manor like Addington (which was valued as producing £5 per year in the Domesday survey: a not inconsiderable sum at the time) would have provided a steady income, enough to provide for his family, for his old age and to leave something for his heirs.

Over the following centuries the manor of Addington and the obligation of its lord to provide a specific dish at the coronation, crops up again and again, whether in legal documents relating to inheritance of the property, or in records of the Court of Claims - the court held prior to each coronation to decide on competing claims to perform certain roles and the often lucrative perks associated with them. Tenure of the manor of Addington changed over time so that early in Henry III's reign (circa 1220) the manor was held by William Aguillun by "seargeanty for making of the coronation mess (ferculum) known as girunt or otherwise as malpigernoun". Then in 1304 the Inquest into the death of Hugh Bardolf of Addington states that his widow, Isabel, now held the estate "by service of making a dish called maupigernoun at the King’s Coronation". The estate later passed to a William Bardolf, so that in the 1377 Court of Claims before the coronation of Richard II it was recorded that, "Baron William Bardolf ... holds certain land in the town of Addington by serjeanty, making spits in the kitchen on the King's coronation day, or someone for him must make a dish of something which is called Girunt, and if fat is used then called Malpigernoun." (note how it is clearly stated that the Lord of the manor himself isn't expected to do the actual cooking).  

The manor later passed to the Leigh family and they continued to insist on their ancient ancestral obligations: Nicholas Leigh of Addington insisted on the right to make a mess of pottage at the coronation of Mary I of England in 1553, while his son (or grandson) Oliver Leigh claimed the right to make "pigernout or herout" for the coronation of James I and Anne of Bohemia in 1603. Of course over time tastes changed and medieval sweet and spicy chicken lost favour. At the 1681 coronation of Charles II it is recorded that Thomas Leigh, "brought up to the table a Mess of Pottage called Dillegrout, whereupon the Lord High Chancellor presented him to the king, who accepted his service but did not eat the pottage." ('Fragmenta Antiquitatis - Antient Tenures of Land  and Jocular Customs  of some Mannors' by Thomas Blount, 1679).

The dish was officially served for the last time at the coronation banquent of George IV in 1821 by which time the lordship of the manor of Addington had recently been acquired (in 1807) by the Archbishops of Canterbury and so on this last occasion, "the Deputy appointed by his Grace the Archbishop of Canterbury, as Lord of the Manor of Bardolf, otherwise Addington, presented the mess of Dillegrout, prepared by the King’s Master Cook". George IV’s coronation was by all accounts the most opulent and extravagant of all as George wanted to outdo Napoleon whose coronation ceremony a few years previously had been judged absolutely magnificent. But it was also the last coronation banquet as George IV’s successor, the parsimonious William IV, decided to scale down on the more expensive ceremonies, the great banquet included, and this has been followed ever since. The tenure of the manor was held by the Archbishops of Canterbury until 1897 when Addington was sold off by the Ecclesiastical Commissioners and the manor house then became a private church music school until 1996. Since then it has been a resort, golf course and wedding venue before being ignominiously placed into liquidation in 2021 amid COVID-19, so even if Charles III was to have held a grand coronation banquet he still wouldn't get the traditional dish of dillegrout.

So what exactly was dillegrout?

None of the coronation records give much of a clue beyond it being described as a mess, a pottage, or a form of soup or gruel. However while no existing medieval cookbooks have any recipes with that exact title, the Arundel Manuscript No. 334 dating from about 1425, has a dish called "Bardolf". Seeing that at that time the barons Bardolf were the lords of the manor of Addington and are recorded as providing the required "coronation mess of pottage called dillegrout", it is highly likely that this recipe is for something very much like it.

Bardolf
Take almonde mylk, and draw hit up þik with vernage [a sweet white Italian wine], and let hit boyle, and braune [dark meat] of capons braied [ground up] and put þerto; and cast þerto sugre, claves [cloves], maces, pynes [pine-nuts], and ginger, mynced; and take chekyns parboyled and chopped, and pul of the skyn, and boyle al ensemble [together], and, in the settynge doune from the fire, put þereto a lytel vynegar alaied [mixed] with pouder of ginger, and a lytel water of everose [rose-water], and make the potage hanginge [clinging, thick], and serve hit forth.

In other words: make almond milk by soaking blanched and crushed almonds in white wine, and then passing the liquid through a sieve. Grind/mince up the dark meat of a capon and add that to the boiling almond milk. Add sugar, cloves, mace, pine-nuts, chopped dried ginger. Parboil some chicken meat, remove the skin and chop into small pieces. Add this to the boiling mixture. Just before serving mix a little ground ginger into some white wine vinegar with a little rose-water, and add that to the rest. The mixture should be quite stiff/thick.

As is usual with medieval recipes there are no quantities or timings but nevertheless with a bit of 'doing what seems about right' it's fairly straight forward. You could use ready-prepared almond milk but this will of course be water-based and a more authentic and boozy product will result from steeping blanched almonds in white wine for several hours, then blitzing the mix in a food processor and finally sieving through a fine cloth to get an alcoholic almond milk as in the original. Taste-wise there really isn't much difference between a capon and a chicken, so for the capon, (while it is obtainable in France for a price) I just used the dark thigh meat of a chicken, with the white chicken breast going for the "chekyns parboyled". I did however leave the 'chicken' in slightly bigger bits than the ground 'capon', just to give a bit of texture. The spices would originally all be dried, either whole or ground, so don't be tempted to use fresh ginger root. Timing-wise, once all pre-prepping was done and the whole "ensemble" put together, I simmered it very gently for about forty minutes before adding the final dash of vinegar and rose-water, and then I had to stir in a little of the ground almond residue left from making the almond milk to finally thicken it up a bit, before I was finally able to serve it forth.

Here's my version for the coronation of Charles III and I'll readily admit it's not much to look at: it looks very bland, and rather like 'chicken supreme' for vol-au-vents, or indeed a bit like the Coronation Chicken of 1953. However the taste is something completely different: it's a bit weird but not at all disagreeable and quite reminiscent of some aromatic, slightly floral, sweet and spiced North African food. Obviously it depends on one's own interpretation of the original recipe and how much of each ingredient you choose to add, but as I made it, although gingery, the spices were not over-powering. And while the sugar is definitely there - it is a sweet dish - it's not sugary sweet in a dessert sort of way but rather in the manner of a nutty, aromatic barbeque-sauce. It's certainly different but then it does date from nearly a thousand years ago.

Thank you Meles for that outstanding post. And full marks also for going ahead and recreating the dish. It sounds like a variation on a mediaeval blancmange but with added wine and minus the rice. I was wondering if the pine nut garnish on your picture was all the pine nuts used or if more were blended into the mix. With a base of chicken meat then I’d imagine that it would be quite a filling dish. From your description I can’t decide whether it’s a sort of mildly spiced chicken-pâté custard or else an aromatic potage of chicken or neither. Also, I was wondering if ‘grout’ in dillegrout was, perhaps, a cognate of the American word grits - i.e. a rough grain meal porridge.

I’ve always wanted to try a mediaeval blancmange. I suppose, however, that we’ve all been put off since 1400 when Geoffrey Chaucer introduced us to the Cook in The Canterbury Tales with the unforgettable lines:

A Cook they hadde with hem for the nones,
To boille the chiknes with the marybones,
And poudre-marchant tart, and galyngale.
Wel koude he knowe a draughte of Londoun ale.
He koude rooste, and sethe, and broille, and frye,
Máken mortreux, and wel bake a pye.
But greet harm was it, as it thoughte me,
That on his shyne a mormal hadde he;
For blankmanger, that made he with the beste.  


A ‘mormal’! The very word of it. The saints preserve us. And thanks a lot Geoffrey for conjuring up that image just before mentioning his blancmange.

Regarding American grits: I think you are likely correct. There's an Old English word grytt (pl. gryttes) meaning variously bran, chaff, mill-dust, or roughly-husked oats, and this is thought to be the origin of the culinary term, grits, although the American usage is probably also influenced by the German terms Grieß and Grütze, albeit that all these words ultimately originate from much the same ancient Norse/Germanic source. I also suspect that American grits are liguistically related to English groats. There's also the Old English word grūt which generally meant any type of stew or pottage and not necessarily made using any oats or grains. All these words likely share a common ancestor in the Old Norse graut (with various spellings) meaning a blended mixture - and I note the modern Danish grød, Norwegian grøt and Swedish gröt, can still mean a mixture of something while also commonly being used to refer to grain porridge. In Middle English of the late 14th and 15th centuries, the word grut or grout (as in dillegrout itself) generally meant any type of soup, stew or pottage; while grotys tended to refer specifically to husked oats (ie groats) and the word grewel (ie gruel) was usually used for more finely-milled oatmeal (more rarely also barleymeal) and typically mixed with water, milk, almond-milk, ale or wine, to make a semi-liquid porridge.

These grouty origins suggest that dillegrout might actually be a pre-conquest Norman recipe, perhaps incorporating culinary influences brought to Normandy when the area was invaded and colonised by William the Conqueror's Scandinavian forebears. There again there could also be some Anglo-Saxon influence too. If it was originally a Frankish/French dish I would have thought it would more likely be called a pottage (from the Vulgar Latin, pottus, after the vessel it was cooked in) and while the dish is sometimes referred to as being a pottage that's only by the time of later Angevin and Plantagenet kings. Almost nothing is known about William I's cook Tezelin (nor his immediate descendents, who inherited his manor of Addington) but being a trusted servant of the king he was almost certainly a Norman, as indeed his family name suggests.

I've made medieval blancmange in the past and yes dillegrout is similar, except being made solely with almond-milk instead of also using rice. There was also a medieval dish called mawmenny or maumenee, maumene etc. The glossary attached to the modern transcription of the collection of medieval recipes from c.1385 known as 'Forme of Cury' (the edition publ. 1985 by C Hieatt and S Butler) describes this as a dish of meat, usually minced poultry, in a spiced sauce of wine and/or almond milk with ground almonds, so again very similar. The glossary suggests that name mawmenny might be a derivation from the French, malmener (meaning to man-handle, rough-up, beat, bruise or otherwise treat roughly) the meat being pounded and ground in a mortar, however it also notes that the name is very similar to the Arabic ma'muniya which it describes as a sweet medieval Islamic dish of chicken, almonds and sugar, that is again much like medieval blanc-manger.

It is often said that these sort of rich, sweet, spiced and aromatic dishes only came to western Europe following the Crusades (the First Crusade being a generation after William I's conquest of England) but I think that greatly underestimates the complexity of communications and trade between Europe and the Islamic world, which then of course extended as far northwards as Sicily and NE Spain. Imported spices such as ginger, pepper and cloves; ingredients like pine-nuts, almond-milk, sugar, rice and raisins, as well as the knowledge of how to cook with them; were far from unknown in Anglo-Saxon England. Meanwhile the Norse Vikings (ancestors of the Normans) were by the 11th century accomplished long-distance traders and raiders - and while they were undoubtedly tough, archaeological evidence suggests that they seem to have had quite sophisticated tastes for the good things in life.

Meles meles wrote:

All these words likely share a common ancestor in the Old Norse graut (with various spellings) meaning a blended mixture - and I note the modern Danish grød, Norwegian grøt and Swedish gröt, can still mean a mixture of something while also commonly being used to refer to grain porridge.

There's a Danish tongue-twister (or rather larynx-twister) which is rødgrød med fløde 'red porridge with cream'. It's notoriously difficult for non-Danes to say:

How to pronounce "rødgrød med fløde".

Danish red porridge, however, isn’t really porridge at all but is more of a fruit compote with perhaps a little cornflour added as thickener. This contrasts with Finnish mannapuuro which is a semolina porridge to which red berries are added and stirred thru to make a genuine red porridge.
 
In the Old Norse tale Grottasöngr ‘The Song of the Mill’, ('grotta' meaning a mill and almost certainly another cognate) two girls are enslaved by a king and set to work in the mill turning the grindstone to produce flour. Unbeknownst to the king, however, the girls are in fact fairies and while they bring wealth to their master thru their work, they also bring destruction to any master who becomes greedy. After a while they ask the king if he doesn’t think that he has enuff flour to sell. He urges them on, however, to ever more milling, working non-stop to produce more and more wealth for him. Their furious milling then makes sparks which set fire to his castle and lets in his pirate enemies who kill him. The pirates themselves then take the girls and the millstone aboard their ship and set them to work, this time grinding salt. After a while the girls ask the pirate king if he does not think that he has enuff salt to sell. He says no and demands that they continue to make salt. Their furious grinding then drills a hole in the bottom of the boat causing it and its huge cargo of salt to sink. The story is sometimes told as a children’s fairy tale Kvernen som maler på havsens bunn ‘How the Sea Became Salty’.

The Finnish epic poem Kalevala features a holy metal vessel called the Sampo made by the blacksmith-god Ilmarinen. The Sampo is a multi-purpose object which brings wealth and plenty to its owner whether that be when using it for forging coins or making salt or milling flour or even cooking porridge. It’s the original magic porridge pot as it were. The Sampo gets stolen and disappears and a central element of the epic is the subsequent quest to recover it. It’s the Kalevalan equivalent of the Arthurian Grail.

In Scandinavian mythology, therefore, the work of smithing, salt-making, milling and cooking porridge are not things merely associated with royalty but are indeed positively divine. With dillegrout seemingly coming to England via Normandy, it’s only a small step then to see how divine porridge fit for a god can become royal potage fit for a coronation.