Food in the accounts of a travelling lady: Maria de Luna,queen of Aragon,in 1403

ABSTRACT

A household account book of Maria de Luna, queen of Aragon, dated 1403, serves as a guide to her everyday life and especially her diet. Its contents give us details that normally go unnoticed, about the court, the quantities and qualities of their foods, the means of preparing them, and the spectacle of the queen and her courtiers at table. The peripatetic nature of the queen’s household brought her to different towns in the interior of the kingdom of Valencia, and the document provides important – and rare – evidence of the impact of the court on these small markets, and the strategies for providing foods of the highest quality to meet the demands of the queen. The household is compared with others of similar rank in the Iberian Peninsula and nearby.