Source: https://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/medieval-england/food-and-drink-in-medieval-england/
Most people in Mediaeval England had to make their own food. Food shops were found in towns but most people were peasants who lived in villages where these did not exist. In Mediaeval England you, if a villager, provided for yourself and farming for your own food was a way of life dictated by the work that had to be carried out during the farming year. You needed a good supply of food and drink. Drink should have meant water which was free from rivers but usually water was far too dirty to drink.
Maslin bread
Most people in Mediaeval England ate bread. People preferred white bread made from wheat flour. However, only the richer farmers and lords in villages were able to grow the wheat needed to make white bread. Wheat could only be grown in soil that had received generous amounts of manure, so peasants usually grew rye and barley instead.
Rye and barley produced a dark, heavy bread. Maslin bread was made from a mixture of rye and wheat flour. After a poor harvest, when grain was in short supply, people were forced to include beans, peas and even acorns in their bread. Lords of the manor, did not allow peasants on his land to bake their bread in their own homes. All peasants had to pay to use the lord’s oven.
Pottage
As well as bread, the people of Mediaeval England ate a great deal of pottage. This is a kind of soup-stew made from oats. People made different kinds of pottage. Sometimes they added beans and peas. On other occasions they used other vegetables such as turnips and parsnips. Leek pottage was especially popular – but the crops used depended on what a peasant had grown in the croft around the side of his home.
Domesticated animals
The peasants relied mainly on pigs for their regular supply of meat. As pigs were capable of finding their own food in summer and winter, they could be slaughtered throughout the year. Pigs ate acorns and as these were free from the woods and forests, pigs were also cheap to keep.
Peasants also ate mutton. This comes from sheep. But sheep and lambs were small, thin creatures and their meat was not highly valued. People also used the blood of the slaughtered animal to make a dish called black pudding (blood, milk, animal fat, onions and oatmeal).
Wild game
Animals such as deer, boar, hares and rabbits lived in woodland surrounding most villages. These animals were the property of the lord and villagers were not allowed to hunt them. If you did and you got caught killing these animals, you faced being punished by having your hands cut off. However, many villages did get permission from their lord to hunt animals such as hedgehogs and squirrels.
Lords might also grant permission for people in his village to catch dace, grayling and gudgeon from the local river. Most villages were built next to a river so these could be a good source of food even if they were small. Trout and salmon were for the lord only. Many lords kept a large pond on their estates filled with large fish. If a peasants was caught stealing from this, he would face a very severe punishment.
Drink
The villagers drank water and milk. The water from a river was unpleasant to drink and the milk did not stay fresh for long. The main drink in a mediaeval village was ale. It was difficult to brew ale and the process took time. Usually the villagers used barley. This had to be soaked for several days in water and then carefully germinated to create malt. After the malt was dried and ground, the brewer added it to hot water for fermentation.
People in most villages were not allowed to sell their beer unless they had permission from their lord. To get permission to sell ale at a fair, for example, you needed a licence which had to be paid for.
Food for the rich and poor varied enormously – as would be expected.
Meals
Breakfast
Lord: This was eaten between 6 and 7 in the morning. It was a leisurely affair. A lord might have white bread; three meat dishes; three fish dishes (more fish on a saint’s day) and wine or ale to drink.
Peasant: This was eaten at sunrise. It would consist on dark bread (probably made of rye) with ale to drink.
Dinner
Lord: This was eaten between 11 in the morning and 2 in the afternoon. A lord would usually have three courses but each course might have between four to six courses in it! There would be meat and fish on offer with wine and ale. It is likely that only small parts from each dish were eaten with the rest meant to be thrown away – though the lord’s kitchen workers and servants might be able to help themselves if the lord was not looking!
Peasant: This was what we would call a ‘ploughman’s lunch’ as it was eaten in the fields where the peasant was working. He would have dark bread and cheese. If he was lucky, he might have some meat. He would carry a flask of ale to drink. He would have this meal at about 11 to 12 o’clock.
Supper
Lord: This was eaten between 6 and 7 in the evening. It would be very similar to the dinner but with slightly more unusual dishes such as pigeon pie, woodcock and sturgeon. Wine and ale would also be available.
Peasant: This would be eaten towards sunset, so this would vary with the seasons. The main meal was vegetable pottage. Again, if the family was lucky there might be some meat or fish to go round. Bread would be available and ale.
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Videos
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Mediaeval Pottage Stew
Pottage or potage is a term for a thick soup or stew made by boiling vegetables, grains, and, if available, meat or fish. It was a staple food for many centuries. The word pottage comes from the same Old French root as potage, which is a dish of more recent origin
Since peasants were poor, and couldn’t afford meat, they used whatever vegetables and grains they could grow to make this soup, often served with a dark, crusty loaf of bread.
So why the sudden look into Medieval eating habits?
Have you ever really thought about the Middle Ages? It’s actually kind of ironic when you compare it to today.
The wealthy could afford all kinds of meat, anytime they wanted it, along with the finest wine, ale, a variety of cheeses, and even the lighter, tastier, loaves of wheat bread. And vegetables? They were considered peasant food, definitely not to be trusted.
Meanwhile, the lowly peasants scrounged for every last crumb they could find. They worked from sunup to sundown, burning around 4,000 calories a day, managing the king’s land in exchange for a small plot to grow their own barley and rye. The wives and daughters managed the gardens and maybe a stray animal or two in hopes of a few eggs, or a little milk to make their own cheese.
Their diet was predominantly vegetarian with the majority of their calories coming from their dark, dense, loves of barley bread, or rye. There were no potatoes or tomatoes yet, so their main vegetable crops were turnips, parsnips, leeks, onions, and cabbage.
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Recipe: https://www.brandnewvegan.com/recipes/medieval-pottage-stew#tasty-recipes-28154-jump-target
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Other
Medieval love of squirrel fur may have helped spread leprosy, study reveals
Skull yields new evidence of link between human and animal leprosy – with red squirrel fur traded with Viking Scandinavia thought to be a factor
Scientists have found evidence that the medieval taste for the beautiful fine fur of red squirrels, traded with Viking Scandinavia, may have been a factor in the spread of leprosy.
The link between human and animal leprosy had already been suggested when the disease was found in modern squirrels in the UK, but the new evidence is from analysis of the skull of a woman who died more than 1,000 years ago in Suffolk, before the Norman invasion.
She suffered from the same strain of leprosy as other medieval skeletons from along the East Anglian coast, and from skeletons of the period from Denmark and Sweden – and closely related to the type of leprosy still found in modern red squirrels.
The disease was one of the most dreaded of medieval times, with many victims shunned and forced to live apart from society. The unfortunate woman – whose remains were found by chance in a garden in Hoxne in the late 20th century and are now in the collection of the museum in Diss – had disfiguring marks to the skull including the destruction of her nose, hallmarks of leprosy. The damage was so severe it suggests the disease would have had terrible effects on her life, leaving her with extensive facial lesions and probably nerve damage to her hands and feet.
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Scientists led by Sarah Inskip, of St John’s College Cambridge, who publish their findings this week in the Journal of Medical Microbiology, managed to extract ancient DNA from bone shavings from the skull, and also traces of the bacteria M. leprae.
