It’s around this time of year that, for many people, we start to think about food! Whether it’s your Christmas, Hannukah or any other of the many winter festivals, food plays a big part in our celebrations. With that in mind we thought it would the perfect time to talk about food in medieval times! ‘Medieval food,’ is a phrase that conjures images of either unusual and strange meats served during huge banquets or the type of tasteless slop we imagine the poor had to endure. But what was on a medieval menu? Were the poor reduced to eating very little variety, or did they have a plethora of ingredients available to choose from? What strange culinary habits did visiting Lords and Ladies have when visiting Norwich Castle? And what kind of Street food would you find in Norwich? These questions are some that I am hoping to answer for you in the following blog. I may even include a recipe or two!
An important matter of note in the following blog is that the medieval society mentioned below (11th to 15th Centuries) is composed of three major classes – Nobility, The Church and Commoners or working people. They had three very different diets and it was even believed at the time that they had different digestive systems depending on your class so that nobility could only eat only refined food and commoners and labourers would need coarser foods. The diet of members of the clergy tended to be restricted by holy days and fasting, although these could extend to everyone else as well and typically the clergy could even be found to be eating the best variety of food. All of this is also dependent upon the events of the times. Famine and diseases were commonplace and these could dramatically alter the food available at the time. King above all foods in medieval England, stood bread. It had massive religious symbology and is mentioned often in the bible and breads remained a staple for all people of all classes.
Food Types And What Was Available
A Matter of Meat
Here, in Western societies, meat has always been an important part of the diet (modern debates about environmental impacts of the meat industry aside). With modern farming methods and the sheer scale of the meat industry, there is a variety of different meats available in many forms for all different levels of society. Although this has always (to a certain degree) been the case, the types of meat, the cuts of meat and the ease of acquiring the meat has changed in many ways since the mid and late medieval period.
Like today, from the 11th century until the 15th century, the type of meat eaten often depended on the class of the person eating it, as well as the occasion. Pork, mutton and poultry were meats often found among the poorer classes, whereas lamb, game meats (such as venison and rabbit) and beef were found among the nobility. Grand feasts held by nobility often had rare or unusual meats such as swan and boar. During an archaeological excavation on Norwich Castle mound, bones from a dolphin were found, disposed of after a great banquet. This led to a temporary bout of confusion for archaeologists, but dolphin was confirmed as a meat eaten by royalty and aristocracy.
Meat was farmed all over the country, the primary livestock being sheep, cattle and pigs. Cattle were useful for dairy and as draft animals for farm work and so their value often lay in uses outside of meat. As such, beef was more expensive than, say, pork, as pigs were often used solely for their meat and as such it was more readily available. As horses started to replace oxen in terms of agricultural field work around the 12th and 13th centuries, beef was seen as a more viable option for poorer people.
Sheep were valued for their wool, especially here in East Anglia where the wool trade dominated industry right up until the end of the 18th century. They were also useful animals for milk and their hide and, for medieval farmers, their manure was necessary for keeping their arable fields full of important nutrients. As such, they would make up the most abundant part of livestock farming in East Anglia. Lamb, from young sheep, was a far more delicate meat and as such more expensive. Especially when you take into consideration the value that sheep, had it grown up, would have provided with its wool and milk (if female). It was more likely that the poorer people would have eaten mutton, as a sheep would be culled later in life when its other useful traits were declining.
For many centuries, pork and poultry were more likely to be raised in an urban environment. Rather than on farms, these animals tended to be home reared. Up until the 18th century, you could rear pigs in the streets of urban areas and they were fairly independent animals that required little care. They cost very little to feed, grew quickly, did not require a pasture and could be eaten young. As an animal reared exclusively for their meat, this made them one of the cheapest and lowest maintenance forms of livestock. As such, it was sometimes seen as a ‘poorer’ meat used more for street food and found among the peasantry more often than nobility. Chickens were similar insofar as they did not require a great deal of space to rear, were cheap and easy to feed and had the additional bonus of providing eggs for consumption and cooking. They were also useful for their feathers and some were reared for cock fighting, which was a popular sport. Geese were also raised for feathers and among the richer classes, the meat.
Game was reserved mostly for the nobility. Most peasants did not have the weaponry or time to go hunting for food. Some families would lay snares to catch rabbits or other small game animals but would have to be incredibly careful when it came to poaching laws which carried extraordinary and severe punishments. Only the members of noble houses would have time to take their expensive horses out onto the land to look for deer or boar that they hunted with expensive weapons crafted for warfare. It was also seen as a reflection of one’s status as a warrior, as the more prolific a hunter a nobleman was, the more effective he was seen to be as a soldier. Boars, native to England until the 1600s, were especially prized. As a dangerous animal, it was also the mark of a warrior to bring down a boar with a spear. With the arrival of the Normans in the 11th century, ‘forest’ land (not always wooded areas but sometimes heaths and grassland as well) were reserved for noblemen to keep for the rearing and hunting of boar and deer. If a peasant or someone without royal permission hunted on those lands, they could find themselves being castrated, have their hands removed or be sentenced to hang as a result.
Fish and Seafood
Fish was a remarkably complex subject in the middle ages. Not only was it seen as a food, but due to its religious significance, it was valued in the church as well. Fish was eaten on a Friday, when red meat was forbidden under Christian law, and during fasts as it was seen as a separate entity to meat. There is also the significance of fish in the bible, being one of the main food sources that Jesus bestowed upon the poor and Christians who were persecuted under the Romans would use the symbol of a fish to subtly identify one another while hiding from watchful eyes. As such, medieval monasteries would quite often have fish ponds for the rearing of fish for use by the members of the church.
The main fish eaten by people in East Anglia would consist of cod, herring and eel, although a variety of shellfish were often eaten as well. Cod was a large fish and so a single catch was worth a lot of money. Herring were a lot smaller but far more abundant off of the coast of Great Yarmouth and the ease with which they could be preserved led to them being a cheap and easy fish to acquire. Eels were everywhere in the fresh waters of the Norfolk broads and rivers and so it was also common to find eel for sale or for poorer families to catch them from nearby waterways. Shellfish such as oysters and mussels were found around the rivers and on the coast and so these too were easily gathered by the poorer members of society for much needed protein.
Eel fishing was very important to East Anglia due to the many fresh water rivers and bodies of freshwater that are around the region. There were many bizarre beliefs about eels at the time. It was thought that eels tied themselves into a ball and rolled themselves along the river bottom rather than swimming. People didn’t realise they spawned at sea and migrated to inland rivers as adults. Instead people thought that eels burst from the bottom of the river floor fully formed in Breydon Water in Great Yarmouth and moved up river from there. Eel skin garters were thought to bring protection from rheumatism and it was believed that a bucket of eels could summon lightning. Despite these strange beliefs, eel catchers made a decent living from fishing and lived in small huts by the river with nets leading out into the water called Eel Sets. There is only one left in Norfolk, standing quietly on Candle Dyke near Hickling broad. The last Eel Catcher, Derek Johnson, died in 2012.
Fruit, Veg and Grain
The bulk of most people’s diets in the middle ages would have been made up of vegetables, fruits and grains. Mostly grown in people’s gardens, vegetables were easy to obtain, cheap, filling and could be preserved. As such, even if meat wasn’t available for consumption, vegetables usually were. Potatoes, probably the most consumed root vegetable eaten in Britain today, did not appear here until they were brought over from the Americas in the 16th Century. Before then, turnip and carrot were the most commonly eaten root vegetables.
Common vegetables found in England during the middle ages included: Cabbage, chard, onions, garlic, carrots, leeks, peas, beans, leafy greens, turnips, beets, kohlrabi, artichokes, parsnips, fennel, parsley, shallot, watercress, endive, lettuce, long beans, broad beans and asparagus. Mostly, these were used in stews such as pottage as it was the simplest and easiest way to prepare a filling meal that could be started in the morning and cooked slowly throughout the day for consumption in the evening. Turnips were particularly important as they kept for a long time, and so were usually still edible in winter and spring when vegetables were harder to come by.
Recipe: Pottage
Pottage was a staple in the Middle Ages. It was often left cooking over the fire for days with more ingredients thrown in whenever it was getting low. Seasonal vegetables and herbs were used interchangeably and dried peas were a staple but could be swapped out for barley. Meat by-products like ham hocks would have been used when available!
3 pints of stock (vegetable to keep this vegetarian but pork stock works too!)
285g of dried split peas
1 Onion (Chopped roughly)
2 Carrots (Chopped roughly)
Any other seasonal vegetables, roughly chopped, (use the list above if you’re looking for authenticity!)
Cubed ham added to taste (if you are going for the non-vegetarian version)
One teaspoon of honey (or sugar if you don’t want/ have honey)
Parsley, marjoram, salt and thyme to season
- This recipe is nice and simple! Place the stock in a large saucepan and bring to a simmer.
- Add the other ingredients, bring to a boil and then, once rolling, reduce down to a simmer again.
- Cook for at least 1 ½ hours but can be cooked for longer on a low heat for more flavour.
- Serve in bowls with crusty or toasted bread.
Grains made up the largest part of a commoner’s diet. Bread was the biggest staple, to the point where it had religious significance and could be made with a variety of grains. Wheat was one of the more expensive cereals and so wheat flour bread was found more often among the nobility and high level clergy. Barley, oats and rye were more commonly used by the working classes and could be made into bread, porridge or gruel to act as a filling but simple dish. These were the bases for most dishes and they were added to with any vegetables and meats available at the time or honey for sweetening.
Nuts were also important. Almond milk was produced in large quantities for cooking in both noble and common households and was sometimes a cheaper alternative to dairy milk. They also made up the staple of proteins during the autumn months and could easily be collected from rural lands.
Dairy Products
Like today, many dairy products were made as part of the diets of all members of society. Milk was taken from cows, sheep and goats for use in cheeses and other recipes. Interestingly, milk was not consumed by itself by adults. Only children, the sick or the elderly would drink it in its raw form. This happened to such an extent that “milk drinker” became an insult levelled against men to call them weak or immature. Cheese was a staple of the medieval diet. Hard cheeses that kept longer were eaten by labourers as they could be carried around and placed on bread or hard biscuits. Softer cheeses, such as “green cheese” named not for its colour, but for the fact that it isn’t aged. It was a delicate, soft cheese that didn’t keep for very long.
The main issue with medieval dairy products was longevity. Pasteurisation was not yet discovered and, as a result, dairy products would go off far faster than they do today. Soured milk was not thrown away, however, as it was often seen as a more appropriate drink for an adult and was used in cooking. The wealthy would potentially have milk used in the cooking of stews or pottages but most working people would use replacements such as the aforementioned almond milk. Cream was available for the wealthy and was often used to make desserts, something not often eaten by the working people. Evidence from the 14th century shows us that they even enjoyed strawberries and cream in summer! Although these would be wild woodland strawberries rather than the variety found in supermarkets today.
Recipe: Nut Milk
240g of blanched Hazelnuts, Almonds or Walnuts
500ml of water
- Put the nuts in a large pan with the water and heat until the water boils.
- Reduce heat and allow to simmer for 5 minutes, stirring occasionally.
- For an authentic method, strain the liquid through a cheesecloth to remove the solid parts but blending until smooth in a blender is also acceptable, if a bit modern!
- Chill before serving.
- You can add honey for sweetness if desired!
- Enjoy on its own or as a creamer for coffee!
How People Ate in Different Walks of Life
Street Food
It is often said that the best way to experience a culture is through its Street food and that is definitely the case for the Middle Ages. The food available shows you the kinds of things people had access to at the time and the preferred trends in foods and flavours. They also tell you about how busy the lives of the people were, are they foods that could be sat down and enjoyed or things they would have to eat on the move? Typically Street food is defined as a pre-prepared meal served immediately while still hot.
It is difficult to talk about medieval street food without mentioning the culture behind it. The people who would have eaten from the “cookshops” that vendors sold their food from, would mostly be urban and poor or working class. Often they were individuals who lived in one room apartments or housing with no access to cooking facilities, making it impossible to cook their own food. Therefore, if hot food was desired, or a proper meal, it often had to come from a cookshop outside. There is a distinct lack of evidence of the use of these cookshops by wealthy townspeople, who often had their own kitchens (and sometimes cooks.) The regulation of cookshops through the municipal authorities suggests that they were mostly used by the poor.
Cookshops are recorded as appearing around the 11th and 12th centuries in London. In 1297, Norwich recorded that it had a “pudding seller,” on the streets but by 1314 we had an entire street dedicated to street food called Cockrowe (cook’s row). It was possibly located near the market but its actual location is something I couldn’t find at time of writing. They were usually static, permanent buildings that could range in size from small to large and open faced to enclosed. They were often clustered in one place like Norwich’s vendors were, and were usually attached to the homes of the vendors themselves. Some had a room just off from the kitchen where customers could sit down to eat but most were “take-aways.” It was often women who ran the cookshops and they had few regulations. So long as they had the proper signage and food was to the standard of the town or city, they could operate.
Cooks and cookshops were often viewed in a negative light by authorities and wealthier parts of society at the time. When discussed in terms of legal regulations, they are often spoken about in a similar light to “rebellious persons” and in art, (such as in Chaucer’s writing,) they are portrayed as diseased and dirty and covered in boils. This again reinforces the notion that they are associated with the poor and looked down upon along with the other sections of working society. Occasionally you would find roving food vendors in the areas where the cookshops and markets were located, selling simple things such as bread loaves, ale, salted fish and meat and crackers or wafers. They were referred to legally as “hucksters” which is why we associate the term with a negative connotation.
Recipe: Street Wafers
Wafers were an incredibly popular snack food found in cookshops or being peddled by hucksters. The original recipe called for the womb (possibly the stomach) of a pike to be included. This would make it a Lenten snack more associated with the church, so I have left it out of this recipe! This recipe required a hot stone originally. Seeing as I am not expecting you to have one of those lying around, a modern waffle iron works just as well!
For 10 wafers:
1 dozen eggs (beaten)
360g flour
40g sugar
1 tablespoon of ginger (if fresh, finely chopped but dried works too)
180g of grated cheese (cheddar works best)
½ teaspoon of salt.
- Preheat the waffle iron
- Beat all ingredients together to make a thick batter. Try to make as smooth as possible so there are no lumps of flour.
- Use the waffle iron to make the wafers, spooning in a small amount each time and taking care to clean melted cheese from the waffle iron between batches.
- They should take just under 5 minutes but continue to cook until they are a light brown.
- They can be served hot or cold and would occasionally be served with a drizzle of honey!
In terms of the street food eaten, some contemporary accounts give us an insight into what was available at the time, again in Chaucer’s A Cook’s Tale, the following passage would have been foods the author would have been familiar with:
“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 London ale.
He koude rooste, and sethe, and broille, and frye,
Maken 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.”
(Lines 381-389, ed. Kökbugur)
Mortreux, mentioned in the above, is made with ground meat and broth and is interpreted as being both a stew or a terrine and blankmanger is chicken and rice cooked in almond milk. Pies, tarts and ale are also mentioned and it’s likely these would have been a staple as well. (You can also see in the last two lines that it talks about a “mormal” on his shin which is a type of boil, harking back to the negative view of the cooks).
Other foods thought to be available at the time included pork ribs, hot sheep’s feet, “rishes” or rissoles, baked or boiled and seasoned “pescods” or pea pods and wafers as shown in the above recipe. Pies are likely the item that proved most popular. They could be stored before being cooked and be baked to order, they didn’t require any utensils to eat or carry them around and would last a while in storage. They could also include a variety of fillings but mostly consisted of ground meat and vegetables cooked in stock with dried fruit and a sour note from vinegar with suet or eggs to thicken the mixture and seasoned with herbs and salt.
Recipe: Meat Pie
A basic meat pie recipe for the sort of pie found being sold from Cookshops! Vegetarian versions can be created by simply swapping the meat elements for a variety of vegetables. You can make a basic watercrust pastry for the pie “coffin” if you would like but pre-bought pastry is fine too!
680g (1 ½ pounds) of ground meat. (This can be pork or poultry but you can use beef or venison if you want, although these were meats eaten by the rich!) The meat should be in small chunks, ground, mashed and parboiled.
2 nine inch pie crusts
4 egg yolks
250ml of meat broth (use vegetable stock for a vegetarian version)
A splash of ale (red wine can be used, although again, this is not authentic to street food of the time!)
240g to 480g of any of the following in any combination: minced dates, dried currants, raisins, minced figs, ground nuts and grated cheese.
¼ teaspoon of salt
¼ teaspoon of pepper
1-2 teaspoons of the following spices, separate or in any combination: ginger, allspice, cloves, nutmeg or cardamom.
- Thoroughly mix all the ingredients (minus the pastry) together in a bowl.
- Place the bottom layer of pastry into a bowl (for less mess I suggest doing this in a pie tin but medieval pies were often free standing and “pasty” shape.) and spoon the mixed filling into the centre.
- Place the pastry lid on top and pinch the edges of the two crusts together to form the pie. Make sure they’re well crimped and there’s no gaps between the two sheets of pastry.
- Cut one or two slits into the upper crust.
- Bake in a preheated oven for 45 minutes to an hour at 180C or until golden brown and the filling inside is set. Served hot but can be enjoyed cold!
Rural working class: Home cooking
In more rural parts of East Anglia, and in the country in general, the working people (mostly farm labourers) would have been more inclined to cook for themselves. With the space available for open fires or ovens (although often ovens would have been communal and probably were owned by the landowner), it meant that they had more of the means to cook their own food. These were often simple dishes, basic things that could be put on to cook over a long period of time with little attention so they were free to go about their daily work, and served to larger groups of people. The aforementioned pottage was the main staple but other broths and soups would be cooked. Often, food eaten in the day was simple, consisting of bread, fruit and piece of hard cheese or, if you were lucky, salted meat. It also depended on what was produced in the village. Fishing villages, for example, would have more sea food whereas chicken farms, more eggs and poultry. Often there was at least one person in the village who would bake bread in the oven and village kitchens might provide hot stew toward the end of the day.
Some people brewed ale in their own homes (before commercial breweries were around) and this would often be enjoyed by the villagers or sold to any nearby towns or cities for the taverns and inns. Often breakfast was something found only among the very rich who could afford fine breakfast foods, or manual labourers as they needed the nutrients and their meal would consist of a gruel (thin porridge with water and added ingredients for flavour) or bread. Dinner was eaten at midday and often in the fields and supper in the evening in the communal village kitchens or hall. Some poorer villagers may not have any cutlery or even bowls so some families would eat from the pot or off of the table but often a small, personal and hand-made wooden bowl and wooden spoon were used which could be whittled by the individual. Some people used a trench dug into stale bread to hold the food so it soaked up any liquids and it could be eaten after to help fill the stomach.
Sweet foods were not eaten daily (as ingredients tended to be very expensive) although if the village had access to honey (say, they had an apiary) they could use that but often in autumn, fruit tarts and pies were eaten when the fruit was fresh from harvest.
The Households of the Wealthy
We have briefly covered the diets of the wealthy in previous sections and seen that they ate more of a variety in terms of food. Spices were more abundant in wealthier households as they had to be imported from the Middle East or the Mediterranean. Wine also had to be imported from warmer European countries and so was often only found around the households of the wealthy. They would have eaten white bread made with more refined wheat flour and pastries and treats made with enriched dough. Desserts would have been more commonplace amongst the rich and meal times more opulent and frequent. The elite were more likely to stick to holy festivals that influenced their diets such as lent and saints days as they had the luxury of being able to forgo a meal or find certain ingredients! Meats were often seasonal, with lamb in spring, rabbits in winter and doves through the autumn. Richer households could demand “all night” food where food and drink was provided to them throughout the night but this was usually during feasts and festivities.
Speaking of which, the main difference between the rich and poor were the large banquets hosted by noble or wealthy families! These consisted of between three to seven courses, with music or dancing and other forms of entertainment in between and were a chance for the rich to show off their wealth by having unusual and difficult to create dishes or expensive and exotic ingredients. Often they included meats that would be deemed unusual by today’s standards (such as the dolphin found under Norwich castle), or cooked or presented in strange ways. Swan, amongst royalty and peacock amongst noble folk were presented shaped like other animals or with edible clothes or sewn to other animals. Large, sharing pies were created and could be stuffed with a complex mix of animals including game birds and whole deer and were often presented decorated with roasted sparrows and blackbirds. Dried and candied fruits would be served with expensive imported cheeses and desserts in the forms of tarts and baked fruits, cakes and sugar sweets, would finish off the meal.
Recipe: Daryols (an opulent custard tart treat)
Darolys were a small custard tart made with expensive spices and heavy cream that were served as a dessert or sweet treat for richer members of medieval society. The tart usually sat at about 2 inches across and could be served with a rich spiced wine or ale!
350ml of heavy cream
2 eggs
60g of sugar
5-10 strands of saffron (crushed)
½ teaspoon of nutmeg or cinnamon
Pinch of salt
Pastry for cases (pre-made lard pastry or shop bought shortcrust is fine.)
- Preheat oven to 180C.
- Blend the eggs and sugar together. Do not beat to the point of foaming as this means the mixture is overmixed.
- Slowly add the cream to the mix while stirring slowly.
- Add the spices and salt and stir in.
- Cut the pastry into small disks, 9cm wide by 5mm thick. Place each into a greased muffin or tart tin and fill each case with the mixture.
- Bake in the oven for 30 minutes or until filling has set. It should jiggle a little in the centre when moved.
- Leave to cool and refrigerate before serving.
Resources
Dispelling myths of medieval diets
Medieval Norwich Fish and Food
Food Standards Medieval England
Food composition Medieval England
A fishy business on the Broads
Medieval Meals throughout the day
Recipes taken from The Cookbook of Julian of Norwich by Ellyn Sanna