Medieval
Food
Eating was one of the castle dweller's most popular pastimes,
for not only did food provide needed sustenance, it was a
means of entertainment. In particular, the banquet was used
to impress a lord's guests with his generosity and his wealth.
Robert Dudley's 19-day festival of fun and feasting in honor
of Queen Elizabeth is perhaps the most notorious of all, and
the masses of food consumed are staggering by our modern,
weight-conscious standard.
 For
Dudley's feasts in 1575, ten oxen were eaten each day! The
behavior we call bingeing is nothing compared to the mounds
of food eaten during one of these feasts. As Mead stated,
"their appetites corresponded to their activity, and
they were not appalled when confronted with the mountainous
heaps of food prepared for their consumption". And many
lords bankrupted themselves in an effort to show their guests
a good time. (It seems that Dudley's queen must not have had
a good enough time, for she never accepted his marriage proposal!)
Generally,
meals were taken three times a day. A small breakfast of bread
and cheese at sunrise was followed between 10 AM and noon
with the main meal, dinner. Then, towards sunset a lighter
supper would be served, consisting of bread, cheese and perhaps
a small dish like a stew. After supper, entertainment might
be provided by minstrels, storytellers, acrobats or contortionists,
or games and song enjoyed.
 A
lord's dinner usually had two to three courses, mainly meats
and pastries, bread, wine or ale (usually the drink of the
lowest classes), fruits, cheeses, nuts, and the like. But
a feast was something so much more - even our modern day attempts
at medieval banquets fall way short of the mark. Beef, pork,
mutton, venison, poultry, fish, eggs, bread, milk, cheeses,
vegetables (in lesser quantities, because they were considered
"common"), and a profusion of wine, ale, cider,
and mead were in ample supply. Mead cites the feast celebrating
the installation of Archbishop Neville of York in 1467 as
typical.
For
the 6000 or so guests, the following was readied: 300 quarters
of wheat, 300 tuns of ale, 100 tuns of wine, 1 pipe of hipprocras,
104 oxen, 6 wild bulls, 1000 sheep, 304 calves, 304 "porkes",
400 swans, 2000 geese, 1000 capons, 2000 pigs, 104 peacocks,
over 13,500 other birds, 500 stags, bucks and roes, 1500 venison
pies, 608 pikes and breams, 12 porpoises and seals, 13,000
dishes of jelly, cold baked tarts, custards, and spices, sugared
delicacies and wafers!
During
the spring and summer months, food stuffs were in ready supply,
and included: "starlings, vultures, gulls, herons, storks,
cormorants, swans, cranes, peacocks [often displayed in full
feather after cooking], capons, and chickens... dogfish, porpoises,
seals, whale, haddock, cod, salmon, sardines, lamprey, dolphins,
tunnies, and eels, as well as mullet, sole, shad, flounder,
plaice, ray, mackerel, trout, crab, crayfish and oysters.
 Fruits
were also eaten, as were onions, garlic, peas, and beans.
So what fruits were available? Wild cherries, grapes, and
plums. Apples and pears were usually cooked. Roasted apples
were popular. Citrus fruits began to be imported around 1290.
Fresh and pickled lemons, and also Sevelle oranges. Other
imports for the wealthy included currants, raisins, figs,
dates and prunes. Roasts, stews and soups were the favored
ways of preparing a meal. Potatoes and corn was not used until
the 16th century.
The
winter months were a time of scarcity, and preparations were
made during the rest of the year to ensure the availability
of meat. Wild animals were always hard to find during the
winter, so most of the cattle were eaten. Beef had to be dried,
though, or would rot if kept for any length of time. One imaginative,
yet practical, addition to the winter meat supply was the
harvest of pigeons. Dovecotes were built to house and breed
pigeons during the year; when winter came, the birds were
killed for the lord's table.
Fish
from the castle's pond were also gathered to augment the winter's
food stores, as were others from nearby rivers or the sea.
Like meat, fish were salted or smoked for longer preservation.
And as far as drink was concerned, where water dwindled, wine
was abundant, popularly shipped in from the Continent. Apparently,
England was the primary consumer of wine during the Middle
Ages. It seems that Henry II acquired a vast wine-producing
region upon his marriage to Eleanor of Aquitaine, and "for
three hundred years the wines of South-East France flowed
without hindrance to England and, apart from some ale, was
the main beverage.
The
lower classes, on the other hand, had a tough time surviving,
and not just in the winter. Their main foodstuffs consisted
of vegetables such as turnips or salad, dark breads (deemed
not fit for nobler individuals), porridges, an occasional
fish, cheese curds, beer, ale, or mead. It is a wonder they
survived as well as they did, and were able to fend off disease.
Ironically, the rich, who should have had better methods of
staying healthy, suffered from a variety of ailments, such
as scurvy, tooth decay, heart problems, skin eruptions, and
infections caused by rotting meat and lack of proper nutrition.
So,
while the banquets offered diners respite from the harsher
realities of the day (although one wonders just how harsh
things were, at times), and provided excitement and full bellies
for the attendants, there was a downside to the types of food
the rich enjoyed: their health suffered. Yet, the quality
of food was not the only reason for poor health. Lifestyles
played a major role. Since medieval and Elizabethan peoples
relished their feasts with such lust, it is highly unlikely
that gaining better health would have enticed them to give
up one of their most favored activities.
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