The Company Ecorcheur Medieval Society

Ordinary Food - what the rest of us ate!
An article by Alice the Huswyf

he English peasant classes lived mainly on what they could grow for themselves. Cabbages, onion, and garlic were the main vegetables grown. Native fresh fruits, such as apples, pears, medlars etc were only available once a year and were avoided as raw fruit because of associated health problems: - the diahorrhea caused by glutting on seasonal, sweet fruit, created the assumption that raw fruit was dangerous. In addition, long cooking and even preservation destroys vitamin content, so nearly everyone in the working population probably suffered low level scurvy at some time in the year, a disease caused by the lack of vitamin C. In its mild form it causes hair loss, lassitude and tooth-loosening but it can be fatal. Beyond the herbs and greenstuffs grown for domestic use, the mushrooms, berries, herbs and fruits found and gathered in the wild would not have fully made good this lack of vitamins. The rich people ate fruit all year round - but as expensive, imported, preserved fruits such as raisins. Salads were regarded as a luxury food, one royal lady even sending from London to Holland for hers.

Water was not drunk - it was held to be unhealthy, particularly for children. As there was no idea of purification even by boiling, this probably was correct as sewage, native bacteria, parasites and other wastes would have seeped through the soil to the water table the wells drew water from. People made Ale - (not beer - as hops, a bitter preserving agent, came in from Europe later). Ale is boiled in the making and so is purified of bacteria to an extent. It did not keep for long and so the mash was used several times before being fed to the pigs, each batch being weaker in alcoholic content, so the last batch - small beer, was given at breakfast, even to children.

Bread was a staple, but don't expect white bread, or wheat bread: these were upper class foods. Peasant bread would be very, very wholemeal, or even black, and made of rye or mixed grains ('maslin'). The village oven was often only rented out to the baker, who had to regain that profit and fired it once a week for general – paid – use. Baking at home was probably carried out, but on the sly in an emergency to avoid early fines. Dough placed on a plate under an earthen-ware firecover coverd in hot embers (or an upturned, earthen-ware bowl if you had one) makes an oven on an open hearth. Otherwise you would make a drop-scone type 'biscuit' on a hot stone. In the northern counties oats were used, to make oat-cakes, but southern England regarded oats as cattle food - 'Havercake' was still used as a jibe at the northern regiments in the Napoleonic Wars.

For ordinary people chicken and fowl meat were counted as white meats, as were eggs and all dairy food, but there was usually only a natural surplus of fresh eggs twice a year. Poultry in themselves are a good crop, being low maintenance scavengers, good reproducers and simply require a little extra feed and protection from predators. Those who could keep a cow would have access to milk and cheese - but this was a less common source; goats and sheep were milked and used for cheese-making - usually a soft, unmatured ‘green’ cheese known as 'ruane'. They also have the advantage of being cheaper to acquire and keep, providing usable amounts of meat at slaughter, breed well, low maintenance, giving milk, fleece and fibre.

When we talk of meat dishes do not assume nice modern dishes of clean, unfatty muscle. Everything was eaten. When muscle was not eaten the liver, kidney, and lights were cooked into meaty dishes - often pies with a strong gravy. This was known as Umble pie (umbles being all the innards, tripe, brain, etc) and eaten by all levels of society at celebrations - so now you know where that comes from, and hasn't the meaning changed? Pork (and cheese) were preserved in the roof space by smoking. Bacon and pork products were very important foodstuffs for ordinary people as the pig is a most thorough producer of meat, and very self sufficient - it can mainly feed itself by scavenging, breeds well and it can protect itself. It was such a staple of lower class diet that the upper classes would only touch it in it's wild form - boar - after it had been caught in a dangerous and thrilling social occasion - the hunt. After all, wild boar is one of the most dangerous quarries and will force itself up a boar spear to get at it’s attacker even after it has been run through. Hunting for the commons was very restricted - but worth the risk of being caught poaching to bring back small game and birds as extra meat for the pot. Royal game - boars and deer – were too great a risk for most. Slaughtering the pigs / beeves happened in the late autumn or early winter after all the wild foods the pigs foraged for had been eaten up. The weakest or least useful beast was slaughtered first and preserved by smoking, pickling or salting. At set periods throughout the winter the next weakest beast was slaughtered and preserved as there was little provision in farming to create enough fodder to keep an entire herd through the winter, as there is today. You had to plan far ahead and very, very carefully. Breeding stock was carefully kept alive and well to breed next winter's meat. As a desparation move, slaughtering the last breeding animal might get you through winter, but you could starve by harvest.

Every Friday, on given non-meat days and on fast days people ate fish. Most ate freshwater fish, but you could buy more expensive, salted sea-fish. Fish stocks were carefully privatised – so much so that placing an illegal fish-trap would result in severe punishment for the whole village. Monasteries and great houses would invest huge amounts in creating and protecting stocked fish-ponds to provide for their tables. Others must manage with what the river and the rules provided. This caused protest – C14th apprentices (cited as London and also Winchester) went on strike demanding to not be fobbed off with cheap foodstuffs and won the right to only be fed salmon twice a week...

The rural mainstay dish cooked almost daily would be a cabbage and bacon pottage - a cross between stew and soup - more like a vegetable dish as only enough bacon chunks would be put in to flavour it. It is easily done, can be reheated and allows you to carry on with other work. Slow cooking softens the cabbage and a little pork fat improves the flavour and raises the calorific content. With the fall of the feudal system and the progressive move over to sheep production, the volume of meat in the diet rises – most notably as part of the payment-in-kind for harvesters.

The growing , preparation and preservation of food was a daily concern and took much time. Clever men would choose a good housewife over a pretty wife as it could mean the difference between a comfortable winter and surviving the winter at all. Nor was the hungriest time of year Winter - although you would have to plan your food carefully to make it last. It was early summer, when the last of your winter store was eaten up and before the main crop ripened. Even on a quite good harvest year, care had to be taken, because your health and how you survived the lean times of the year depended on how much food production was used up to pay dues to secular overlords and tithes to church ones.