Medieval Food
In medieval 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.
Medieval food. Medieval cuisine includes foods eating habits and cooking methods of various european cultures during the middle ages which lasted from the fifth to the fifteenth century. Drink should have meant water which was free from rivers but usually water was far too dirty to drink. Yet the daily menu and average diet for poor people was plain and simple food. Everyday food for the poor in the middle ages consisted of cabbage beans eggs oats and brown bread.
Bread served as an effective and affordable source of calories an important thing to consider for a medieval peasant who might have a long 12. You needed a good supply of food and drink. Medieval food was often plain due to scarcity of resources and limited trade but on celebratory occasions among the nobility the food could become decadent. Up to the start of the middle ages when william the conqueror and the normans invaded england the only real influence on the types of food consumed had been from the romans.
Medieval food medieval food changed considerably during the middle ages. Nobles living in a medieval castle celebrated important occasions with grand feasts filled with unimaginably rich foods. Medieval food is a whole world in itself because it is a realm of extremes in ingredients and taste. Sometimes as a specialty they would have cheese bacon or poultry.
While medieval foods werent so different from the meals we eat today think bread porridge pasta and vegetables for the poor and meat and spices for the rich the way it was prepared often differed greatly from the way we prepare our food today. Exotic and spicy dishes were regular features of medieval banquets where the rich and powerful dined. Sometimes as a specialty they would have cheese bacon or poultry. The violent times of the dark ages led to a primitive society lacking in elegance or refinement.
The picture above shows a norman lord dining in the great hall of his castle or manor house. In the medieval period though these strange dishes would have been delicacies.