mediaeval meal times

[Dragonlady]

I'm reading the time travellers' guide to the middle ages at the mo, and it mentions that in the middle ages there were only 2 meal times, one mid morning and one late afternoon, unless you were very self indulgent and had breakfast. The main meal was apparently the morning one. This seems pretty impractical for peasants and other working folk - surely you'd need something at sun up to give them energy for manual labour, and would have their main meal around sunset when they were no longer able to work? I've tried looking for other info online without a great deal of luck, any thoughts welcome. I find other cultures and times' food habits fascinating.

 

[DannMcGrew]

Today the Amish farmers (plain folk of Germanic origin who maintain old traditions) in my region eat their main meal at 11 a.m. They have a lighter meal around 4:30 or 5. Breakfast varies from a slice of pie or bread and a glass of milk, a bowl of cereal or perhaps some eggs. That breakfast is generally eaten just prior to the children leaving for school around 8 or 8:30. That is after many of the morning chores --especially milking -- have been done. They get up at 4 or 5 a.m. and go to bed at 9.

 

[Dragonlady]

Fascinating, so they return from outside work to have a main meal early on, and the whole day is angled earlier.

 

[The Judge]

The main meal at around mid-day is what I've picked up, too, with a supper later in the afternoon -- times presumably varying depending on the season, as they're following the sun as much as possible. But I dare say it wasn't unknown for someone to take a heel of a loaf with them as they went out to work first thing in the morning.

 

[Finch]

Two meals a day was the norm in medieval England . There are a number of theories how this came about . One is it came from Roman habits . But more likely to be connected to day light . People would get up early and work until lunch time , the middle of the day . It would be a light meal of something like soup and bread . After the days work the main meal was eaten . It could be meat or fish and what fruit and veg that was available.

 

[DannMcGrew]

BTW you can pretty much set your clock by the meal times I mentioned. One will find almost every Amish household sitting down to "dinner" at 11 a.m. That dinner is followed by an hour of rest/napping. The evening milking follows supper and other chores -- work in the fields/garden -- if light permits or stripping tobacco in the barn by lamplight.

 

[Venusian Broon]

Well, I've spent decades of my life having no breakfast - no time in the morning to do much. (I'm back to having breakfast now though - much more civilised) and I think the body adapts to what we throw at it.

Anecdotally I also prefer to exercise hard (my equivalent of hard labour I suppose!) on a empty stomach - at least, well after my bowl of porridge - and then fill up afterwards. I think I'd also like to look forward to a meal at midday to get me through the work.

Possibly it is linked to my time-starved era of my life - if your food required any preparation, especially any heat from fires, it probably was wasteful just to make a fire for breakfast and take too long to get a fire going first thing? So leave it to midday. (I guess though that the lowliest would probably be going on dense bread and a bit of cheese, so no prep needed be done)

 

[RJM Corbet]

Benedictine monks still follow the medieval 'Rule of St Benedict.'

They rise early to say prayers -- some orders around 3am, others around 5am -- , and then they have a light breakfast of toast/rolls/cereal and coffee around 7.30am. Then to work.The main meal is 'dinner' at 1pm: a meat/fish dish accompanied by two vegetables, and a dessert -- with beer for those who want it, or water for those who do not. Originally Benedictines did not eat meat or fowl, but nowadays that has loosened up, along with other things.

Rest till 2pm (monks seem to like to eat very fast). Then back to work. Work ends around 6pm. The next meal is a light supper at 7.15pm: soup and sandwiches, or something similar. More beer if desired. Final prayers at 8.30pm, then retire for the night. Individual monasteries differ with exact times.

 

[Dragonlady]

@Venusian Broon from what i'm reading the lowly peasant would have eaten quite a lot of pottage, oats with veg from the garden and whatever else you had too, which would need cooking. Also, cheese was originally seasonal, a way of making milk last through the winter, I understand. Before industrial feed we have now pregnant winter cows produced little milk. I wonder if rhythm of agricultural life had anything to do with it- jobs first thing and last thing necessitating not eating then??

Does that mean mediaeval feasts and banquets would have been at 11am, and social eating? I wonder what shop opening times would ahve been like, open early then shut for lunch and late afternoon in time for supper, or open into the evenng?

I think my body would be quite happy with dinner at 11am followed by a snooze, but I'm a bit of a hobbit when it comes fo breakfast. I guess a lump of yesterday's bread eaten on the hoof is different from a family 'meal' though.

That's another thought. If bread is made fresh each day, often in the home, choices of food on rising may have been very limited, especially those that don't require a fire to be built first.

 

[Pemry Janes]

That might be the reason why breakfast wasn't a thing, it took time to bake the bread. I wonder if this sort of eating pattern was the same in Asian countries or the New World. Given that they had different staples, it would be interesting to know if that had an influence.

 

[RJM Corbet]

Water wasn't safe. They drank cider, beer and wine, and the wine was usually diluted with water.

 

[Venusian Broon]

@Venusian Broon from what i'm reading the lowly peasant would have eaten quite a lot of pottage, oats with veg from the garden and whatever else you had too, which would need cooking. Also, cheese was originally seasonal, a way of making milk last through the winter, I understand. Before industrial feed we have now pregnant winter cows produced little milk. I wonder if rhythm of agricultural life had anything to do with it- jobs first thing and last thing necessitating not eating then??

Does that mean mediaeval feasts and banquets would have been at 11am, and social eating? I wonder what shop opening times would ahve been like, open early then shut for lunch and late afternoon in time for supper, or open into the evenng?

I think my body would be quite happy with dinner at 11am followed by a snooze, but I'm a bit of a hobbit when it comes fo breakfast. I guess a lump of yesterday's bread eaten on the hoof is different from a family 'meal' though.

That's another thought. If bread is made fresh each day, often in the home, choices of food on rising may have been very limited, especially those that don't require a fire to be built first.

I knew about the pottage, but that doesn't seem the sort of meal you'd try and make first thing in the morning with no fire! Perhaps the sort of thing you'd make around about the hearth when you came home? I did hear about bread being quite common for the midday meal for labourers with heavy work, given that's it's portable, very energy dense and I assume you could make it the night before (?) However I might be getting time periods mixed up.

Of course with bread, you would have to grind the grains into flour and I'm sure I remember reading that a large part of Europe at the time had laws that you had to take it to a miller and pay a tax, and you weren't officially allowed to grind it yourself. So bread would have been for the wealthier peasants?

Cheese at least lasted, so you probably took a bit when you had some!

Actually we probably are so used to regimenting our own diets and getting hold of exactly what we want, that I'm sure that these poor peasants just took what they had at hand and that was what they ate.

 

[Dragonlady]

@RJM Corbet apparently ale rather than beer - no hops

 

[Dragonlady]

@Venusian Broon indeed! Apparently sometimes they weren't even allowed to use their own oven. Rich man's bread was wheat flour, poor man's was barley, rye, oats, or even peas if it was all you could get

 

[RJM Corbet]

Actually we probably are so used to regimenting our own diets and getting hold of exactly what we want, that I'm sure that these poor peasants just took what they had at hand and that was what they ate.

The potato eaters - Vincent van Gogh - Google Arts & Culture

Van Gogh deliberately chose a composition which would challenge his growing prowess as a painter. Like the French master Jean-François Millet, Van Gogh wan...

artsandculture.google.com

 

[The Judge]

Things vary from place to place -- England isn't going to be the same as Scotland or Spain, and even within England a hamlet in Cornwall is going to be different from a market town in the middle of good sheep-country, and a serf is going to have a very different life-style from a lordling. And that's before you get into the exact time period, season and weather. So it's always hard to give anything other than generalities. (When it comes to writing about this kind of thing, by the way, I'd suggest taking an overall impression of eg eating habits and then thinking yourself into the characters and who they are, and take it from there.)

Meanwhile, yes pottage is the staple, being thicker or thinner depending on wealth (thicker usually = richer), and its contents will also depend on time of year -- people in villages are going to add lots of whatever they can grow, so that's going to vary from place to place and month to month (and they're going to eat a lot of what we think of as weeds). Pottage is something that's put over the fire and left to get on with it while the women of the house get on with other household duties. Bread might be baked in the home in a farmhouse -- though don't forget they don't have yeast in easy packets, so it's wild yeast if the mix is left out, or barm or buttermilk. But bread ovens -- or indeed any ovens -- aren't common elsewhere. A town would almost certainly have a bakehouse, and even in a village the lord of the manor might have a bakehouse which everyone uses both for bread and pies and the like.

As to bread, and the thickening for pottage, anything at all would be used, down to chestnuts and acorns (and chestnut flour is still used a lot in some regions of Italy, and acorns were used there to make pasta) but maslin bread was commonest for the lower classes, at least until the Black Death.

If you want greater detail about food, I can recommend The Medieval Cookbook by Maggie Black. She has around 50 recipes which she's updated, but she gives context from around 1080 to 1400 and later, and she has a section on Courtly and Christmas feasting as well as 3 separate recipes for pottage. I thought I had another good book I've used, but it's hiding on the shelves at the moment.

In addition, the Weald and Downland Living Museum at Singleton near Chichester regularly has baking sessions at its Tudor Kitchen using authentic produce and techniques and they often have seasonal recipe leaflets to accompany these. I can only find one at the moment, which is for Christmas and includes Gingered Bread and Minced Pie ("Take a legge of mutton...") but if you get in touch with them, they might have a load they could print off and send.

 

[Overread]

A few further thoughts:
1) You will awake hungrier if you ate late at night. So having a big evening meal wouldn't have benefited since they'd awaken more hungry before they could start work.

2) It's very possible to awaken and work on an empty stomach, perhaps only having a drink. Heck my father has done that for years and has breakfast at 11.

3) Consider age, regional and seasonal shifts. All these things might well affect what meals were had as well as access to both food for the meal and also what "snacks" were present between the meal times. I'm sure that certain regions and places would have had more access to casual food. Meanwhile a farmer working the land (or other heavy labour work) might well have biscuits or other foods on hand for when they work inbetween the meals.

4) Seasons might also be important when it gets to winter. One might find that warm food in the morning; or warmed drink is taken more frequently.

5) Nature of work. Personally I can wake up and work on an empty stomach, but I've only got around one to two hours before I will feel hungry and need either a snack or a proper meal before I can continue. However if I'm driving anywhere I find that I have to eat before I leave. Part of that I attribute to a higher stress environment. Hard labour is just physical muscle strain, however mental concentration and stress on top can be far more - straining - to a person (I find). Plus, again getting back to the nature of the work, you can't just "stop" driving. Similarly there might be other tasks that are hard to impossible to stop once started and thus a meal or source of foodbefore they begin, again, becomes important.

6) Natural variation. Whilst there are always standards remember how many people, even just in this thread, show variation in behaviours. Whislt part of that can be the fact that we are a global community; another is simply the variation between people. So even if a certain period of time in a region lives a certain way there is nearly always going to be some degree of variation within the population. When we study the past we have to consider this and how much evidence conclusions are based upon. If only one source remains then that source could be typical of the age or could be abnormal or just one persons viewpoint. Even when youv'e a large body you have to consider the source as well as the potential for natural variation.

 

[sknox]

Those time traveller's guides are a fun read but shaky history. They rely heavily on English sources and it's mostly late medieval. Eating habits varied by place, by culture, by season, by wealth, even by diet. By golly.

When you read a statement about "people" or even "peasants" in the "Middle Ages" without further specificity, be cautious. It's fine to use such sources as inspiration for writing, but don't mistake them for good history.

 

[-K2-]

I'm a little surprised that this is being discussed without considering economic factors. Today, there are vast swaths of people who rarely have a single meal daily. I myself went years where 2-3 days between meals was common (not by choice), and even much longer periods. It would be one thing if it was just myself, yet I've lived in large communities where it was norm for most.

Taking that into consideration, with the number of people (I assume) who scratched out a living in what are rather difficult environments (northern temperate zones), and what little I understand about land ownership and citizens' rights, let alone conditions in cities where food must be bought, 'two meals a day' as a pat answer sounds a bit cheerier than I suspect it was for most.

But, that's just guessing on my part. Maybe things have gotten worse *shrug*

K2

 

[Overread]

One thing to consider, depending on region and period in time, is that wild/natural food resources were potentially more plentiful than today. Furthermore there was likely more generalist understanding of what foods to eat. The English today hardly eat mushrooms and most people on the street wouldn't touch a wild one to save their lives nor could they identify safe and unsafe ones. However jump back a few hundred years and I'd wager more people, esp those who are not upper classes (and thus have servants to do their work for them) would have a more well rounded understanding of what they can and cannot eat from the wilds.

Whilst this might only supplement food at certain times of the year its important to consider. Of course land ownership has always been an issue. I'd wager that you'd see big differences between a country like the UK which is essentially limited on land and where much of it (even in ancient times) was "owned" by someone; and those regions where there are a vast tracks of wilderness which, whilst they might be owned, are far less practical to police.