Medieval Food & Beverage

Meals were served 3 times a day. Breakfast consisted of bread and cheese at daybreak. The evening meal, served at sundown, consisted of bread and cheese and possibly a small dish such as a stew. Supper, served around mid-day and considered to be the main meal, consisted of meats, pastries, bread, wine or ale, fruits, cheeses and nuts.

A feast, consisted of beef, pork, mutton, venison, poultry, fish, eggs, bread, milk, cheeses, vegetables and ample supply of wine, ale, cider and mead. Many feasts included as many as 6000 guests! For this large gathering, as much as 2000 pigs, 100 sheep, 300 calves, 500 deer, 2000 geese, and 13,000 dishes of jelly, tarts, custards and pastries, 300 tons of ale and 100 tons of wine were needed! And I didn't even mention every food item!

In the spring and summer, food was abundant and included starlings, vultures, gulls, herons, storks, cormorants, swans, cranes, peacocks, capons, and chickens, dogfish, porpoises, seals, whale, haddock, cod, salmon, sardines, lamprey, dolphins and tunnies, as well as mullet, sole, shad, flounder, plaice, ray, mackerel, trout, crab, crayfish and oysters. Fruits were also eaten, as well as onions, garlic, peas, and beans. Roasts, stews and soups were the preferred dishes of a meal.

In the winter food was scarse so beef was dried during the rest of the year so it could be stored for winter. Pigeons were raised and bred during the year and when winter came they were eaten. Fish was salted or smoked so it could be preserved for longer.

If you were among the lower class, you weren't as blessed with food as the lord and his guests. All through the year, not just during the winter, your main food supply would be vegetables and breads (the breads not suitable for upper class), porridge, fish, cheese curds, beer or ale. Surprisingly, the lower class seemed to escape a variety of health problems that the upper class had an abundance of. These health problems were scurvy, tooth decay, heart problems, skin problems, and infections.