The Time Traveler's Guide to Medieval England: A Handbook for Visitors to the Fourteenth Century

by Ian Mortimer

  Calais is an extreme case, and this chapter is predominantly concerned with tastier things than rats, horses, and dogs. Nevertheless, the extremes are worth bearing in mind as you peruse the metaphorical menus of medieval England. A number of your favorite foods will not be available. There are no potatoes or tomatoes; these come from lands yet to be discovered. For the same reason there are no turkeys: your Christmas dish instead—if you can afford it—is likely to be a swan, a goose, beef, ham, or bacon.3 You will search the markets in vain for carrots, which have yet to be developed from their inedible purple wild variety. Rice is imported only in small amounts, and pasta—although regularly made in Italy and Sicily—has yet to make an appearance in England. Like all true travelers you have no option but to eat the local food, and in many cases you will find that the only alternative is hunger. If an unchanging diet of boiled bacon, rye bread, and peas does not appeal, then consider yourself lucky not to be stuck in a house in which the bacon has gone rancid, the flour has been eaten by rats, and the peas have become damp and rotted.

  Rhythms of Food

  The modern convention of three square meals per day does not apply in medieval England. Here you will eat just two. With the exception of a few high-status, self-indulgent individuals, people do not normally have breakfast. A householder might take some bread and cheese on rising, especially if he is planning to ride a long distance or be very active, but on the whole he will eat nothing until dinner. This, the main meal of the day, usually takes place between ten and eleven o’clock in the morning, depending on the season. It is followed by supper, a more modest affair, in the late afternoon—between four and five o’clock. Although the medieval diet does not come close to our ideas of healthy eating—for example, boiling cabbage until all the vitamin C has been destroyed—in one sense it has merit, for it delivers the greatest boost of energy in the late morning, when people still have most of the day to work off the calories.

  Another important gastronomic rhythm arises from the strict rules about eating meat. The Church forbids the consumption of animals on Wednesdays, Fridays, and Saturdays, and throughout Lent and Advent. This equates to just over half the year. In Lent even the eating of eggs is forbidden. As this applies to the whole of society, even the king, no host or patron will break the rule in your presence. Anyone who eats meat on a nonmeat day is liable to find himself or herself hauled up before the church courts. It is a sin and will play upon a man’s or woman’s conscience until he or she is relieved by confession, an indulgence, or a penance imposed by the courts.

  The third layer of dietary rhythms is simply that of seasonal availability. Fruit is fresher in autumn, and at harvesttime all sorts of things become plentiful, from white bread to pies and flans. Meat is also more plentiful in late autumn. The expense of feeding animals through the winter months means that many are slaughtered at Martinmas (November 11). Some are roasted and eaten straightaway; others are salted for consumption during the winter. Obviously garden produce is seasonal; in fact, vegetables are arguably the most seasonal products of all, as there is little monetary value in them and thus no long-distance trade. As for fish, more fresh varieties are available in summer, when the seas are not so rough and the merchants coming from the coastal towns have longer daylight hours to transport their cargoes to the inland markets. In winter, market fish is mainly salted or dried. Even the form in which things are cooked varies with the seasons. A great deal of cooking takes place out of doors in summer. This is partly because of the weather and partly because keeping a large fire burning on the hearth of a small house tends to make it unbearably hot. Communal cooking of roast meat is common in late summer and autumn; in winter food is older and more often boiled.

  For all these reasons, a request for your favorite food when you fancy it—especially if it is a meat product—can only rarely be satisfied. Times of day, days of the week, and seasons of the year all matter much more than they do in the modern world.

  Peasant Households

  As noted in chapter 2, there are rich peasants and poor peasants, and it goes without saying that married yeomen with thirty acres have a better diet than poor single laborers with no land or garden. It also goes without saying that hungry travelers are not welcome in a place where food is scarce. But let us say you find yourself sitting down at a yeoman’s table, like that in the three-bay house described in the last chapter.

  There could be several sorts of bread in front of you. At the start of the century, dark rye bread is common, as is bread made from wheat and rye mixed together, known as maslin.4 It is unlikely that before 1350 you will be offered fine white bread in a yeoman’s house, but on special days—considering you are a guest—it might happen, if your host keeps a portion of his land sufficiently enriched with dung for growing wheat. On other days you might find bread made from barley (especially in the western counties), or oats, or a mixture of oats and wheat. You might be offered oatcakes as well as bread (especially in the north). If these do not tempt you, consider eating “horse-bread.” This is made from a sort of flour of ground peas, bran, and beans—if contemporaries look at you strangely, it is because it is not meant for human consumption. But in some places you might be expected to eat the brown wholegrain bread known as “tourt.” When this gets old, it is cut into slices and used for trenchers or plates. After use, the trenchers are given to the pigs to eat, soaked in the juices of the meal. Nothing is wasted in a peasant’s household. Even the plates are edible.

  As you will gather, bread is an important part of the medieval peasant’s diet. Accordingly, its price is controlled by law (the Assize of Bread). The buying of bread, however, is a typically urban activity. Your rural yeoman is more likely to make his own. He or his wife will take their grain to the manorial mill (normally a watermill but just possibly an early wooden windmill), where the miller will grind it and take a small proportion in payment (normally a sixteenth or a twenty-fourth). If the yeoman has a stone or a clay oven in one of his outhouses, he and his wife might bake the bread themselves. Otherwise they will take their ground grain to the village baker for baking. The end product might be kept up to a week in the home, although when it is that old it is usually used only for trenchers and animal feed.

  If there is any rival to bread as the staple food of the English peasantry, it is pottage. There are thick and thin pottages, from thick white porridge made with oats, and runny green pottage made with peas, to white porray made with leeks. Your host will expect your eyes to light up when he sets before you a bowl of a pottage containing peas, herbs, some bacon, and white beans. The most basic ingredients are meat stock, chopped herbs, oats, and salt, but beyond that almost anything can go in. Breadcrumbs are often used as a thickener. If you take a wooden spoon and start digging around, you are likely to find onions and garlic and other garden produce, such as cabbage. The peas might either be the small green sort with which you are familiar, or they may be a white variety. In poor peasants’ houses, large grey peas are used. As with everything else which is green, or greenish, these are boiled thoroughly prior to eating. There is a widespread understanding that green vegetables—cabbages in particular—are not good for you, and potentially harmful if raw.

  It is likely that the vegetables served in a peasant’s house all come from his own garden. If you look around it you will see that there are few ornamental shrubs or flowering plants (except lavender and sweet-smelling roses), and the only trees are productive fruit trees. There is no lawn; the garden has no recreational element in its design. Instead there are rows of herbs and vegetables. If the peasant wants to eat turnips or to feed them to his animals, he needs to grow them himself. More to the point, if he wants a safeguard in case of a complete harvest failure, growing turnips is a good insurance policy. Gardens thus fulfill a twofold function: sustenance and taste. The fields are essential for his cereal crops, and the manorial pastures and downlands are important for grazing his animals, but the greatest variety in his diet comes from his garden. How proud
he is of his onions, garlic, peas, leeks, chibols (spring onions), cabbages, beans, parsley, and sage. If there are well-kept fruit trees in the orchard, then no doubt his family eats well—and not just in autumn, for fruit can be preserved for a long time, both naturally and in preserves and pickles. Everyone keeps apples but look for pears, cherries, plums, grapes, walnuts, and damsons. Gooseberries, strawberries, and mulberries are also occasionally cultivated. Blackberries and sloes are so commonly found in the wild that there is no need to grow them.

  What about meat, you ask? What about dairy products? Where do these figure in the peasant’s diet? After all, that meat stock in the best pottage has to come from somewhere, as does the bacon. True—but do not forget that that meaty broth was in honor of a guest. And meat stock can be made to last a very long time, with the bones being boiled and reboiled. The fact is that many peasants, especially villeins, do not have many opportunities to eat meat. As the poet William Langland puts it, describing the diet of Piers Plowman,

  I have no money to buy pullets,

  Nor geese nor pigs but two green cheeses

  A few curds and cream, and a cake of oats

  And two loaves of beans and bran to bake for my children

  And yet I say by my soul, I have no salt bacon

  Nor eggs, by Christ, to make collops;

  But I have parsley, leeks and many cabbages

  And a cow and a calf, and a carthorse,

  To draw dung to my field while the drought lasts

  And by this livelihood might we live to Lammastide

  By when I hope to have my harvest in my croft

  So I may serve a dinner to my heart’s delight.

  Then all the poor people fetched peascods,

  Beans and baked apples they brought in their laps,

  Chibols and chervil and ripe cherries many

  And proferred Piers this present to appease Hunger.5

  Meat is the food of the rich and is in demand not only by the rich but by all those yeomen and townsmen who would like to be seen living like the rich. It is thus a status symbol, and it follows that those at the bottom of the social ladder eat much less of it than those at the top. Nor is it easy for those at the bottom to make up for this disadvantage by catching wild animals. Hunting of game is rarely permitted, being reserved for the lord of the manor. There are some exceptions: wildfowl are plentiful in some areas—estuaries, for example—and they can be caught in large weighted nets or killed with slings. Hares are available to trappers, as are coneys (rabbits), these having bred rapidly in the wild since their introduction to England in the twelfth century. Even though these count as game—and are often caught unlawfully—a manorial court will normally impose only a small fine for poaching them. Even those taking hares from the royal forests will not be severely punished. If you do catch some hares, here is how your host might cook them:

  Take hares and flay them; pick the bones clean; hew them into pieces and put them into a pot with the blood, and seeth them. Then put them into cold water. Put the broth with other good stock, almond milk and parboiled minced onions. Let it boil on the fire. Add powder of cloves, cinnamon and mace, and a little vinegar. Take the well-washed flesh, and the bones, and set them all to boil in the broth, and then serve.6

  There is another reason why peasants do not often eat meat or only eat wild birds and hares. Living animals have many more uses than dead ones. Cows, sheep, and goats provide milk, which, although it does not last long, can be made into cheeses, which can be kept for months. Piers Plowman would be a fool to slaughter either his cow or his calf. Sheep and goats provide wool—essential for warm clothing—so you will not find lamb or kid on a peasant’s table (although you will find roast or stewed mutton, especially in November). Chickens, ducks, and geese are far more valuable for the hundreds of eggs they can produce than the one or two meals which their flesh will provide. Of course, when a chicken has ceased to lay, there is no better place for her than a cooking pot but it is worth waiting until she is old. Oxen, the largest and most valuable of all animals, are vital for pulling the plow—essential for the production of cereal crops. (The special rigid collar which one day will enable large horses to take their place has yet to be developed.) In addition, by carefully slicing the upper legs of cattle and controlling the flow, sufficient blood can be obtained without killing the animal to make blood pudding. Mixed with oats, salt, and herbs, and then boiled, it is a rich source of protein and a tasty variation in winter to pottage or cheese.

  You would have thought that fish would provide a welcome, non-meat source of protein for the peasantry. Welcome it is indeed, but it does not figure greatly in most rural families’ diets. For those living inland, there are obvious problems of obtaining fresh fish—transportation adding greatly to the cost. But there is another, underlying reason. The Church’s prohibition of meat consumption on certain days helps to create a strong demand for fish among the nobility, gentry, and clergy. For this reason fish is expensive. Manors where the peasants are allowed to fish for themselves (like Alrewas in Staffordshire), are the exception, not the rule.7 Normally the common man is not allowed to fish on the lakes, ponds, and rivers near his home—such rights belong to the lord of the manor. If you are hired to go fishing, your catch will go directly to the lord’s table. Even if the bailiff quietly allows you to keep a fresh trout, you might well sell it. Your peasant host will certainly have no difficulty choosing between two days’ wages and eating a status symbol. Members of the royal family send fish as presents to one another. The duke of York regularly sends pike, sea bream, tench, and salmon to his cousin, King Henry IV. When the royal family set such a high value on fish, what hope does a commoner have? Pickled and salted herrings are the peasant’s usual fish dinner, with salt fish (normally a white fish, like cod) and stockfish (dried cod) the next most common. These are available throughout the year from town markets. Eels may also be bought, either in sticks of twenty or in pies and pasties, being plentiful in medium-sized rivers and relatively inexpensive.

  What is in that painted and glazed ceramic jug on the yeoman’s table? The answer is almost certainly ale: that is to say, a drink made from malted barley or oats without any hops in it (the inclusion of hops being the difference between ale and beer). Ale is so important in the medieval diet that its price, like that of bread, is governed by statute law. Four gallons of ale should be sold for 1d when the price of barley is 2s per quarter. The very best ale—which can be sold for as much as 2d per gallon—is made in Kent. But do not expect to find Kentish ale throughout the country: it does not keep. Without hops it goes sour very quickly. When alewives have brewed a new vat, they set about selling it straightaway, putting a bushel on a pole above the door of the house to advertise its availability. In peasant families, the brewing is done on a regular basis by the women of the household, and when the ale begins to turn sour, it is flavored with herbs and honey or caudled with egg yolks. If spices are available, the sourness might be concealed with ground pepper, galingale (blue ginger), cinnamon, and other exotica, purchased from the local market. In this way, ale is turned into a sort of mulled drink.

  Lifting your wooden mug or mazer and taking a swig, you will find that the ale in a peasant household tastes a little sweet. It is also weak. As most prosperous peasants have an aversion to drinking water—which is liable to convey dirt and disease into their bodies—they drink ale exclusively. Only the single laborer and widow, living alone in their one-room cottages, drink water (rainwater is preferred, collected in a cistern in the yard). Married men expect their wives to brew ale as one of their household duties. Cow’s milk is considered suitable only for cooking and for old women and children. Thus the ale cannot be too strong, otherwise the yeoman’s judgment would wobble under the effect of drinking strong alcohol all day every day. In some areas of the country cider and perry (cider made from pears) are drunk instead of ale, especially in the western counties. The cider can be strong. It is also quite cheap—half the price of secon
d-best ale, at ½d per gallon. The same can be said of the honey-based drinks, mead and metheglin (the latter being flavored with herbs), which also are to be found in the west and south of the country: extra strength at half the price. Although your English peasant will never have encountered spirits and probably very little wine, drunkenness is by no means unknown. If a yeoman’s wife is good enough to brew full-strength ale or cider and let him drink eight pints of it in rapid succession, the result is quick, predictable, and not peculiar to the fourteenth century.

  Towns and Cities

  When you sit down to dinner in a town house, your expectations will probably be governed by what you see around you. If you are in a small wooden building, dining in a small, poorly lit hall, and being attended by your host’s wife, then your fare will probably be less tasty than the yeoman’s meal described above. If your host is an important merchant, on the other hand, and you are being entertained in the well-lit hall of a large house, with several fine pieces of silverware and smart white linen tablecloths on display, and with a whole pile of trenchers stacked up in front of you (one for each course), then you can expect food far richer and more varied than the peasant could ever dream of offering. You might drink red wine and eat beef, lamb, or kid in sauces prepared by the merchant’s own cook, and taste wafers and sweetmeats afterwards, as would a lord.

  In all probability your diet in a town will fall somewhere between the two extremes of peasant and lord, so let us here just consider what it is about food in towns and cities which is different from the country. For the countryman living three or four miles from a town, it is not just the cost of buying things which is restrictive, it is the time taken in getting to the market itself. Whereas the rural yeoman will try to cover all his needs in one trip, the merchant, shopkeeper, or laborer living in a town has no problems nipping to the bakery, or to the fishmongers’ market stalls, or sending a servant. Consequently the townsman—and especially the city dweller—has far less control over his food supply than his country cousins. If he needs bread, he buys a loaf directly from the baker; he does not normally go to the miller with his own grain unless he lives in a very small town and has a few strips of land in the open fields just beyond the walls. Similarly, his garden cannot provide all the fruit and vegetables he needs (except in the cases of a few prosperous merchants, who have substantial town gardens). Most people have to go to the market for garden produce.