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Food and Feast in Medieval England
This fully illustrated book describes the extraordinary range of food which found its way on to the tables of medieval English society, its production and distribution. Although bread, ale, meat and fish were the staple diet, fish often came from as far away as Iceland, and as early as 1480 over 100,000 oranges were being imported to augment the diet. The book covers a wide range of medieval food, from hunting, fish breeding, brewing, baking, food hygiene and storage. The book concludes with an examination of medieval feasts, such as that held at York on 26 December 1251, which took six months to prepare, and saw the consumption of no fewer than 68,500 loaves of bread, 170 boars and 25,000 gallons of wine. Based on archaeological and documentary evidence, this book aims to provide an introduction to an often neglected topic of medieval life.
176 pages, Paperback
First published June 1, 1993
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About the author
P.W. Hammond
11 books4 followersPeter W. Hammond is a medieval historian and a leading authority on the reign of Richard III. For thirty years he was research officer of the Richard III Society and he is currently President of the society.
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January 25, 2018Very much a does what it says on the tin type book: it says food and feast in medieval England and that's - by and large - what you get.
Only by and large what you get, because some of the evidence is drawn from the slightly later and somewhat better documented Tudor period and when you glance at the footnotes some of the evidence on diet comes from other parts of medieval Europe.
The book consists of seven chapters: Where food came from, Food of the countryman, Food of the town dweller, Food of the gentry, Adulteration & nutrition, Table Manners, and Feasts. There is an emphasis on the extravagant, such as peacocks, pheasants or swans cooked left to cool and then inserted back into their own skin and feathers of which the author says “they must both have made very spectacular table decorations, although the risk of infection from uncooked skins would have been great” (p138), or fantastically coloured and richly flavoured dishes combining meats and sweetened with sugar.
How even the better off ate on a day to day basis is unclear because the evidence used in this book comes from accounts of elaborate feasts, financial accounts, legal records and, to a limited extent, archaeology. The difficulty is that not all consumption was accounted for. The wealthy or those in religious orders possibly because they consumed produce from their own estates, for the poor because they left no bookkeeping records, they scavenged and grew their own food .
This leads to uncertainty in the discussion of nutrition, diets can be seen as highly varied and healthy, and at the same time as potentially unhealthy, with the wealthy at risk of mineral and vitamin deficiencies while the poor, in addition to being generally unnourished, may have had particular seasonal problems with getting certain types of produce. It all depends on how plausible you think it is that your typical peasant got to drink half a litre of milk and half a litre of whey everyday.
Here I think is one of the weaknesses of the book - there is no attempt to go into the detail of geography, climate and landscape, and to discuss how diet may have varied from region to region. Nor is there any interest in entering in controversy, Hammond is happy just to point out the areas of uncertainty, like those mentioned above, where they exist.
So what we get is a potage of anecdote. The medieval English ate a far wider range of foods than their descendants: herons, porpoises, seagulls, as well as more or less anything greenish that didn't move - particularly when you were down at the lower end of the social spectrum.
This brings me to the second weakness of the book - the distorting effect that the evidence gives. The books offering guidance on table manners such as telling the reader not to pick out food from between their teeth with a knife but to use a tooth pick instead are hopefully castigating extreme behaviour rather than reflecting what was typical . Similarly prosecutions for adulterating food or selling substandard ale don't help us to know what was normal for the consumer. Likewise the sheer numbers of fish or barrels of wine brought into London do not provide a picture of the pattern of consumption by her teeming citizens. The diets of soldiers calculated out as providing 5000 calories a day stand comparison with those of soldiers in WWII, or at least they might if we had any confidence that the garrisons of fortresses in Scotland or Venetian sailors actually regularly got the foods that they were promised on paper.
On the other hand some of the evidence gives a picture of a society very different to today. Butchers didn't like to sell in quantities of less than a kilo. Ale house and taverns also preferred to sell in bulk . You could not, it seems stop for pint or buy a bit of beef for your supper. The cash economy was orientated to the needs of bulk buyers. Furthermore large numbers of people had only limited access to the cash economy since wage labourers were often paid partly in food (and cash wages paid out quarterly or less often). The provision of food was an important part of labour contracts with the type of food you got depending on your status. The lower down you were socially the browner your bread became, due to the greater quantity of rye and bran in the mix and the less meat you were likely to get.
In some ways I found The Goodman of Paris a more interesting introduction to medieval food and feasting because it is all about one household and features actual dinner plans with some cooking instructions (much sketchier than we're used to from modern cookbooks). Naturally the scope of that book is more limited but then again Hammond doesn't have that much definite to say about what the ninety or so plus percent of the population who were peasants were actually eating either. Perhaps worth a bite is The Forme of Cury, the earliest surviving English cookbook, even if the cury of the title apparently comes from the French rather from the Tamil.
A short book that avoids controversy and analysis, giving an anecdote rich overview of Medieval English eating habits that benefits from some lovely illustrations particularly from the Luttrell Psalter.
Only by and large what you get, because some of the evidence is drawn from the slightly later and somewhat better documented Tudor period and when you glance at the footnotes some of the evidence on diet comes from other parts of medieval Europe.
The book consists of seven chapters: Where food came from, Food of the countryman, Food of the town dweller, Food of the gentry, Adulteration & nutrition, Table Manners, and Feasts. There is an emphasis on the extravagant, such as peacocks, pheasants or swans cooked left to cool and then inserted back into their own skin and feathers of which the author says “they must both have made very spectacular table decorations, although the risk of infection from uncooked skins would have been great” (p138), or fantastically coloured and richly flavoured dishes combining meats and sweetened with sugar.
How even the better off ate on a day to day basis is unclear because the evidence used in this book comes from accounts of elaborate feasts, financial accounts, legal records and, to a limited extent, archaeology. The difficulty is that not all consumption was accounted for. The wealthy or those in religious orders possibly because they consumed produce from their own estates, for the poor because they left no bookkeeping records, they scavenged and grew their own food .
This leads to uncertainty in the discussion of nutrition, diets can be seen as highly varied and healthy, and at the same time as potentially unhealthy, with the wealthy at risk of mineral and vitamin deficiencies while the poor, in addition to being generally unnourished, may have had particular seasonal problems with getting certain types of produce. It all depends on how plausible you think it is that your typical peasant got to drink half a litre of milk and half a litre of whey everyday.
Here I think is one of the weaknesses of the book - there is no attempt to go into the detail of geography, climate and landscape, and to discuss how diet may have varied from region to region. Nor is there any interest in entering in controversy, Hammond is happy just to point out the areas of uncertainty, like those mentioned above, where they exist.
So what we get is a potage of anecdote. The medieval English ate a far wider range of foods than their descendants: herons, porpoises, seagulls, as well as more or less anything greenish that didn't move - particularly when you were down at the lower end of the social spectrum.
This brings me to the second weakness of the book - the distorting effect that the evidence gives. The books offering guidance on table manners such as telling the reader not to pick out food from between their teeth with a knife but to use a tooth pick instead are hopefully castigating extreme behaviour rather than reflecting what was typical . Similarly prosecutions for adulterating food or selling substandard ale don't help us to know what was normal for the consumer. Likewise the sheer numbers of fish or barrels of wine brought into London do not provide a picture of the pattern of consumption by her teeming citizens. The diets of soldiers calculated out as providing 5000 calories a day stand comparison with those of soldiers in WWII, or at least they might if we had any confidence that the garrisons of fortresses in Scotland or Venetian sailors actually regularly got the foods that they were promised on paper.
On the other hand some of the evidence gives a picture of a society very different to today. Butchers didn't like to sell in quantities of less than a kilo. Ale house and taverns also preferred to sell in bulk . You could not, it seems stop for pint or buy a bit of beef for your supper. The cash economy was orientated to the needs of bulk buyers. Furthermore large numbers of people had only limited access to the cash economy since wage labourers were often paid partly in food (and cash wages paid out quarterly or less often). The provision of food was an important part of labour contracts with the type of food you got depending on your status. The lower down you were socially the browner your bread became, due to the greater quantity of rye and bran in the mix and the less meat you were likely to get.
In some ways I found The Goodman of Paris a more interesting introduction to medieval food and feasting because it is all about one household and features actual dinner plans with some cooking instructions (much sketchier than we're used to from modern cookbooks). Naturally the scope of that book is more limited but then again Hammond doesn't have that much definite to say about what the ninety or so plus percent of the population who were peasants were actually eating either. Perhaps worth a bite is The Forme of Cury, the earliest surviving English cookbook, even if the cury of the title apparently comes from the French rather from the Tamil.
A short book that avoids controversy and analysis, giving an anecdote rich overview of Medieval English eating habits that benefits from some lovely illustrations particularly from the Luttrell Psalter.
May 29, 2012
This book is not for the casual history lover. Unless you are really very curious about what people ate in medieval England, you will find this book extremely boring.
That said, I found it really interesting.
So many history books focus on the grand events, the deaths, the betrayals, the coups. This is all very interesting of course, but so much of life, like our lives today, is spent between these events. This book focuses on not the grand moments, but the daily one of eating and what was on the plate.
Starting with peasants, the book discusses the diet of the main classes of people and points out differences as well as misconceptions, such as that peasants only ate gruel. In fact, their diet was often supplemented by an array of vegetables. Obviously, it wasn't as much or as varied as the higher classes, but studies demonstrate that not only was it often well above the necessary caloric intake, it also covered the nutritional basics. Scurvy, though the bane of sailors, was not all that common, and rickets (the sign of vitamin D deficiency) was certainly lesser known in those centuries than during the industrial era.
The book also gives a thorough overview of table manners of the time period, which weren't as barbaric as we would like to believe. Rules were clearly set out and polite behavior was as rigid as it is today, just with fewer niceties, such as individual plates and the lack of needing to bring your own spoon to a dinner party (though that would be kind of funny).
Though this isn't a book for everyone, and I may be cementing myself in "nerdland" for just reading it, it is interesting and worthwhile for anyone wishing to have a clearer view of everyday life in the middle ages.
That said, I found it really interesting.
So many history books focus on the grand events, the deaths, the betrayals, the coups. This is all very interesting of course, but so much of life, like our lives today, is spent between these events. This book focuses on not the grand moments, but the daily one of eating and what was on the plate.
Starting with peasants, the book discusses the diet of the main classes of people and points out differences as well as misconceptions, such as that peasants only ate gruel. In fact, their diet was often supplemented by an array of vegetables. Obviously, it wasn't as much or as varied as the higher classes, but studies demonstrate that not only was it often well above the necessary caloric intake, it also covered the nutritional basics. Scurvy, though the bane of sailors, was not all that common, and rickets (the sign of vitamin D deficiency) was certainly lesser known in those centuries than during the industrial era.
The book also gives a thorough overview of table manners of the time period, which weren't as barbaric as we would like to believe. Rules were clearly set out and polite behavior was as rigid as it is today, just with fewer niceties, such as individual plates and the lack of needing to bring your own spoon to a dinner party (though that would be kind of funny).
Though this isn't a book for everyone, and I may be cementing myself in "nerdland" for just reading it, it is interesting and worthwhile for anyone wishing to have a clearer view of everyday life in the middle ages.
December 11, 2018
I picked this book up at my local library sale and enjoyed reading it very much. I’ve read a considerable number of fiction books set in the medieval period (currently, the Doctor Bartholomew series set in 14th century Cambridge), so it’s helpful to “see” the scenes described in the fictional accounts - and also to determine whether the author did his or her research.
Also thanks to the internet, which has developed since this book was originally published, one can view a plethora of YouTube videos of people cooking medieval recipes and recreating medieval feasts. The videos can serve as a kind of addendum to the book.
Also thanks to the internet, which has developed since this book was originally published, one can view a plethora of YouTube videos of people cooking medieval recipes and recreating medieval feasts. The videos can serve as a kind of addendum to the book.
December 17, 2013
Food and Feast in Medieval England gives an excellent brief look at what was eaten in Medieval England, where the food came from (grown or imported), how it was prepared and some of the laws regulating food sales and food production in the cities. It has chapters focusing on the diet of village peasants, city folk and the nobility. An very hefty percentage of people in the Middle Ages were employed almost solely in the making of food- if you want to know what they did all year, seeing what they ate is a good place to start.
November 18, 2007
A good introduction to the history of food if you have a brain. Sometimes a bit rambling, but with some fascinating pieces of information (even for those few of us who actually are deeply interested in this topic and have read a lot about it). Seems to have difficulty deciding if this popular or academic literature, however.
October 16, 2014
A historical analysis of the foods available and eaten by both peasants and gentry during the Medieval period in England. It addresses where the food came from, how it was preserved and stored, and its nutritional value.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews