What Would You Have Eaten for Christmas in Medieval Times?

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>>8351928

Wealthy or poor

There’s not much detail as to what the couple ate at their winter feast. The artist was more interested in depicting the strawberries and flowers in the margins than in putting food on the table. This is typical of medieval manuscript art. Even elaborate descriptions of royal feasts say little about food. We know even less about what the poor ate, although lords probably feasted their tenants at least once over Christmas.

We do know that preparations for winter would have begun in the late autumn. Humans and animals both ate the same basic foodstuff: grain. Poorer people did not have enough grain for animals over winter so most pigs and cattle were fattened up on acorns and slaughtered. Calendars commemorate this strategic act for the months of November and December as in the images below, paired with the relevant signs of the zodiac (Sagittarius and Capricorn).

Of course, the wealthy could continue to keep their animals alive, so they had fresh meat all winter. It’s not true that they used spices to liven up rotten meat: cloves, nutmeg, cinnamon and pepper were imported from India or Indonesia, so if you could afford them you could afford good meat. The rich could also afford sugar – candied fruit, sugared almonds and sweets have always been popular Christmas treats.

The poor would have eaten sausage and bacon instead, salted fish if they could get it, stored or dried apples, peas and beans, perhaps a bit of honey, and would only have had the added flavours of onion, leeks and garlic. Even salt was expensive. The hungriest time was actually not the months that we associate with winter cold, but the months of April and May. It was then that stores had run out and there would be little growing yet in the garden. Nor was there much dairy as hens naturally lay less in winter and cows don’t produce milk until after they have their spring calves.

cont.

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>>8351933

Yuletide feasting

The best way to find out what the wealthy ate is to turn to their financial accounts and cookery books. Cookery books such as theForme of Cury, written for the household of King Richard II (1377-1399), provide some tasty recipes. For arecent projectwe made recipes from this text and others for the public to try at festivals and markets around Yorkshire. In Castleford Market in December 2012 we prepared seasonal tastes such as gingerbread, mutton stew (mounchelet) and apple pudding (pommesmoile).

But it was nigh on impossible to prepare the main dishes that the rich had at their feasts. Turkey originally came from the Americas so was not found on English tables until the late 16th century. It probably replaced a showier but much less tasty bird: the peacock. The price of these birds meant that most people had to be content with another large expensive bird, the goose, which was a traditional Christmas main course until relatively recently. Also closely associated with Christmas was the wild boar – a boar’s head was often brought into the hall to accompanying carols. But it wasn’t always intended for eating.

And then elaborate displays of prepared meat, sugar or wax in the form of fantasy animals, angels and castles were often part of the entertainment, sometimes even moving mechanically or exploding.

So count yourself lucky as somebody who won’t go hungry this winter. You may have left the pudding quite late but you can leave the peacock and pommesmoile for next year.

Top image: ‘Bringing in the Boar's Head’, from the Christmas 1855 supplement to the Illustrated London News (public domain)
The article ‘What Would You Have Eaten for Christmas in Medieval Times?’ by Iona McCleery was originally published on The Conversation and has been republished under a Creative Commons license.

FIN

Tl;dr
I plan on eating the Mchicken the best fast food sandwich

>>8351937
>And then elaborate displays of prepared meat, sugar or wax in the form of fantasy animals, angels and castles were often part of the entertainment, sometimes even moving mechanically or exploding.
It's just like those tacky "fine dining" webms posted on /ck/ all the time

>>8351928
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Gyu4d8K9OI

>>8351928
Neat thanks op

what was the 'go 'za of the Medieval Times?

Breaded cheese.

Huh?