Middle ages menu for the poor?

Answer 1

There was no menu. Food was seasonal, meaning that you ate only what was available at that particular time of the year (no apples in May, no leeks in June and so on).

In general terms, peasants lived on bread made from wheat, ale made from barley, dairy products such as butter, cheese and buttermilk, eggs, large amounts of vegetables and fruit when available. Meat would be a very rare luxury - you kept a cow or goat for its milk and geese for their eggs; they would only be killed and eaten when they stopped producing at the end of their useful lives, so the meat would be old and tough.

Rabbits, fish and birds generally belonged to a manorial lord, so taking them was a criminal act. Only in the sea and the wetlands of the fens were fish and eels free for anyone to catch.

The main everyday meal was a kind of vegetable stew called pottage. Anything and everything went into the pottage, which was often put on the embers to cook overnight: onions, leeks, kale, parsnip, spinach, swede, turnip, peas, field beans, cabbage, shallot, lettuce, herbs and a handful of cereal all went into the pot together.

Answer 2

Barley soup and barley bread most days. No potatoes they didn't exist in Europe then. Wheat was too expensive and barley or rye was cheap.

Answer 3

Good

Food

Answer 4

Good