What did people eat in 1066?

Answer 1

In the Middle Ages in Europe, what people ate depended a lot on how rich they were. Poor people (which was almost everybody) ate mainly barley. Sometimes they made their barley into bread, and sometimes into pancakes or pizza, and sometimes into barley porridge (like oatmeal) and sometimes into barley soup. But every day, breakfast, lunch and dinner, most of every meal was barley. It must have been very boring!

As much as they could, the poor people found other things to eat with their barley to make it less boring. They grew carrots and onions and cabbage and garlic to put in their soup, and they made cheese to eat with their bread and melt on their pizza, and they gathered apples and pears and mushrooms as well, so they could make apple pies or baked apples. And they tried to get honey to sweeten their treats. They grew herbs like basil and rosemary to flavor their food. Mostly poor people drank ale (kindof like beer) or beer in England and Germany, wine in France and Italy and Spain. Even the beer was made from barley! Rich people also ate a lot of bread, but they made their bread out of wheat so it tasted better. And they had more choices of other things to eat with their bread. Rich people ate meat - pork and roast beef and stew and lamb chops and deer and rabbit. And they had spices to put on their food, expensive spices that had to come all the way from India like pepper and cinnamon. Even salt was often too expensive for poor people, and only rich people had it. In fact, when you were eating in a medieval castle, the salt would be on the table in a huge fancy salt cellar, and the rich people would sit near the salt so they could use it, while the poor people sat further down the long table and couldn't use the salt. We still say, "above the salt" to mean a rich person. (c) www.historyforkids.org

Answer 2

In 1066, people depended on the land for survival. They hunted and raised livestock for meat. They grew crops and practiced food preservation for the winter. Much of their time was spent on the necessities of survival.

Answer 3

it was grotty the rich served food on flat bred because they never had no plates when the rich got plates they give the flat brad to the poor to eat they would eat flat bread and would drink ale.

Answer 4

Meat was very popular. Although it had weird names, (fried pig's head) it tasted good. Beef and mutton (lamb) were eaten a lot. Mutton is a kind of sheep. Venison, or deer meat, was eaten a lot too and so were poultry, game, and wild birds. The best way of preserving meat was to sprinkle it with salt. This worked, but not very well, so when the meat rotted, people would pour a sauce on it, and eat it anyway.

Vegetables were also popular. People liked eating vegetables like onions, garlic, and herbs that they would pick from the castle garden. These were eaten with meats. During Lent, (Fridays, Wednesdays, and Saturdays) people would eat fish.

People used to have funny habits for serving food. For example, some people tried to make the animal look alive after cooking it! They would cover the meat with fur or feathers! Most people didn't have plates. They used flattened bread instead, called trenchers. When they did get their hands on a cup or plate (forks were almost unknown), they shared with someone else! Used trenchers were given to the poor to eat.

What kind of food you ate depended on how rich you were. Wealthy families ate many different kinds of foods, but poor families didn't get much. In fact, most poor families weren't even allowed to eat white bread! That was for the kings to eat. Poorer families had to eat things like dark breads, oatmeal, and meat (mostly pork). Wealthy families ate meats like rabbit and game (birds).

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Answer 5

As water was not safe, most people would have drunk Ale, Beer, or Mead. The lords and other wealthy personages could also drink Wines.

This choice of beverages had been true for thousands of years and only changed when modern sanitation was introduced in the late 1800s. (Saint Paul even advises in the book of 1st Timothy to "take a little wine for your stomach's sake and your often infirmities")

Answer 6

food

they ate rats