What did medieval peasants eat for lunch?

Answer 1

The main food staples were cereal grains such as wheat, rye, barely, and oats. Beans, peas, and other legumes were also an important food, as were dairy foods like butter and cheese. Because fresh milk is very perishable without refrigeration most milk was processed into products with a longer storage life. Almost all peasants would have had a large garden as well, with crops such as onions, carrots, cabbage, turnips, and garlic being common. Fruit such as apples and Pears would have been eaten in season or dried for later use.

Grains might be made into bread, or simply cooked as a porridge, or used to thicken soups and stews with other ingredients. Breakfast was usually a light, quick meal, perhaps just bread or other ready to eat foods on hand. The main meal of the day was a mid day dinner served between 10 A.M. and noon. Pottage, which is essentially thick soup made with legumes and whatever other vegetables were at hand was common. Meat was sporadically available in the peasant diet, as most peasants raised poultry and pigs, but amounts were limited, and there must have always been a tensions between eating animals for personal use and selling them to market for ready cash. Eggs were eaten. Fish was eaten as well, both caught wild, and stocked and farmed in ponds. A village miller might raise fish in his millpond for local consumption. A lighter supper would have been served in the evenings.

Gathered food had some importance. Tree nuts were gathered in the fall. Acorns were gathered as well. In good times acorns were for animal feed, but in times of crop shortages or severe economic hardship they would have ended up in the soup pot or the bread meal as well.

Ale was the most common drink in the middle ages. Barley was malted, a process in which it is sprouted, then roasted and ground, and then fermented in water. The resulting beverage had been cooked and was mildly alcoholic, making it less prone to disease issues, but was low enough in alcohol that it could be consumed in volume. Children drank ale as well as adults. Hops were not added to the brewing process until very late in the period, which resulted in true beer, which stores better. Medieval ale did not have a long shelf life and was consumed soon after brewing. Wine was also enjoyed, but was several times more expensive than ale, and thus would have been a less common drink for a village peasant.

Answer 2

Not generally. Meat was in short supply and typically reserved for wealthier individuals, such as the count or lord. Peasants typically ate things like bread, milk and cheese from livestock, and vegetables or other crops they grew. The only time a medieval peasant could expect to eat meat would be on a feast day -- for example, Christmas, when a boar or pig might be roasted.

2nd answer: I am going to disagree with this to a degree. Medieval peasants certainly would have eaten far less meat that modern people in first world counties, but they were farmers who raised animals for meat, milk, eggs, wool, etc. Every November animals larger than poultry would be evaluated for their ability to survive the winter, and animal populations would have been weighed against stores of fodder, and a certain number of animals would have been slaughtered. Meat could be preserved by drying, salting, or brine soaking. Sheep and chickens at the end of their productive lives would be killed and eaten, and in the case of the sheep also exploited for skin and bone, which had various craft uses. Dairy animals only produced milk if they had breed, and these animal's offspring were a potential source of meat as well. Pigs were raised by peasants, whose primary value was for their meat.

Again, total meat consumption was lower than modern standards, and lower than the standards of the rich of their own time, but they would still have had some. The above poster mentioned feast days. This is a good point, but keep in mind that feast days are legion in the Catholic calendar. While the peasants could not eat the platters of roasted meats that appear at the banquets of the rich, modest amounts would make their way into the family stew pot from time to time.

Answer 3

Medieval Peasants ate things like ale and pottage - a sort of vegetable stew and possibly some meat or fish if they were lucky.

Also if they had any leftover fruit, they would make a pie.

Answer 4

Medieval people ate many of the same sorts of meat we do today.

People ate chicken, duck, and goose, as we do. Poorer people were more likely to eat chicken. They also ate swans, but they did not have turkey, which was a New World bird.

People ate pork, ham, bacon, and pork sausage. Of mammal meats, these were the ones most likely to be eaten by most people.

Wealthy people ate more mutton and beef than poor. Members of the nobility at venison, and were often the only people legally allowed to do so.

There were laws in some places that made it illegal for people of the lower classes to eat steaks or roasts of beef. This was not a matter of wealth, but of nobility, so there were times when a wealthy merchant might not be allowed to eat roast beef, but a poor member of the nobility could.

Answer 5

From time to time they would have. The diet of the medieval peasant would have been much lower in meat than the modern western diet, but chickens were certainly kept by medieval Europeans. Eggs would have been a more common food than the actual chicken, but hens would be consumed when no longer producing eggs, and surplus roosters, sometimes raised as capons (a castrated rooster raised for meat) would have been available for consumption.

For a peasant family eating a whole chicken would have been a special meal, and only done occasionally. In addition, the food value of these animals would have always been weighed against the economic value of selling the bird in a nearby market town. Peasants were perpetually short on cash, and selling animals would have provided a much needed infusion of coins for the things that the peasants could not grow or make themselves.

Answer 6

Usually peasants ate bread and drank a very cheap form of alcohol, mostly Ale, or in Scotland, whisky.

Remaining oats from breakfast could also go into making porridge.

Answer 7

There were medieval monastic orders that did not allow consumption of meat, though they did allow the monks to eat fish. Vegetarians were known in ancient times and in the times since.

Answer 8

If they raised it or could afford to buy it, yes.