What did peasants eat in medieval times?

Warriors have to be at peak fitness to do their job properly whatever the period of history were talking about this is a modern-day British Army 24-hour ration pack scientifically designed to keep the fighting person fit when they're in the field how does it compare to what might have been eaten by a medieval knight [Music] we have been trudging through the mud and we've ended up it's a modest in and we are going to have a look at what might be called peasant food I have with me a fantastic historian called Chris who knows all about sort of food of the period we've got what looks quite simple sort of set of things here do you want to sort of go through them and explain it looks like bread absolutely yes bread was actually a distinguisher of status in the Middle Ages this is a lower-end bread it's made with barley flour and with rye it's it's a brown coloured which sort of in our era sort of is push bread absolutely it's entirely the opposite way around in the Middle Ages the brownie or breads of the poorer you were right interesting that's a rather lovely I'd like that I probably paid more in the supermarket but back then back then this is the food of the peasant because there's more efforts that goes into producing white flour so it's just brown flour that's been saved and all the goodness taken out of it okay so bread and this we have ale in the cup fantastic so you could drink you could drink booze at you know meals or yes most people drank beer there is a popular misconception that nobody drank water in the Middle Ages this is not actually true if you had a good source of water you would drink water right right if you didn't you would drink beer and you might start drinking beer from from the age of about five is it similar to beer we had today or did it vary hugely presumably it was very it was very regional it would depend on the quality of your barley and your hops I also noticed you had fish there and that looks like salmon to me chunky steaks our salad it's a sign indeed salmon yes salmon in the Middle Ages was peasant food because it was freely available in rivers so yet again a kind of reversal of what we expect so salmon today is a very expensive those probably quite expensive chunks of salmon and we have brown bread we have booze beer and we've got salmon so that's actually quite a seems like quite a hearty hearty meal it's yes and you've got so a little bit of greenery in think yes yeah what were you going to do with it you're going to do this okay this is this is your hard work so you're gonna have to earn your supper this is actually sorrel that I pick from my garden yesterday and you're going to grind it up there's some salt in there and you're going to grind it yes and then we're going to strain it through this piece of linen cloth and that is sorrel sauce sorrel sauce and absolutely genuine medieval recipe you had to work for your food in medieval times we've gone back to basic ingredients you know fish from the river bread a lot more effort gone into making the bread and you've got me pounding vegetables from the garden I also have cooking away on the fire a pease pottage pottage is anything that's cooked in a pot right so so we're really describing what you're doing yeah frying so it's potting it and peas as in peace please garden peas with swings with anything wait with some stock and some herbs basically medieval mushy peas right fantastic and you're cooking on it's not an open fire as such it's cold isn't it it's really flames no it's charcoal one of the things that you don't want to be doing even if you're cooking over wood is having a blazing fire because you haven't got the heat so again let me see on film and TV receiver already fired a pot over if it's in fact probably wrong when you burn yourself and it's not very hot upstate seems to be cooking very efficiently actually it is remarkably quick yeah it's more like using an auger right you've got your hot um and then you'll cool or other and then you move things about depending on what you want to do with them so arguably all those people with nice country houses with augers are effects [Laughter] bread which is peasant bread so sometimes we get this impression from film and TV that peasants are sort of eating slop and mud and of course they're very physical lives so it must have actually consumed the reasonable number of calories and and good food was not kind of a complete stranger to absolutely the staples for the average peasant working field would have been Red Baron and bacon bread beer and baby most people reared a pig behind their house right which pigs eat a lot of ways yes the pig would have been slaughtered at the beginning of the winter possibly didn't keep it over the winter you just ride because you don't then you have to feed it over the winter right you slaughter it and salty and smoke a little bits of it to make the bacon right most medieval peasant how's this you probably have a hook hanging above the fireplace which is where you'd smoke your bacon that's family so didn't waste even the smoke no that was used absolutely they didn't waste anything for Pig either please make they'd use the blood to make things like black puddings and they do the intestines a sausage casing looks so nothing would have been wasted wonderful probably from the bread as the French right so that would be effective your plate is fantastic we haven't done the sauce what do you want to do just put that in there if you yes we put it in there and then you need to squeeze this over some of the salmon not very much so I don't think it's going to make a lot of sense you know it's so all sort of and this just gets queasy there's actually quite a lot coming out it's much more than I thought it would be yes me too so this is experimental archaeology that's wonderful and we have these pottage Hey she pays you could serve this up in a in a really expensive restaurant in London relatively quickly we've prepared what actually looks like a superb and very very tasty meal we've got salmon we got pease pottage we've got bread we've got beer a lot of people think that peasants would have eaten grey boring food well I suppose in famines and have eaten whatever they had but broadly speaking this is the sort of thing that you would have eaten and quite frankly I'm very impressed [Music] it's delicious absolutely delicious in fact I'm more impressed now because it's so simple the sorrel has worked incredibly well with the fish the pease pottage is absolutely lovely obviously this a lot of this food goes into working we're going to be working in the fields doing a lot more physical things shifting and carrying stuff walking everywhere and this is very warming quite hearty when imagine you could do it the mornings work with this well this would actually be your midday meal eating in the Middle Ages was we would have breakfast which would be bread and ale then you would stop work in the middle of the day and have the main meal of the day which is quite important at this time of year because by the time you come in in the evening it's dark right and again you probably have something like bread and cheese or present some ham never have a cold meal so you eat your main meal in the middle of the day when you can see what you're eating right and and then you've got there you've done half a day's work yes fill yourself up filler that petrol tank filled with with lovely food rest a little bit then go back out and do what you're doing because they live very external life well I have to say if nothing else about peasant food it's very very tasty and very very filling it's absolutely delightful while I'm finishing this absolutely lovely peasant food don't forget to Like and subscribe and use the notification button as well and follow us so that you can see what we're going to be preparing next week [Music]

Channel: Modern History TV

Views: 5,986,598

Keywords: history documentary, jason kingsley, medieval, middle ages, knight, food, salmon, cooking, recipe, peasant, pub, inn, rations

Id: WeVcey0Ng-w

Length: 8min 44sec (524 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 02 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/[deleted]]

Can't have your peasants starving to death, it's short sighted as you lose your own food and you lose their labour.

[u/Spoonfeedme]

They ate well until they didn't. One year of drought could be overcome. Two and life would start to get desperate.

[u/KypAstar]

Denethor was probably disappointed there were no cherry tomatoes and turkey leg.

[u/LovableContrarian]

"Peasants ate better than you think they did in Medieval times"

I hate titles like this. Don't presume to know my understanding of medieval peasants' eating habits, OP. You bitch.

[u/Molotov56]

The peasants also enjoyed the jousting tournament at Medieval Times

[u/mr_loose_cannon]

"You literally got me pounding everything in the garden"

He almost got away with that.

[u/UTDE]

Weird seeing the Steward of Gondor doing cooking videos

[u/Dunder_Chingis]

Mmmmmmm nah, I already decided a long time ago that medieval times only fat barons and kings had food and peasants all had to wear burlap potato sacks for clothes.

[u/Skabonious]

This is real rich coming from the king of Gondor