Miscellaneous > The Sallyport

Medieval foods.

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Sir Edward:

--- Quote from: DouglasTheYounger on 2013-09-03, 01:12:23 ---Then there's pottage. The idea behind pottage is to basically take any scraps of edible substance you had at hand and boil the heck out of it.

--- End quote ---

Yep, let nothing go to waste. :)

What people often don't realize is that medieval people ate rather well, with a wide range of fruits, vegetables, and meats available. They knew how to make cheese, bread, and many other things. Class/wealth limitations were there, of course, but even peasants were able to have a fairly well rounded diet, though their meat options might have been more limited. Chickens and cows were worth a lot more alive, so they'd be eaten less frequently than we're used to today. And of course there are things they simply didn't have because of regional limitations. For instance, we have this picture in our heads (thanks, Hollywood) of medieval kings chewing on a turkey leg, however turkeys are North American. Not to mention, that would be extremely poor manners to eat that way. No one in the upper classes would deign to appear so gluttonous, and would instead only eat bite-sized pieces that they cut with a knife.

Sir Nate:
king henry the 8th introduced turkey legs to other courts didnt he?
and I love mike loades, me and my brother always joke about him turning everything medieval into a deadly weapon and fighting everyone around him.
He's awesome.
What kind of waters would be ok to drink?
Well water.
little streams

Sir Douglas:
Streams you'd have to watch out for. At their source they may or may not be drinkable, but once you get downstream and they've had a chance to flow a bit, they pick up all kinds of nasty stuff from the stream bed, plus whatever falls into them. If a bear poos in the woods and all that....
Rainwater collected in a cistern would have been a safer choice.

Sir Edward:

In Europe, most sources of water were polluted by humans, so it was hard to find a sufficiently clean source, unless it was an underground spring (or cistern of rain water, as Sir Doug mentioned). Making beer/ale was the primary way of making water safe to drink (though the alcohol content was a lot less than in modern beer). Frequently wine and water would be mixed, since it would both stretch out the wine supply, and disinfect the water.

The dangers of drinking plain water were so well known that when Europeans first landed in the Americas, they didn't want to risk drinking the local water, and continued to rely on alcohol for quite a while.

Sir Nate:
drinking out of the river thames would be a death sentence.lol.

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