What did peasants eat? How do you eat like a medieval peasant? Why did peasants have to worry so much about filling and healthy foods?
Peasants ate food they grew, caught, processed, and cooked themselves. They ate various grains all year long and vegetables were also common in summer. Dairy was a great source of protein and could become cheese. The women raised small animals, including birds (see my post on peasant women here), so they had eggs, too. Pigs were decently cheap to produce since they could fend for themselves. Peasants couldn’t hunt deer or wild boar lest they get in trouble and lose a limb or their life, but they could sometimes hunt rabbits or other small game. The diets of rich and poor alike included fish. Peasants couldn’t usually afford dessert. They just wanted to survive.
What foods could peasants afford? How do you make a meal so you can eat like a medieval peasant?
How to Eat Like a Medieval Peasant: Main Dish
Because peasants were poor, they didn’t have the luxury of fresh meat or multiple dishes. They were content with a few filling, hearty, cheap foods as long as they didn’t starve.
Peasant foods had to be as high in caloric value for their price as possible, because they often burned through thousands of calories a day working. They had to hope they would have enough to eat to make up for all those lost calories, because if they didn’t eat enough, they starved to death.
Things like beans, barley, and cabbage were cheap sources of food; cabbage is still a poor persons food. One main dish that almost, if not all, peasants ate was pottage. Pottage was a stew made with grains, vegetables, and whatever else they could get, while other bean dishes were also popular.
Pottage
What was pottage? Pottage was a stew of grains, vegetables, and whatever the peasants could afford or gather. It could have fruits in it as well because medieval people distrusted raw fruits. They thought that raw fruits and vegetables would make them sick!
Herbs from their gardens, such as sage and rosemary, went in to flavor their dinner. Pottage was kept in a pot over a fire while ingredients were added throughout the day or sometimes the whole week. The well-known nursery rhyme ‘Pease Porridge Hot’ came from medieval pottage.
Pease porridge hot, pease porridge cold,
The Nursery Rhyme, Pease Porridge Hot
Pease porridge in the pot, nine days old.
Some like it hot, some like it cold,
Some like it in the pot, nine days old.
Therefore, to eat like a medieval peasant, you might want to make some pottage. However, it might not taste very good.
How to make Pottage
Ingredients:
- Liquid, about half the amount of pottage you want to make. I used a total of 5 quarts water and leftover whey from cheese-making.
- Vegetables, I used 7 carrots, 7 parsnips, 1 cabbage, half a thing of mushrooms, and 2 onions.
- Grains and beans, I used a little more than a cup of Great Northern Beans and enough oatmeal to thicken it.
- Salt to taste
- Herbs, I used rubbed Sage and crushed Rosemary
- Opt. chicken broth (I didn’t use any, but it would have been nice)
- Cut your vegetables and prepare the beans.
- Add them to the liquid with the herbs, salt, and chicken broth if you’re using it.
- Add some oatmeal and boil until thickened to taste. Continue adding oatmeal, salt, and herbs if needed.
Be careful not to make too much. I made that mistake and most of it is frozen, potentially until we get chickens. Please understand: Not all people will eat this. My mom will eat most things, but she could not stand it. Having oatmeal with vegetables grossed her out. My brothers and dad didn’t like it very much either. You can leave out the oatmeal if you like, but you’ll need to add thickener like other grains, flour and water, or more beans.
Bean Dish
Medieval people had Fava beans, which were quite a bit like Lima Beans, while some of the beans we use today were from the new world, and therefore, not medieval. Peasants would gladly eat them as they were cheap, while the rich didn’t like them very much.
Ingredients:
- 6 cups of Beans. I used Great Northern.
- 2 minced onions
- Butter
- Chicken Broth to taste
- Prepare the beans then mash them up. Add chicken broth until you have the desired taste and consistency.
- Caramelize the onions in the butter.
- Mix the onions into the beans.
Please check out the video from Tasting History here. I adapted the recipe to suit me, but he has the original recipe I used. I actually enjoyed this recipe a lot more than pottage, and my family agreed. Everyone ate it, though one brother was not super happy about it.
Vegetables and Gardens
While the rich people were busy looking down on vegetables as more of peasant food, the peasants were eating them with relish. Peasants could grow many vegetables in their gardens, and they sure ate them. Every morsel of food counted, especially in the dirt-poor, starving families.
Gardens could include cabbage, parsnips, onions, and other common vegetables, but potatoes and tomatoes were not available (tomatoes and potatoes didn’t come to Europe until the 16th century). They were new-world vegetables. Gardens also had herbs for seasoning and medicine (see my post on medicine in the Middle Ages here.) Peasants added vegetables to their pottage.
How to Eat Like a Medieval Peasant: Bread
Bread was one of the staple foods for poor and rich people alike, but the difference came in the quality of the flour and the grain the flour came from. While the rich could afford wheat bread ground much finer (see my post on the cuisine of rich people here), the poor ate other grains, and their flour could be really coarse.
They would use barley, rye, and oats a lot, partly because these were some of their main crops anyway. In times of famine and starvation, things like peas, beans, acorns, and anything else they could find went into the bread.
Whole grains went into bread, not white flour. The bread was dark and pretty coarse. Because of the whole grains, bread was filling and nutritious. They also made pancakes with their flour.
How to Eat like a Medieval Peasant: Cheese and Milk
Who doesn’t like cheese? There are a few people, but most enjoy cheese. Peasants in the Middle Ages also made cheese. They didn’t have much, if any, cheddar or brie cheese, but they did have green cheeses. Green cheeses didn’t have to age and tasted good.
Cottage cheese is a green cheese, and medieval peasants made a precursor to cottage cheese. But where did medieval people get the milk? Cows weren’t too common among the poor because they needed a lot of food, and people could not afford to pay for the food for a cow. They were keeping their children fed.
Goats and sheep, however, didn’t cost as much to feed. The women and their daughters tended to the animals (see my post about poor women here.) They had to milk their goats and a cow if they were fortunate enough to have one; they also had to milk their sheep. We don’t usually think of sheep as a good source of milk, but they were resourceful.
How to Make Green Cheese
Ingredients:
- 1/2 gallon of whole milk
- 1 tsp salt
- 1/6 cup of lemon juice
- 1/8 cup or more of white vinegar
- First, combine lemon juice and vinegar, set aside.
- Then, add salt to the milk and heat to 185º Fahrenheit.
- After that, stir in the acids and sit for 10 minutes.
- If the curds don’t separate add more vinegar and lightly stir it in. Let it sit for a few more minutes. Repeat if necessary; mine took a while but it ended up tasting good.
- Pour the cheese through a cheesecloth. Leave it for a little while until the whey has mostly drained away.
- Mix the remaining whey into the cheese and refrigerate for 2 hours.
- Opt. Save the drained whey for pottage.
Check out Max Miller’s original recipe and instructions here. My recipe is half of his.
Eating Like a Medieval Peasant: Eggs, Meat, and Fish
If meat was not very common, then how did peasants get protein? Well, they ate eggs. They still had an extensive fraction of the year where they couldn’t eat eggs or meat (during lent, fasting days, advent, sometimes ordinary days in the week were deemed “fasting days”, etc.). However, they could still eat fish. Women had the job of raising birds and collecting eggs.
They also cooked with them. Hunting big game was off-limits to the poor. Peasants didn’t own their own land. The forests belonged to the king and nobles and they had the right to bestow hunting rights and those never went to peasants. Poaching was against the law like it is now. However, their punishments were way more severe. If they were caught poaching, they could lose something as small as an eye or a hand, or they could also lose their life. In desperate situations, people still tried to poach.
Another source of protein was fish. Fishing was also a common pastime (see my post on hobbies and pastimes here.) People could eat fish on fasting days, along with other days. There were laws about fishing, too, like whales, porpoises, and dolphins were only for the king. Fishing was still a fair way to get your protein in without losing an appendage or inciting the Church’s anger.
Peasants had to be smart about what they ate; they ate cheap foods with high caloric value. Did you try any of the recipes? Did you like them? Let me know in the comments!
To Read More…
(and check out my sources…)
Pottage…
Medieval Pottage Stew – Brand New Vegan
Peasant Diet…
Medieval Food! Who else is hungry?
Middle Ages Food: What Did They Really Eat?
Pease Porridge Hot…
Pease Porridge Hot – Nursery Rhymes
Tasting History Videos I used for research and recipes…
What Did Medieval Peasants Eat?
These books are great research resources…
- Life in a Medieval Castle by Joseph and Frances Gies
- Life in a Medieval Village by Joseph and Frances Gies
- Life in a Medieval City by Joseph and Frances Gies
Here are a few related posts of mine…
Cuisine of Wealthy People in the Middle Ages
Life of Peasant Women in Medieval Times
The Life of Poor Men in the Middle Ages
Here are others you might enjoy…
Heraldry in the Middle Ages for Modern People
Valentine’s Day and Courtly Love in the Middle Ages
Love and Powerful Couples in the Middle Ages
What Happened During Easter in the Middle Ages?
Did People Celebrate Birthdays in the Middle Ages?
Did People Have Holidays in the Middle Ages?
What Was Christmas Like in the Middle Ages?
And last, but not least, my homepage…
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