But most are devoted to recording the dishes of the medieval kitchen. Others focus on descriptions of grand feasts. Some are lists of recipes tucked into the back of guides to medical remedies or apothecaries instruction manuals.
There are over 50 hand written medieval cookery manuscripts still in existence today. Meat could be fresh salted or smoked and included chicken bacon pork beef mutton duck geese pigeons and wild birds such as pheasants and partridges. The one thing that differentiated the medieval rich from the poor more than any other in terms of food was meat.
If you were a medieval peasant your food and drink would have been pretty boring indeed. Food and drink for the lower orders. Hans splinter cc by nd 2 0 dining like a medieval peasant.
Medieval people would have been hungry most of the time and a feast was a time for celebration and gluttony. Feasts were a highlight of medieval life. Medieval cuisine includes foods eating habits and cooking methods of various european cultures during the middle ages which lasted from the fifth to the fifteenth century during this period diets and cooking changed less than they did in the early modern period that followed when those changes helped lay the foundations for modern european cuisine.
Most of the population including peasants based their meals on grains seasonal vegetables and occasionally meat this diet may not have been particularly varied but it did provide peasants with enough energy and nutrition. While the nobility enjoyed luxurious feasts peasants consumed only very basic meals. As in the modern day the food and drink of medieval england varied dramatically.
You needed a good supply of food and drink. In medieval england you if a villager provided for yourself and farming for your own food was a way of life dictated by the work that had to be carried out during the farming year. Food shops were found in towns but most people were peasants who lived in villages where these did not exist.
