SC - Fw: [Mid] Last Post : Knowne Worlde Potters Meeting

[Decker, Terry D.]

>   I am getting a handle on how such things were used, their special needs
> (since they are not metal) during cooking and such, What i need to learn
> now is what was cooked in them. More specifically, I want to know what
> the common man regularly ate in the 13th to 14th century in England. some
> of my pottery books make brief referance to the analysis of matter found
> within pottery vessels, and seem to suggest a relatively high calory
> diet, (around 1800 calories a day, or so they say) but this tells me
> nothing of just what was eaten.
> 
>    All this leads to helping me create as Period an experience as
> possible. Since English potters were not of noble birth, I am really not
> looking to or expecting elaborate food..or is this wrong?
> 
>  
> Hroar
> 
> 
As far as I can tell, the primary food of the Middle Ages was grain; barley,
rye and wheat, and to a lesser extent oats and rice.  A couple of studies I
quoted previously on this list suggest that the average consumption was 2
pounds of bread and 1 gallon of beer a day. 

Christine de Pisan (1420) describes the fare of the laborer's wife as "black
bread, milk and water."

According to Chaucer (I believe), "poor folk in cottages, charged with
children and the chief lord's rent:  that they with spinning may spare,
spend they it in house-hire, both in milk and in meal, to make therewith
pap, to glut therewith their children that cry after food.  Also themselves
suffer much hunger....  There is bread and penny-ale taken for a pittance
(luxury); cold flesh and cold fish is to them as baked venison; on Fridays
and fastingdays, a farthing's (1/4 penny) worth of mussels were a feast for
such folk..."

A day labor for the monks at Glastonbury in the 12th Century received a
daily loaf and two gallons of beer with a weekly penny to pay for all other
food stuffs.  Servants of the Abbey received a daily ration from the monk's
kitchen in lieu of the penny.

Harvest carters received 1 loaf of second rate bread (wastel) and beer per
day at Ramsey.  On the first day, the harvesters received "bread, beer,
pottage (of peas or beans), flesh and cheese, and three loaves for every two
men...of wheat and rye, with more wheat than rye".  On the second day,
"bread, pottage, water, herrings and cheese."  The accounts show roughly the
same amounts each day alternating between flesh and fish days.

You also need to consider the Black Death.  Real wages increased about
five-fold after the plague and general wealth increased as estates were
settled.  Between mid-14th Century and the beginning of the 17th Century,
real income was almost 50 percent higher than between the late 17th Century
and the middle of the 21st Century.  Except for periods of famine and war,
many places in Europe had a wide variety of meat, fish, and vegetables
available and the money to enjoy them.  

England, with its ocean moat and growing fleet, fared well so that by 1470,
Sir John Fortesque said of the general population, "They eat plentifully of
all kinds of flesh and fish: they wear fine woolen cloth in all their
apparel."  At the same time, parts of France still suffering the effects of
the Hundred Years War were living on gruel.

In the late 14th Century, the poet John Gower commented upon the cost of
labor after the plague, "Labourers of olden time were not want to eat
wheaten bread; their bread was of either corn (probably barley) or of beans,
and their drink was of the spring.  Then cheese and milk were a feast to
them; rarely they had other feast than this."

The ideal laborer of Piers Plowman would eat yesterday's cabbage with
penny-ale and a piece of bacon, but instead required, "fresh flesh or fish,
fried or y-baken," served hot from the kitchen.  When food was scarce, the
laborer made do with, "two green cheeses, a few curds and cream, and a cake
of oats, and bread for my bairns of beans and of pease."  And the commonly
available leeks, onions, parsley and cherries.

When meat was available for the laborer, it would likely be chicken, goose,
pork, bacon or herring.

A potter would be a townsman and a skilled laborer and would likely have
better food.  The owner of the pottery would probably eat as well as most
nobles.  I would recommend looking at Menagier (even though he's French) for
recipes suitable for a wealthy townsman.  I would also recommend reading C.
Anne Wilson's Food and Drink in Britian.

Bear



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