What Was the Diet of a Medieval Peasant?
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I was watching that video earlier while testing out the medieval cooking pot I just made:
The kings propped up religion, religion kept the peons afraid of the king and the king propped up religion by force of arms. What kind of god condones this?
Have a good look, this is our future as well.
Have a good look, this is our future as well.
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Sounds like God didn't condone this, but the kings did.
Yep, in our future
Yep, in our future
There y'all go again with the negative vibes, lol... for all you know, those medieval peasants ate poached venison every night, AYE? Maybe an occasional poached bovine for some FILET MIGNON, BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! 
P.S. Aerindel, that is one GOOD-LOOKING POT, and I say that as an experienced field cook, lol...
P.S. Aerindel, that is one GOOD-LOOKING POT, and I say that as an experienced field cook, lol...
There y'all go again with the negative vibes, lol... for all you know, those medieval peasants ate poached venison every night, AYE? Maybe an occasional poached bovine for some FILET MIGNON, BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!
P.S. Aerindel, that is one GOOD-LOOKING POT, and I say that as an experienced field cook, lol...
Thanks. I see know why a family may have only owned ONE pot, if they where lucky in period. For 'just' being a pot, it was a ridiculous amount of work, and that was with modern advantages.
But yeah, if you can't tell, medieval cooking is a big hobby of mine, although usually I go less for peasant, food, and more for noble food. I can whip up a Lombardy Custard to die for.
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Yep - I can see how much work that was.
I don't go in for too much for stocking barter items - but one thing I have got plenty of is excess cast iron, stainless and spun steel dutch ovens, pots and pans.
I assess that they would be valuable items if people were forced to go back to cooking over open fire for most of their meals.
What I find really interesting about this subject is that much of what we consider 'poor people survival food' like beans, corn, potatoes, they didn't have at all, and rice, while available, was relatively expensive.
For another head scratcher, medeivally, almond milk was more popular than cows milk, but butter and cheese where common.
Ferrets a more popular pet than cats.
Lots of eggs used, but almost no eating of chicken meat (makes sense if you think about how different meat chicken breeds and breeding are than layers)
Salt used at the table, but almost never as an ingredient in cooking. (Salt was too valuable to cook with, each person was expected to provide their own salt)
Freshwater fish, especially eels....highly prized....salt water fish, cheap and plentiful but geographically limited.
For another head scratcher, medeivally, almond milk was more popular than cows milk, but butter and cheese where common.
Ferrets a more popular pet than cats.
Lots of eggs used, but almost no eating of chicken meat (makes sense if you think about how different meat chicken breeds and breeding are than layers)
Salt used at the table, but almost never as an ingredient in cooking. (Salt was too valuable to cook with, each person was expected to provide their own salt)
Freshwater fish, especially eels....highly prized....salt water fish, cheap and plentiful but geographically limited.
its a wonder any population made it through that at all...lol
one thing and i dont have the year. but growing potatoes was outlawed by the catholic church. the king of france went against orders and had a bunch of potatoes brought in and planted. that fall there was huge crop failures of grains and starvation began. king of france had a nice crop of taters and saved many people in europe because of it. it was end of potato ban .it was believed because it grew underground it was food of the devil.
one thing and i dont have the year. but growing potatoes was outlawed by the catholic church. the king of france went against orders and had a bunch of potatoes brought in and planted. that fall there was huge crop failures of grains and starvation began. king of france had a nice crop of taters and saved many people in europe because of it. it was end of potato ban .it was believed because it grew underground it was food of the devil.
Since we are on the subject, this is one of my favorite youtube cooking channels:
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Hi Aerindal, haven't seen you post in a while....nice pot
my ancestors were German peasants and even much later than middle ages they had a very basic diet. Mostly bread, potatoes, dairy products and vegetables with some pork sausage thrown in.
my ancestors were German peasants and even much later than middle ages they had a very basic diet. Mostly bread, potatoes, dairy products and vegetables with some pork sausage thrown in.
The kind that gave us free will. Yup, free will to screw ourselves over. I'm sometimes amazed that the human race has survived as long as it has.
From what I have gathered, my coastal Norse ancestors ate a diet that was mostly unchanged from medieval times, even up to the mid 1800s when they left for North America.
Fish, pigs, goats, and sheep for meat. Bovines were there, but from what I understand the commoners didn't really have them.
Quite a lot of berries when they could get them.
Rice was a staple, but I don't think they actually grew their own. They had some wheat. Potatoes came later, but they were huge in their diet in the 1800s. Norwegians make everything out of potatoes...
Fish, pigs, goats, and sheep for meat. Bovines were there, but from what I understand the commoners didn't really have them.
Quite a lot of berries when they could get them.
Rice was a staple, but I don't think they actually grew their own. They had some wheat. Potatoes came later, but they were huge in their diet in the 1800s. Norwegians make everything out of potatoes...
Why is it, at any given time, the majority of humanity are knuckle dragging sheep? Some time back in our genetic history, we must have interbred with something extremely stupid!
All of us on this forum could have taken over England.
But then again, we'd be using black powder hand grenades and crossbows with scopes and wearing hardened leather body armor laminated with fish head glue and bone strips that weighed a third of the steel stuff.
I think you would be surprised just how much leather armor actually weighs and how poorly it preforms compared to steel. Cloth armor is actually a lot better than leather if your into non-metal armor. As for bone....armor is the stuff you wear to protect bone from weapons, not the other way around.
As for taking over medieval england....ehhh....who wants it? If we where transported back in time, the best thing we could do is use our knowledge of geopgraphy....to take over America.
So that's why when people are taken advantage of it's call shearing.
Instead of taking over England, my family was still in Germania trying to keep those pesky Romans out.
Mine was in Scotland....getting their freedom back from England...and/or losing it, depending on exactly what time we are talking here.
Good idea! Show the natives the concept of the compound bow! Of course, we could just give the Vikings the secret of gunpowder....hehehehhh.
I got to disagree on the armor, laminated boiled leather armor would stop an arrow easily, It might not be as durable however.
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But could it penetrate Kevlar? Several of us know how to make it.
In fact, I helped make one of of its components at a carpet mill of all places!
In fact, I helped make one of of its components at a carpet mill of all places!
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Potatoes went over to Europe, after America was first explored. France seemed to be the first country in Europe to have potatoes. I did read that Bohemia (Czechia) got potatoes around 1780.
Rice? When did Europe first get rice?
One of the staple foods was peas, and may have been much more common than beans. Peas porridge hot, peas porridge cold, peas porridge in the pot, nine days old.
Indeed. But the medieval period is generally considered between 1000 AD and 1600 so we are talking well too late for our 'medieval ancestors.
Europe has had rice since Roman times but it was a more expensive grain and didn't grow in northern europe, it would have been an import from arabia, southern Spain, France and Italy
Peas where VERY important as they didn't have most varieties beans at all until late 1500s, Like potatoes, beans where an import from America
Under very ideal conditions, at close range, depending on the armor. But generally speaking, plate armor was impenetrable to all but the heaviest axes, hammers and crossbows. Arrows going through plate is in a similar realm as katanas cutting through machine gun barrels....more national pride than reality.
Easily. An arrow from a high power bow can actually easily penetrate SANDBAGS that will stop .308 rifle rounds. Its all in the sectional density. Kevlar is actually very poor armor against bladed weapons.
Well, again, what arrow? what range? what bow?
I will say this, my 285lb medieval crossbow has little trouble going through a couple layers of boiled leather, but barely scratches 16 gauge mild steel even at point blank range, and the boiled lamellar armor I've handled is actually HEAVIER than a steel breastplate
Leather armor was CHEAP, (compared to metal) which was a virtue in itself, but as amor, it was far short of maile, plate, etc.
How much leather armor was actually used is actually highly debated, being leather, there is of course, there are no surviving examples of leather armor as you would expect, but there is also very little evidence of it existing at all. In the thousands of examples of armor pieces and paintings of armor...there isn't even any depictions that we know for sure where leather armor and not cloth, painted metal or simply leather used to hold together metal plates. Given its poor performance against most weapons and near complete lack of archeological evidence, it may in fact, be mythical.
I don't have a video of my crossbow vs leather, but I do have one of it punching right through 1/2 plywood. (And this would have been considered a light crossbow for the time)
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It is my understanding that leather was used over padded cloth, and often studded with rings that looked much like large washers. This gave it a decent resistance to cutting weapons, like a slashing sword for example, but it fared poorly against stabbing attacks, much like chainmail.
Ring armor is actually mythical, at least in Europe (they could have used something like that in Asia, I know India had a lot of strange armor styles)
Leather could have been used that way, but again, there are no paintings of it, and of course, no surviving examples. If it existed, it must have been very rare to leave no evidence behind at all, (compared to cloth armor, mail, plate armor etc, of which there are thousands of depictions.
I don't not find this surprising though, as from my own tests, it's easier to cut leather, than cloth. I really have fallen in the school of thought that leather armor was invented as a D&D class, and never was an actual historical practice.
One thing that I always find mind boggling...
Its often said that we know more about the moon, than we do about the ocean.
What you don't hear, is that we know more about the moon, than we do about our own ancestors more than about 500 years ago.
Its amazing how many places we have no idea how they did basic day to day things or made common items.
Even when if have a surviving item, we know almost nothing about what it was actually like to make it.
Its crazy to think there where millions of people, living lives just as real as ours, with hopes, dreams, taxes, favorite foods, etc...living their lives....and we don't really know what their day to day life was actually like.
Many of the things we 'know for sure' have just ONE example we have found. Take something like viking iron cooking pots. We have two.....two examples of something for an entire culture...imagine what future historians would think if in a thousand years, the only thing they knew about your kitchen, was the TWO random items that survived from it.
Imagine someone in the 27th century trying to re-enact the battle of Fallujah, based on one set of random body armor that was dug up? (And it turns out that was actually worn by an embedded british reporter)
That is what its like trying to figure out medieval things right now.
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a) Seconding Sonya: Nice to have you 'back'.
b) IMO, it's Also a salient Point to Show (Op-Sec preservingly, of course...
) that when you say "my crossbow" - You Mean the One you HANDCRAFTED, and Not something Purchased from 'Ten-Point' or Barnett or whomever. That, Imo, makes your Vid-clip / Point That-much More impressive and, uh.. 'pointed'. ..I mean, I've Seen the Beast (posted elsewhere, but I shall not mention Where - not my Place to say..) and I testify that it is 100% Grade A Certified, Bonified BADASS 'DIY', ya'll.
Great to See that it 'Can be Done', without being 'Purchased'. Very Inspiring Piece. 
Just my .02
jd
Yes, its one of the ones I built:
^ I would Love to see a 'How it THEY (didn't Know there were TWINS!! ) were DIY'd Thread on those, Man.. Just sayin. Maybe over some 'Snowed-in Weekend' the time could be found? 
.02
jd
) were DIY'd Thread on those, Man.. Just sayin. Maybe over some 'Snowed-in Weekend' the time could be found? .02
jd
Bullet resistant and stab resistant are two different vests, unless you have a plate.
Not sure what they'd think about a pizza cutter and an ice cream scoop...
Sadly, much of what was used was organic in nature and rarely survived the times and decay.
It's like trying to put a puzzle together with 80% of the pieces missing and no box.
Many assumptions are made. Logical assumptions perhaps, but assumptions none the less.
