What Did People Eat in the Early Middle Ages?

The diet of the early Middle Ages was based on bread or porridge, supplemented by pottage of peas, beans, and vegetables, with cheese, eggs, fish, and small amounts of meat; ale, cider, or wine was the common drink. Food varied by region, by season, by social class, and by the demands of the Church’s calendar. The peasant’s diet was narrow, monotonous, and heavily dependent on grain; the noble’s diet was richer in meat, fish, and the luxury goods that came from distant markets; the monk’s diet was regulated by the Rule and shaped by the rhythm of fasting and feast. Famine was a constant threat, especially in the sixth and seventh centuries, and the great volcanic winter of 536-550 produced harvest failures from the Atlantic to China. By the tenth and eleventh centuries, the diet was becoming more varied, and the peasant’s access to meat, fish, and dairy was slowly improving.

For the agricultural regime that produced the food, see the Agriculture and Rural Life. For the people who produced it, see the Who Were the Peasantry?. For the institutions that shaped monastic diet, see the Monasticism and the Benedictine Rule.

The basic diet

The foundation of the early medieval diet was grain. The most common bread grains were wheat, rye, barley, and oats, with wheat the prestige grain of the rich, and rye, barley, and oats the staple of the poor. The famous dark bread of the medieval peasant was made from rye or barley, often mixed with peas or beans to stretch the flour. The white wheaten bread of the noble and the monk was a luxury. The very finest bread, the panis similagineus made from bolted flour, was reserved for the greatest feasts and for the most important guests.

The other main form of grain consumption was porridge or pottage. Pottage, a thick stew of grain, vegetables, and (sometimes) meat or fish, was the daily food of the peasant and the poor. It was cooked in a large pot over the fire, served in a wooden bowl, and eaten with a spoon or with a piece of bread. The pottage of the period contained what was available: oats, barley, or rye, mixed with peas, beans, cabbage, leeks, onions, garlic, and herbs, and (when it could be afforded) a little meat or dried fish.

The most common vegetables were peas, beans, cabbages, onions, leeks, garlic, turnips, and (in more favored regions) carrots and parsnips. The root crops and the hardy brassicas could be stored through the winter, and they were an essential part of the cold-weather diet. The cabbage, in particular, was an important source of nourishment through the lean months. The medieval garden also produced herbs for cooking and medicine: parsley, sage, rosemary, thyme, mint, savory, marjoram, and (later) the spices imported from the East.

Fruit was available, but it was less central to the diet than it would become in the later Middle Ages. Apples, pears, plums, and cherries were grown in the orchards of the village and the manor; berries and nuts were gathered from the wild. Figs, dates, and the citrus fruits of the Mediterranean were luxuries, available only to the rich. Honey was the chief sweetener, used in small quantities to flavor the bread, the pottage, and (most importantly) the mead and the honeyed ale of the period.

Meat, fish, and dairy

Meat was eaten, but in much smaller quantities than in the modern diet. The peasant’s meat was largely pork, supplemented by bacon, salted pork, and the occasional chicken or goose. Cattle were kept primarily for their milk and for draft work, and they were slaughtered only when they were no longer productive. Sheep were kept primarily for their wool, although the older animals were eventually slaughtered for meat. The result was that the peasant’s meat was largely the meat of older animals, prepared in ways that made it palatable: salted, smoked, dried, or cooked slowly in the pottage.

Fish was an important source of protein, especially for the many Christians who observed the fasts of the liturgical year. The most common fish were the freshwater fish of the rivers, the lakes, and the ponds: carp, pike, perch, eel, trout, and salmon. Sea fish were eaten in coastal regions. The herring, in particular, was a staple of the diet of the northern peoples, and the herring fisheries of the Baltic and the North Sea were a major industry. The dried and salted cod of the Norse fisheries was an important export.

Dairy was an essential part of the diet. Milk, butter, and cheese were produced on every farm and in every village. Butter was the chief cooking fat, used in everything from the pottage to the pastry. Cheese was produced in many varieties, from the soft fresh cheese of the peasant household to the hard aged cheese of the monasteries. Whey, the byproduct of cheese-making, was a common drink and a useful addition to the pottage. Eggs were eaten in large quantities, both in the pottage and as a stand-alone dish.

Drink

The common drink of the early Middle Ages was ale, made from barley. The ale of the period was quite different from the modern beverage: it was lightly hopped (hops were not widely used until the central Middle Ages), it was often flavored with herbs and honey, and it was drunk in large quantities because it was safer than the water. The ordinary ale of the peasant was a thin, weak beverage, drunk at every meal. The strong ale, the cervisia of the period, was a more potent drink, served at feasts and at the gatherings of the village.

Cider, made from apples, was common in the northern and western regions. Wine, made from grapes, was the drink of the Mediterranean and of the great monasteries, but it was also imported into the north in significant quantities. The wine trade of the Carolingian period was a major industry, and the great monasteries of the period had extensive vineyards. Beer, made from wheat, was a more southern and a more prestigious drink. The “small beer” of the central and later Middle Ages, a thin beverage drunk by everyone, was not yet a feature of the period.

The diet of the rich

The noble’s diet was substantially richer than the peasant’s, and it included a number of items that the peasant rarely or never ate. Venison, the meat of the deer, was a noble prerogative, jealously protected by the forest laws. The great hall of a Carolingian royal palace or an Anglo-Saxon noble’s estate would have a wide range of meats, prepared in elaborate ways: roasted, baked, boiled, salted, smoked, spiced. The luxury goods of the trade - spices from the East, sugar from the Islamic world, citrus fruits, dried fruits, fine wines - were also part of the rich man’s diet. The pantry of a great monastic house or a royal palace in the tenth century might contain cinnamon, pepper, ginger, cloves, and other spices, used in small quantities to flavor the meat and the fish. For the trade in these goods, see the Towns, Trade, and Currency.

Famine and feast

Famine was a constant threat. The great volcanic winter of 536-550, when a major eruption produced a dimming of the sun for months, was followed by a series of crop failures and famines that may have contributed to the demographic decline of the sixth and seventh centuries. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle records a series of famines in the seventh and eighth centuries, and the Annales Fuldenses record a great famine in 793-794 that killed many in the Frankish heartland. Famine was often regional rather than general, and it was usually caused by a combination of bad weather, plant disease, and the disruption of the harvest by war.

Feast was the counterpoint to famine. The great feasts of the liturgical year - Christmas, Easter, Pentecost, the feast of the local saint - were times of communal celebration, with special foods, special dress, and special rituals. The harvest feast, in the autumn, was the most important of the year for the peasant, marking the end of the agricultural work and the storage of the year’s produce. For a broader account of the rhythm of the year, see the Agriculture and Rural Life.

The kitchen and the cook

The kitchen of the great household was a complex operation. The Capitulare de villis, issued around 800, prescribes in detail the duties of the cooks, the bakers, the brewers, and the butlers of the Carolingian royal estates. The peasant’s kitchen was a much simpler affair: a single room, with a fire in the middle, a cauldron on the hook, and a few wooden or ceramic vessels. The bread was baked in a communal oven or in the lord’s oven; the meat was roasted on a spit or cooked in the pottage; the ale was brewed in a large tub. The tools of the kitchen were simple: knives, ladles, spoons, bowls, platters, a few pots and pans. The medieval kitchen has been reconstructed in many open-air museums, and it is clear that the work was hard, the heat was intense, and the smells were strong.

The diet in context

The early medieval diet was narrower, less varied, and more vulnerable to famine than the diet of either the late Roman world or the high medieval world. The collapse of the long-distance trade of the Roman Empire, the decline of the great estates, and the loss of many of the urban markets of the classical world all reduced the variety of food available to ordinary people. The revival of trade in the tenth and eleventh centuries, the rise of the towns, and the development of the manorial system all contributed to a slow but real improvement in the diet of the period. By the central Middle Ages, the peasant was eating a wider range of food, with more meat, more fish, and more of the luxury goods that came from distant markets. For a broader context, see the Daily Life and Society in the Early Middle Ages.

Agriculture and Rural Life
Who Were the Peasantry?
What Was a Medieval Manor?
Monasticism and the Benedictine Rule
Towns, Trade, and Currency
Daily Life and Society in the Early Middle Ages