The History Of Food | How Did Medieval Peasants Stay Alive?

#History #Food
A sack of grain has to provide tonight's supper, next week's bread, and seed for the next harvest. What could a medieval family afford to eat?

Count down ten foods and ways of eating that helped ordinary households make the most of limited resources: mixed-grain bread, dried peas, garden vegetables, ale, preserved fish, bread trenchers, gathered foods, cheese and whey, offal, and pottage. The final chapter follows clues preserved in medieval pottery to explore what people were actually cooking.

Our main setting is rural England between the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries. The family is imagined; the archaeological evidence from West Cotton, Northamptonshire, is real. We distinguish plausible household choices from documented findings, without treating one settlement as a menu for all of medieval Europe.

Which of these foods still appears on your family's table? Tell us in the comments, and subscribe to Forks & Empires for more stories of the food that shaped our world.

Visuals are AI-assisted historical reconstructions and illustrative modern laboratory scenes, not archival footage or images of the actual West Cotton study.
By https://www.youtube.com/@ForksAndEmpires