Eating a medieval pheasant
More like a medieval king.
No one before the 1930s had access to such a large breed of chicken lol.
They probably would have confused this picture with a miniature Turkey.
or a very lean goose
HA! A mini Anatolian peninsula, you say?
Peasants? Even many nobles didn’t eat like that every day.
People think that the typical nobleman in the Middle Ages ate like King Henry VIII. That isn’t true. Did you know that they determined that at least at a few points in Vlad the Impaler’s life he was basically living on a vegan diet? They ate a hell of a lot of vegetables and grains because meat was still expensive for everyone involved.
This. You had a steady diet of vegetables and bread. Maybe eggs if you had chickens and some small bit of land. Those times were harsh as fuck
Also they weren’t guzzling wine and ale at all hours and when they did drink it was usually cut with water or what they called ‘small beer’ and very young wine (which didn’t have time to properly fermented and reach full potency) that had limited alcohol content. Also they did drink water. In the same way that in places in the world where they have limited water treatment facilities they still drink water even if it isn’t the best.
Again… they weren’t stupid. They might not have had the depth and breadth of modern medical technology on how alcohol affects you, but people knew what it did and they know what addiction is (even if they made it out to be a personal weakness) and how terrible it was.
Hell no, he had brochettes almost every day…
Vlad, the real inventor of gyros/kebab
Humans on a stick don’t count!
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The roast chicken is usually not an egg creating machine though.
They are fairly young male chickens, that have been raised just past their maximum growth rates.I guess that wouldn’t have been that much different in medieval times. The difference nowadays is, that we have specialized breeds for egg-laying or meat production vice versa and the respective ‘wrong’ sex of each will just be ‘discarded’ right after hatching.
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Skyrim ass meal. need a wheel of cheese with it.
Try a ploughmans meal - bread, cheese and pickle. Awesome as a lunch.
Btw, that “ploughman’s lunch” was created in the 1960s by british marketing executives. It has nothing to do with medieval times, it’s just meant to evoque that vague feeling.
The branding of ploughman’s lunch was invented in the 60s but that same Wikipedia page states it had been a common meal for rural labourers for centuries.
The pickle is probably the new aspect. Farm workers have obviously been eating cheese, bread, pasties, cold meats etc. since forever.
Fermenting veggies has been around a long time too. It might not have been a pickled cucumber, but something pickled wouldn’t be unheard of.
Thank you for this info. I wouldn’t have thought to look into such a thing. It reads to me like it was created by marketers, though, not politicians. It says “the Cheese Bureau, a marketing body affiliated with the J. Walter Thompson advertising agency” created it in the '50s.
You’re right, I misremembered the article. Corrected, thanks!
Is that a pickle or some pickle?
Tangy pickle yes. Branston, piccalilli. Or pickled onions, relish, or somesuch.
Neither. It’s just pickle.
And a wineskin full of barley water, chilled in the stream
Nah, just a pint of beer
A medieval peasant would be wishing they could est like this.
Even in the 1960s eating a whole chicken would have been a luxury, this isn’t peasant food, that’s the gout inducing diet of a king
I doubt anyone today eats a whole chicken for lunch.
I used to work at Boston Market, and there were definitely customers that would order a whole chicken just for themselves and eat it. Not every day or anything, but it wasn’t rare enough to raise eyebrows either.
It looks basic but quite tasty if the prep and spicing has been done right.
Not every good meal has to be a Michelin Star affair, y’know. Sometimes, all you need is fries and two kroketten to be satisfied.
Not every good meal has to be a Michelin Star affair
Is eating a vegetable your threshold for “Michelin Star affair”?
Would a medieval peasant have access to that much meat?
King Richard I was once captured for ransom while traveling undercover trough Austria.
His cover was blown specifically because he tried ordering a roast chicken.
There are a few variations of the details in this story though, a peasant could definitely have owned a chicken and eaten it when it died but it was probably way more valuable to sell it.
They probably ate the roosters though? Or maybe sold them for food ofc.
Doubtful, most common meal for peasants would have been a sort of stew of vegetables and oats called pottage.
A whole chicken would have been prohibitively expensive either to purchase or in lost money from sale at market, same for pork or beef.
Fish though would be plentiful and cheap and a valuable source of protein. Oysters were considered peasant food until pretty much the 20th century.
Wheat bread similarly would have been a rare luxury, especially made from refined white flour, rye and buckwheat, roughly ground would be far more common.
Lobster also used to be a peasant food (“cockroach of the sea”)
Oysters until even the late 20th century, yes?
Oysters were so common that they were incredibly cheap, but they were not considered peasant food. They were enjoyed among the different classes.
Yes, they had chickens back then.
“The tall, skinny ones are confused, Brother…”
They’d have access, but you’re not wrong, a peasant probably isn’t going to waste that much on a single meal.
Depends on time and place, of course. Peasants in the late medieval period in England ate more meat than we do today (about 40% of their calories).
A roasted bird? Why not? Y’all are making assumptions that this is a chicken and the peasant a small farmer but why not a traveling mime trapping pigeons from the square?
You ever seen a pigeon?
Not without feathers but a bird is a bird
Soft white bread? Nobody but rich upper class people could afford soft white bread until well past the industrial revolution.
That’s also a pretty large roasted bird that’s being eaten in complete absence of stew.
fun fact: whole-grain bread is probably healthier than soft white bread anyways due to an increased content in fiber, so there’s that …
I thought this was common knowledge?
it might be, but it still fits into the context. especially considering how peasants unintentionally might have been healthier simply due to their poverty, which might seem paradoxical.
Roast chicken on a nice crusty sourdough is amazing. Get some butter or gravy in there it’s a hell of a meal
A lazy supermarket special - a roast chicken in a bag and a baguette roll picked up on the way to the checkout. We’ve all been there and I’m sure it makes a passable meal, but cooking is a skill everyone should endeavour to be proficient in.
Yeah but lets face it, a supermarket rotisserie chicken is generally cheaper and better than a chicken roasted at home. I dont understand the economic of it, but its true. I have up roasting chicken at home because its just never as succulent
$5 at Costco babyyyyyy
I’ve had good results with spatchcocking, which as a bonus also cuts the cook time in half.
The bachelor’s handbag.
Lol no. How about porridge with water every day of the week.
More like porridge with beer…made out of old porridge.
“What is the charge? Eating a meal? A succulent chicken meal?”, “Get your hand off my baguette!”
I had to scroll way too far for this.
Oh damn, that’s a fucking feast! Peasents can’t afford that shit.
He stole the chicken and bread, calm down Mr medieval economy
All Javerts are bastards.
