Medieval Food

By Michele Acker

Excerpt

INTRODUCTION

Unless you’ve done major research into the medieval time period, and even if you have, you will find that the topic of food is generally overlooked. A little understood subject, fantasy writers, especially beginning writers, tend to gloss over the lack of information by pretending it doesn’t matter. They will either overlook it altogether and refuse to let their characters eat on camera, or else they will make their characters eat nothing but stew and drink nothing but tea or water. Not only is this inaccurate, it’s downright boring! Life, even medieval life, does not consist on stew alone.

Considering the popularity of medieval settings in fantasy novels, this would seem to be an essential consideration. And certainly it should be. Food was very important to people in the Middle Ages, not just as a way to survive, but as a means of expressing their religious beliefs and as a way of controlling others, either by the giving of food or by the denying of it. Complex laws were put into place to prevent people from stealing food or cheating their customers, and punishments were swift and merciless. Elaborate rituals and special dishes and cutlery were observed at feasts of the rich and the well to do. Nothing was overlooked or taken for granted.

Religion ruled most aspects of people’s daily lives in the Middle Ages. Its importance was second to none, extending even into the types of food eaten on certain days, and the rituals involved with fasting. Over time, those laws changed and mutated to accommodate those who no longer wished to follow them, though a few of those laws have traveled with us into the present. Then as now, the rich made the rules and the poor were forced to follow whether they liked it or not.

This chapter will cover some of these issues and will hopefully leave you better informed about a subject that was so vitally important to the people who lived in that time. Then perhaps we can see more interesting and accurate depictions of life and food in the Middle Ages.