The Early Modern Diet
Before the sixteenth century and the introduction of luxury produce, the English diet was basic and meagre in style. It consisted of the very plainest of ingredients, mostly: grains, meat, fish, and vegetables.
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The availability of food shifted over the early modern period depending on the seasons, class, and wealth.
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Meat
Only the upper classes consumed very small portions of protein, with birds, beef, offal, mutton, hare and bacon as the main meat source.
Grains
Bread was a basic supply and a necessity for survival, it could maintain an entire community.
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Vegetables
These represented the main food source for peasants, being the only foodstuff they could realistically afford.
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A person’s diet varied DAY BY DAY.
Fun Fact
The concept of ‘Breakfast’ as we know the term today wasn’t invented until 1800.
Three meals a day is a nineteenth century invention!
The word ‘Breakfast’ comes from the Latin Disjejunare to mean ‘un-fast’ or ‘break the fast’ from the previous evening. In the eighteenth century essentially, dinner was in fact breakfast!
The early cookery books and dietary literature, prove that breakfast did not exist! People ate only two meals a day: dinner and supper served at 11am and 3-4pm respectively. This number of meals was considered sufficient by moralists of the time.
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Dinner
Dinner time was a large meal, sufficient to last all day for those working in the field. People would return home from the field half way through the working day to eat dinner with their family.
Supper
Supper was a lighter snack eaten once work was completed. All food was eaten before sunset so that people could cook and eat in daylight.
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Gradually over centuries, dinner time became later and later.
In the sixteenth century, dinner was eaten at 11am, but by the seventeenth century this had moved to between 12-1pm.
Once people went to work in towns, and away from their home residence, it was impossible to eat dinner at home at 11am and many required sustenance earlier in the day; it was at this point that breakfast began to filter into our diets.
From the eighteenth century:
In Southern Europe, breakfast consisted of a pastry/bread and coffee
In Georgian England, breakfast comprised of a hot beverage either tea/coffee/chocolate served with a sweet bread or cake eaten around 9-10am.
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It wasn’t until 1800, when breakfast emerged as a full meal with bacon and eggs.
The ‘Full English’ is only 200 years old!
Average Daily Diet:
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The average weekly diet for a six person peasant household in the fifteenth century was:
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8 loaves of Bread
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2lb of Cheese
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2lb of Butter
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1/2 lb of Bacon
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2 pints of Milk
A middle class family’s daily dinner looked like:
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3 Chickens
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Haunch of Venison
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Ham
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Flour and Suet Pudding
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Beans
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Gooseberries
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Apricots
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These foodstuffs were only locally grown produce and usually preserved by pickling or smoking. Until the nineteenth century, with the introduction of the refrigerator, food could not be kept fresh for a long period of time and needed to be preserved to prevent it going over!
Food was grown seasonally and animals too were reared at certain times of the year!
For example, pork, beef, rhubarb, and carrots could only be consumed during their harvest season.
Preserving meat and vegetable was the best method to maintain a continuous food source throughout the year!
Foods were often adulterated with illegal substances to make ingredients go further:
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Grocers would sell white bread made with the metal compound Alum instead of flour
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Sulphuric Acid was added to colour pickles green
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Red Lead was added to the rind of Gloucester cheese
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Coffee would contain roasted corn
From the sixteenth century, Europe experienced a gradual increase in the consumption of exotic foodstuff which was shipped from the New World and the East. This European discovery and colonialization is responsible for the fundamental shift in ‘lifestyle’ at that time.
There was no immediate change to European food culture with the initial introduction of food from the New Worlds. Gradually over hundreds of years since their first introduction into Europe, these foods became an essential component of the English diet. These included:
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Potatoes
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Tomatoes
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Red Peppers
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Avocados
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Vanilla
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Turkey
People needed to work out how to fit the new foodstuff into their already established diet. Potatoes, tomatoes, pepper and haricot beans took over 200 years to become a permanent feature in the English diet!
Turkey
Fun Fact
People really did eat Peacock!
Turkey was the first imported meat that was accepted in England- the earliest appearance of turkey around the English table is in 1540.
Why did people like Turkey?
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1. Turkey was not too different to the other birds the English already ate
2. It could act as a substitute for peacock or pheasant.
3. Birds were considered a very healthy meat to eat.
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Unlike most other exotic foods, a turkey was generally welcomed by the medical profession and an acceptable addition to the English diet.
Tomatoes
The tomato. An essential ingredient in today’s cooking, and typically the fruit of Italy! However, the tomato originates from Andes, South America where the Aztecs were eating them as early as 700AD and was rather slow in becoming a staple of the European food culture.
Incredible though it might be to modern foodies, the tomato was met with great suspicion in Europe.
Tomatoes were first mentioned in European recipes in 1600. The tomato was compared to an aubergine and suggested to be eaten with salt, pepper and oil.
The first professional recipe with tomatoes was written in 1692 in Italy.
Antonio Latini, Lo scalco moderna, 1680s
Antonio Latini’s Italian Cookbook Lo Scalco Moderna included a recipe for ‘Salsa di Pomodoro alla Spagnuola’ which translates to a Tomato Salsa. A universal recipe that is definitely still used in Italian cooking today!
Some of the best recipes are the simplest and often the oldest.
Tomatoes did not become common in Italy until much later in the century- hard to believe in today’s society!
Portrait of Antonio Latini
There is no record of tomatoes in existence in Spain until 1745 by Juan Altamirano in his book Nuevo Arte de Cocinanew (The Art of Cooking) which included thirteen recipes for tomatoes! These recipes are reminiscent of the kind of Mediterranean dishes we have and eat today!
Tomatoes may have been present in seventieth century Europe, however in England, tomatoes were not featured in recipes until the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and then only in the form of canned tomatoes or soups!