Red Tower

What did the people eat?

In the Middle Ages there was a big difference between what the peasants ate and what the nobility ate. Peasants often only had little to eat, and it was simple food. Mainly, they ate porridge, rye bread and vegetables such as turnips or cabbage. Sometimes there was a bit of meat in the soup as well. What they ate, and how much they ate, depended on what just happened to be growing and available at that time of year.

The nobility could afford much more than that. They ate white bread, special fruits such as figs, and often meat, such as a roast. Only the nobility were allowed to hunt. The meat of hunted animals was regarded as something really special. However, the church also had a say in what was allowed to be eaten. At Lent, for example, meat was forbidden, but fish was allowed. So that there was enough to eat in the winter, many kinds of food were dried, smoked or pickled in barrels.

Allocate the various types of food to the countess and the peasant.

Porridge

A simple staple food, but one that filled stomachs.

Carrots

Grew well in the peasants' fields – a vegetable that kept well.
Leeks

Leeks were easy to grow and often used as a vegetable by the peasants.

Beer

Peasants often drank beer because it was cheap an nutritious.
Cabbage

Robust winter vegetable that kept for a long time and provided important vitamins.
Rye bread

Baked with coarse flour. Cheaper than refined wheat bread.
Figs

Fruits that were imported, exotic and therefore expensive.

White bread

Baked with fine wheat flour and very expensive.

Wine

Popular with the nobility, more expensive and more genteel than beer.
Butter

Precious fat, because the cows didn't give much milk, and making milk involved a lot of time and effort anyway.
Peacocks

At feasts there was sometimes peacock meat.
The colourful feathers were seen as a sign of wealth.

Potatoes

Originally from the Americas, they were introduced to Europe around 1550.
They were not cultivated as food until later.

Tomatoes

From South America, not known in the Middle Ages.
Many people thought they were poisonous.

Bananas

They are native to the tropics and were unknown to most people in the Middle Ages.