What did people eat during the Renaissance?
The kind of food that people ate during the Renaissance depended on where they lived and whether they were wealthy or a peasant.
Peasant Food
The average person during the Renaissance was a peasant. Peasants would eat soup or mush for food just about every meal. They would also generally have some black bread. The soup would be made of scraps of food, usually vegetables such as carrots or eggs. Mush was made from some kind of grain like oats or wheat and then cooked in water. Sort of like oatmeal today.
Baking bread during the Renaissance
Baking bread
Peasants didn't get a lot of meat to eat. Meat was expensive and rare. One reason meat was hard to get was that you needed salt to preserve
…show more content…
Like the Greeks and the Romans they studied, they enjoyed having huge feasts with lots of fancy dishes. Like the peasants, they ate soups and broths, but these soups were spiced with exotic spices and often sweetened with sugar. The rich also ate more meat. They would have large roasts of beef, stag, or pig. Roasts would be boiled in a large vat and then basted with juices and rose water to add flavor.
Feasts
At weddings, festivals, and large feasts the food could get interesting. Often they would eat large game birds like swans, peacocks, or cranes. After cleaning and cooking the birds, they would often reattach the feathers for decoration. This was also a time for lots of meat to be eaten such as mutton, chicken, pheasant, venison, rabbit, turkey, and ham. For dessert, which was often called the "Fruit course", there would be fruit, jellies, nuts, and cheese.
What did they drink?
People didn't drink water with meals like we do today. The water during this time would have been dirty and not very good to drink, especially in larger towns. Mostly people drank wine or beer (also called ale). Wine was the most popular in Italy and France, while ale was big in the northern areas like Germany and
The beginning of this period the European countryside was broken up into large estates owned by the wealthy nobles. Most people were peasants, who worked the land for the noble owners. All parts of life centered around religion mainly the Catholic Church which was very powerful. Throughout the Renaissance, the
On special occasions, bread or pancakes were baked. Men usually supplied meat: ham, venison, beef, salt pork, buffalo, rabbit, or bear. Settlers largely drank what we do today, but also foraged for delicious additions to their meals. They learned how to pick nuts and berries from the surrounding woodland, and sometimes purchased brown sugar, molasses, honey or salt. Available foods depended on location and season, so produce and game varied greatly from one area to the next.
Roman eggs were commonly eaten, but were much smaller than modern eggs, and were brought in large amounts. For a beverage, he brought a clay cask of must, a juice made from fresh grapes stored in such a way as to become alcoholic quickly, but maintain a low alcoholic content. http://www.foodtimeline.org/foodfaq6.html#ancientrome http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/233472.html Darius I brought fare attributed to several social classes/levels of ancient Egypt, consisting of baked and salted fish, fished from the nile a few days before. Another main course he brought was a large dish of game and wild fowl. In addition, Darius brought a dish full of boiled vegetables, which would have been eaten at every meal for a person of his social level.
The people were eating off horses and other beasts as long as they persisted. They made due off eating dogs, cats, rats, mice, shoes, and other leather they could find. Some settlers started digging up dead corpses to feed off of. They would lick up blood from the weak.
The Renaissance was a time of change. It began in Italy during the 14th century, and spread throughout the North. People all over Europe were affected, for the better and for the worse. Some people finally had a chance to
Before the Renaissance produced changes, the Middle Ages, the time period before the Renaissance was different. In the Middle Ages, the main players in Europe were the Pope and the Catholic Church, and they barely had schools. (Source A). Once the 1300’s came, the changes began to happen. The people began to enhance their farming
Some of the foods they ate in the Renaissance we still eat today. They ate soups, roasts, salads, pastas, bread, desserts, fruits and pastries. Majority of the people in the Renaissance ate bread. They ate bread with everything. It didn’t really matter of what they eat for breakfast, lunch and dinner. People in the Renaissance loved eating food and they really enjoyed it.
Meat: beef, mutton, lamb, veal, kid, port, coney, pig, venison, fish (sometimes salted--pike, salmon, haddock, gurnard, tench, sturgeon, conger-eels, carp, lampreys, chines of salmon, perch, white herring, shrimp, pilchards, mackerel, oysters), sausage, eggs, sheep's feet, meat pies. Due to lack of refrigeration, techniques for preparing spoiled meat--vinegar,
Summary: This website tells the history of food at the time of the Elizabethan Era.Poor people had unvaried diets consisting largely of bread, fish, cheese and ale, but the rich of Elizabethan England ate well.All kinds of meats were served to the rich people of Elizabethan England.Vegetables and fruits were regarded with some suspicion and was far more common for roasted and boiled meat to be accompanied with bread.Tudors were fond of desserts.Sometimes wine glasses, dishes, playing cards and trenchers were made out of a crisp modeled sugar called sugar-plate which would be elaborately decorated.
The wealthy people had worn expensive fabrics such as satin, velvet and cotton. In my city the poor had worn flannel and many other cheap priced fabrics. For many people cotton was known for what many wealthy people would wear because it is not easy for someone to get there hands on it. Most men here in Florence had worn boots, pants, shirts, vests, and hats while most women would be seen walking around the streets wearing shoes, two skirts while one went under the other one, a shirt, a bodice, and a hat which would sometimes be replaced with a snood. Women had also braided their hair. On many women you would also see curls because it is a sign of beauty. Clothing was an important treasure to many people in the upper class of nobility and aristocracy who would spend a lot of money on the clothes they wore. Some women had made their dresses fancier by decorating
The diet between the upper and lower class differed in what they could afford. The upper class citizens of the Elizabethan era ate lavishly and extravagantly. As they could afford the spices from Asia and the freshest meat on the market. While the lower class citizens ate poorly. The lower class diet consisted of many vegetables and fruits with meat as a rare luxury. Vegetables were seen as unfit for the wealthy because they came from the ground. While the diets of the upper classes seem to be very different from those of the lower classes, there are many similarities that can be
During the Middle Ages a peasant’s life was, indeed, very rough, there were anywhere from ten to sixty families living in a single village; they lived in rough huts on dirt floors, with no chimneys, or windows. Usually one end of the hut was given over to storing livestock. Furnishings were quite sparse; three legged stools, a trestle table, beds softened with straw or leaves and placed on the floor; the peasant diet was mainly porridge, cheese, black bread, and a few homegrown vegetables. Peasants had a hard life, yet they did not work on Sundays, and they could travel to nearby fairs and markets. The basic diet of a lord consisted of meat, fish, pastries, cabbage, turnips, onions, carrots, beans, and peas, as well as fresh bread, cheese, and fruit. This is by no means equivalent to the meals the peasants ate, a lord might even feast on boar, swan, or peacock as well.
Food-related to a class is still important in 2017 because we have many factors that correlate things we do and use to a greater class. Now, food is a very prominent to everyone's level in society because cheap foods like, 50 cent chips, candy bars, and sodas are typically chosen by the ones who can not afford the healthier foods because they're much more expensive. Although, during the renaissance era foods associated with the dirt were for the peasants and lower class and fresh meats were for the rich because the meat was harder to obtain and the veggies and fruits were much easier to get. In the present meats are much cheaper because it is mass produced so everyone can get it much easier. Veggies and Fruits are mass produced but now they are more expensive than unhealthy, processed foods.
With regards to cattle, much of the Celts food relied on the animals and crops. Lamb, beef, fish, cheese, butter, milk, mead, breads and vegetables are some of the foods that would be eaten. Farming was mostly done by the peasants as they were in charge of the heavy work on the land. In order to protect their land, a fence or a fort, also called a rath, would be built around the farmsteads.
Behind each house was a garden or small plot of land. The common fields surrounding the village were some distance away, divided into strips and separated by twigs and pieces of unplowed land. Past the open fields was the waste, the uncultivated land which provided grazing land for the cattle, sheep and pigs and also fuel and timber for building.11 Bread was the staple item of the peasant diet. Eating meat was either a rare or nonexistent occurrence. Peasants ate whatever they grew: grains and a small percent of vegetables and potatoes. Barley and oats were made into both food and drink for consuming. The good grains, the meat from the animals, and the tasty fruits and vegetables went to either the lords or to the upper classes.12 “The peasant’s housing was as basic as his diet.” Most houses consisted of two rooms, one for living and one for sleeping. The walls were constructed of clay or straw supported by wooden frames. The roofs were thatched and animals were free to wander in and out. The smells of animals, sweat and waste were anything but pleasant and were more than plentiful.Water was gathered from an outside well or spring and there was no form of sanitation leading to a low level of personal