Life In Medieval England

For the peasant in Medieval England, there was no quick trip down to the local store or fish and chip shop for something for dinner. Peasants lived on what they could produce, or were permitted to eat by the rich nobles that they served.
A peasant would have a small piece of earth on which to grow the vegetables considered mere animal fodder by their masters, such as peas and beans. While they slaved growing the wheat for the nobles to make white bread, they could not afford to eat it themselves, and grew their own supplies of rye and barley for flour.
A peasant in the medieval period lived very simply. The first meal of the day was whatever was left over from the day before, which was usually gruel or stale bread. At midday, the usual fare
Sugar was very popular with the wealthy, and was eaten to excess, so much that English nobles were noted for the poor state of their teeth.
The gulf between rich and poor during the medieval period was very evident. The poor owned nothing. Everything around them, from the roof over their heads to the land they worked, belonged to the nobles. The fish in the sea and the rivers, the game on the land and any domesticated animals, also belonged to their lords and masters. This left only pigs, which the rich disdained, to provide legal meat for the poorer households.
In rich households, the spit held sway as the main method for cooking meat. The meat was suspended over an open fire on a metal rod, and turned so it would cook on all sides. While wooden and metal plates were available in royal households, many lesser nobles and peasants could not afford them and used thick slices of dark bread called trenchers as plates. The advantage was that the crockery could be eaten along with the
Rosewater was a popular flavouring in sweet foods, and raisins, sultanas and dried candied fruits could be found in the noble household. A popular Christmas dish was plum pudding, filled with spices and fruits. Eggs were common, usually from hens, but also from ducks, geese and other birds. Eggs could be preserved by pickling, and were used in custards in rich houses.
With no refrigeration, spices and salt were often used as preservatives. The poor, when they had a pig to slaughter, preserved the meat by soaking it in brine, and smoking over hot wood ashes. Fish and other wild game were also preserved in this way. A dish still popular with the English today is smoked haddock, or ‘kippers’.
A cow was not something the poor could aspire to, but cattle were kept by nobles, and provided milk, butter, cheese and beef. While no one can be sure exactly how medieval cheese tasted, it is a safe guess that they were salty due to salt being regularly used as a preservative. The types of cheese ranged from hard to soft ‘cottage’ cheese. Goats and sheep were also used to provide