Cooking and Eating in Tudor Times

Life in Tudor England was so different from modern life that it takes a huge and determined leap of the imagination to transport us back from our times to theirs. This imaginative leap is not helped much by historical films and television programmes, because (of necessity) these mainly concentrate on the history of the rich,famous or notorious.

The life of the Tudor peasant was usually short, uncomfortable and largely without incident. Most people in Tudor times worked very hard, struggled to have enough to eat and died at what we would consider to be a very young age - thirty five was the average life expectancy.

Food (or the lack of it) was a prime social indicator, with the variation between rich and poor being very great indeed.



Food of the Tudor Poor

Poor people in Tudor times lived mainly on bread and cheese and pottage, a kind of soup made with dried peas and beans; meat was a luxury (and even if available, could not be eaten in Lent, on Fridays or other holy days). Many of the foods we take for granted were unknown in Tudor times, for example, potatoes, tomatoes, peppers and bananas.

Tudor bread came in many varieties, with poor people eating coarse wholemeal bread made from rye or barley flour or even ground acorns. Rich people would eat more refined white bread known as manchet bread or paindemain.

Poor people might be lucky enough to be able to supplement their diets from time to time with eggs, a chicken or a rabbit or maybe some ham or pork. Meat had to be eaten fresh however, as food preservation and storage would entail use of resources usually unavailable to the poor. Seasonality was a fundamental aspect of eating in historical times when food preservation methods were in their infancy.

The Food of the Rich

All the pictures below relate to the lives and food of the rich. The aristocracy, ranging from kings, queens, dukes and earls down to the lords of individual manors, lived lives very far removed from the lives of ordinary people. Wealthy people in Tudor times were able to afford the space and the servants to prepare elaborate meals, as well as having enough money to buy a variety of raw materials, such as salt,sugar and spices, which helped them to preserve food and make it more palatable.

Preparing and Storing the Food of the Rich

The most important component of the kitchen was the huge arched fireplace, where joints of meat could be roasted on spits or boiled in cauldrons over a wood fire. A roasting joint of meat had to be kept turning so that it could cook evenly; this was sometimes done by hand, by a young boy known as a scullion. Sometimes, a small dog with short legs (especially bred for the purpose) would turn the spit by running in a dog wheel attached to the spit.

Meat eating was a status symbol in Tudor times. Rich people would make a point of conspicuous consumption to emphasise their wealth, and would usually distribute left over food to the beggars who loitered at the gates of great houses, or to the peasantry or tenants of their land. A wealthy landowner would have a farm to provide meat as well as using hunting for game to supplement his diet. Most estates would have fishponds where carp and tench would be kept for consumption on Fridays and on holy days.

Game would be hung to improve the taste in a cool pantry (see below) and meat would also be kept separately from dry foodstuffs. Herbs and spices were used for flavouring and preserving food. Sugar was very expensive and much loved by the wealthy, who paid the price by often having rotten teeth due to over-consumption of sweet food.

Food might be kept in storage cupboards with small air holes in the front, to maintain the circulation of the air whilst keeping vermin such as rats and mice out.

Don't Drink the Water

Because there was no public water supply (other than wells), water in Tudor times was often dirty and unsafe to drink. A weak beer or mead was the most usual drink (even for children), as milk would turn sour quickly and fruit juices were impossible to produce except in small quantities for the rich.

The whole world of Tudor food and drink was so different from our modern fast food culture that it's a challenge even to begin to imagine the part food played in the everyday lifef the time. This was a culture of seasonality, notable for conspicuous consumption by the very rich, for lower classes who often went hungry and by the fact that there was no easy means of preserving food - very different from our modern day convenience food culture, where every foodstuff you could possibly imagine is readily available most of the time.

Sources

Trevelyan,G.M., English Social History, Longmans London (1942)

Chrisp,Peter, A Tudor Kitchen, Heinemann London (1997)