Whoops! I didn't think to check. Thanks Albion Wilde.
Posted on 05/16/2019 5:28:43 PM PDT by BenLurkin
Using chemical analysis of pottery fragments and animal bones found at one of England's earliest medieval villages, combined with detailed examination of a range of historical documents and accounts, the research has revealed the daily diet of peasants in the Middle Ages. The researchers were also able to look at butchery techniques, methods of food preparation and rubbish disposal at the settlement Dr. Julie Dunne and Professor Richard Evershed from the University of Bristol's Organic Geochemistry Unit, based within the School of Chemistry, led the research, published today in the Journal of Archaeological Science.
"Much is known of the medieval dietary practices of the nobility and ecclesiastical institutions, but less about what foods the medieval peasantry consumed."
The scarce historical documents that exist that tell us that medieval peasant ate meat, fish, dairy products, fruit and vegetables but there is little direct evidence for this.
The OGU team used the technique of organic residue analysis to chemically extract food residues from the remains of cooking pots used by peasants in the small medieval village of West Cotton in Northamptonshire.
(Excerpt) Read more at phys.org ...
Hard to fathom that, not that long ago, most folks were fully occupied with finding enough food to live until tomorrow.
Only a few more centuries to go before they find turkey residue at Bob Cratchit’s house!
“Got some lovely mud over here!”
Sounds good to me!
Paleo plus dairy.
I thought they ate cake.
If you think about all the different variations and derivations of the word “pot” - which means “vessel” or “container,” originally for cooking, then you can realize the importance of the cooking pot for ancient societies — these were like refrigerators, boiling and restocked constantly with new ingredients as found.
Not only did the cooking pot store and preserve food, it provided more nutrition, as vegetables yield more nutrients when cooked slowly than if eaten raw.
Cabbage can take up to 180 days to mature and in the absence of insecticides, would need to be carefully tended. It grows best at 60 degrees, bolts at 80 degrees, but prefers full sun to shade. Seed can germinate down to 45 degrees but the best return on seed germination is between 65-75 degrees, same as leeks. Both leeks and cabbage require heavily composted soil and consistent watering but not too wet or they’ll rot. So evidence of consistent cabbage cultivation can give us clues what the microclimate was and lends evidence to a animal population that could produce the manure required for both crops. :)
I thought it was well known what the medieval peasant had to eat, just not the ratios. Modern popular history preaches that peasants mostly lived on vegetable pottage (stew), with a little dried and pickled meat and fish if they were lucky, but fresh meat only on high days and holidays?
Those types of scientists
are nuttier that fruit cakes.
And they most likely get government grants for this b.s.
Your comment is truer and not as dark as you may realize. One of the reasons for the great political stability of Medieval Europe despite the lack of empires was this:
Typically, throughout history, when the food:peasant ratio went too low for more than simply one crop cycle, one kingdom would invade another. In medieval Christendom, populations were held in check by numerous abstinent periods, which, combined with common sleeping areas, held birthrates in check among the peasantry. If the population still grew too swiftly, the religious estate offered plenty of food and reasonable comfort without reproduction.
This system collapsed during the plagues, when the population fell so low that the religious festivals seemed pointless, and so few educated people joined the religious estate that the vast land holdings of the religious estate seemed wasteful.
Gee, none of that stuff was on the menu at
King Henry’s in Orlando.
;-) Forget socialism. Reinstate Feudalism!
Ping!
Whoops! I didn't think to check. Thanks Albion Wilde.
All fruit and vegetables were cooked – it was believed that raw fruit and vegetables caused disease. The Boke of Kervynge (carving), written in 1500, warns the cook to: ‘Beware of green sallettes and rawe fruytes for they wyll make your soverayne seke’ (’Beware of green salads and raw fruits, for they will make your master sick’)..
https://www.bl.uk/the-middle-ages/articles/the-medieval-diet
Good stuff!
IMHO no country has adopted the US system, which is specifically supoerior to feudalism.
Inestead they have asopted “American” changes to their feudal systems.
Yeah... zoning laws are bringing us back to feudalism. DeToqueville correctly pegged why the U.S. would become a superpower: the legal subdivision of land.
And yet documents are commonly cited as proof in other investigations.
In the 17th Century Hobbes could still observe that for most people life was nasty, brutish and short. In the early 19th Century, English peasants were willing to trade rural poverty for urban poverty in Dickensian cities.
There's a reason that millions of them took a chance on America to get the hell out of there.
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