In the Middle Ages,
breakfasts were not the elaborate affairs of
Victorian times nor even the necessary and important meal of today;
breakfast
was, in fact, practically nonexistent during the earlier medieval
period,
and quite sparse (by contemporary standards) in the latter years. To be
able to have merely a "sop in wine" (bread or toast in wine)
every
day for one's morning repast was considered luxurious. Here is what
Terence
Scully, author of The Art of Cookery in the Middle Ages, and P.
W. Hammond, author of Food & Feast in Medieval England,
have
to say about this subject:
"Most commonly only two
meals were eaten in a day. Normally the first
meal of the day was the major meal. This was dinner. It must originally
have been prepared to fit into a late-morning pause after the initial
activities
of one's daily routine. Because this meal required so much preparation,
particularly in affluent households, it could not usually be available
much before noon, the sixth hour of the day. By that time half of the
day's
work - or play - could very well be done. To conclude one's active day
a second meal was more easily prepared and served some six or eight
hours
later, at or just after dusk. Because the original basis for this meal
was soup, or sops, it became known as supper. This meal too was subject
to elaboration at the hands of professional cooks, but universally it
remained
a somewhat simpler meal than the midday dinner. According to Platina in
the second half of the fifteenth century, at supper 'we must eat
food
which our stomach can digest easily; however, we must eat rather
sparingly,
and especially those of melancholy humour whose ills usually are
increased
by nighttime dampness and food weighing them down with discomfort.'
"Following the teachings of
the Medical School of Salerno, John of
Milan advised:
'Rise at
5, dine at 9,
sup at 5, retire at 9, for a long life.' "Why were there normally just two meals rather than three or four? Or for that matter, rather than just one? The answer to any question is undoubtedly rooted largely in practical convenience, but for the Medieval physician the justification for mealtimes involved in part a perception that one felt healthier if one ate only when one became hungry. To eat, therefore, before a previous meal had made its way completely out of the stomach was declared to be a most dangerous practice. Given that the average 'modern' digestive system seems comfortably able to handle only two substantial meals in a day, and given that the professional cook was required to lay on nothing less than substantial meals, the two-meal pattern remained the norm for most of Medieval Europe. "As cookery became complex
and skilled an undertaking, dinner became
increasingly more elaborate and its serving was pushed even past the
middle
of the day. Supper, in turn, could be delayed until 7 or 8 o'clock,
when
useful daylight was past, but it seems to always have remained a meal
of
clearly secondary importance, at which the assortment of dishes was
both
more limited and simpler. Toward the end of the period with which we
are
dealing, hunger became more unwilling to wait until noon or 1:00 pm to
be satisfied. Perhaps the delicious odours that began wafting from the
kitchen at the earliest light of dawn excited people's appetite beyond
reasonable restraint. And so it became acceptable to break
one's
overnight fast with a small bite at some time before dinner.
"Breakfast, at first a
concession, of an unseemly if not totally
dissolute sort, became seen as less disgraceful to the extent that it
was
just an immaterial trifle. The license was justified - an excess, which
strict Medieval morality might judge to be a variety of sin - by
designing
it on the one hand either to give the peasant and craftsman something
to
sustain their morning's labour, or, on the other, in the case of the
aristocrat,
merely to hold hunger awhile in abeyance until a meal that was really
worthy
of his or her status could be prepared. We find the morning collation
justified
in particular in the case of the aristocrat who was forced so often to
be on the road visiting the various outlying parts of his estate, but
who
was unwilling to set out at daybreak on an empty stomach.
"The earliest breakfast was
undoubtedly just a chunk of bread and
a mug of watered wine. Then we have evidence of anchovies and fillets
of
other fish being consumed, these like the famous British breakfast of
kippered
herring being always in a preserved state ready for eating at any time.
The fatter fish, such as herring (and its small relative, the anchovy),
salmon and trout lent themselves to particularly well preservation by
smoking,
and came to be appreciated in certain circles as a tasty means to hold
off hunger pangs. Besides, if nibbling a breakfast could be censured as
contributing to the sin of gluttony, surely the fact that what was
nibbled
was fish could only help mitigate the sense of sin!"
Terence Scully, The Art
of Cookery in the Middle Ages, pp
119-120
"The very poor doubtless ate
when they could, but the slightly better-off
peasants seem generally to have eaten three times a day. These meals
consisted
of breakfast at a very early hour to allow for dinner at about 9:00 am,
or not later than 10:00 am, and supper probably before it got dark,
perhaps
at 3:00 pm in the winter. Three meals a day were accepted as reasonable
by most later sixteenth century writers, such as Andrew Borde, although
he thought that this was only good for the labouring man; anyone else
should
be content with two. It has been suggested that breakfast was only
eaten
by children and workmen, but certainly by the fifteenth century it was
quite commonly taken by everyone. Breakfast was regularly allowed for
in
the accounts of Dame Alice de Bryene at the beginning of the fifteenth
century, although the 1478 household ordinance of Edward IV specifies
that
only residents down to the rank of squires should have breakfast,
except
by special order. Edward, Price of Wales, son of Edward IV, breakfasted
after morning mass. The time was only specified as 'a convenyent
hower',
although to break one's fast after devotions was the generally
recommended
procedure. Earlier references to breakfast sometimes meant dinner,
literally,
in these cases, the first meal of the day."
P. W. Hammond, Food
& Feast in Medieval England, p. 105
Household records of the
time also punctuate the reality of a light
breakfast and indicate what specific foods were served. In 1289,
peasants
working as carters on Ferring Manor in Sussex had a breakfast of rye
bread
with ale & cheese. In 1512, clerks and yeomen in the Northumberland
Household received for breakfast on meat days a loaf of household
bread,
a bottle of beer and a piece of boiled beef. The porters and stable
staff
in the same household received a loaf of the same bread and a quart of
beer. On fish days the clerks and yeomen received a piece of salt fish
instead of the beef.
Breakfast Foods List Ale Anchovies - smoked or preserved. Beef Beer Bread - any variety. Cheese Herring - smoked or preserved. Salmon - smoked or preserved. Salt Fish - preserved pieces of filleted ling, hake, cod, or whiting. Sop in Wine - toast or bread in wine. Trout - smoked or preserved. Wine |
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