Eating of medieval time:
In the Nun’s Priests tale of the Canterbury Tales at the very beginning it gives an introduction to the character of the tale. She is a widow who lives in the country who possesses lots of farm animals. The Nun’s Priest described her as an old lady who could eat a lot but usually just ate dairy items such as eggs and milk. This not only made me hungry but made me ask myself what types of foods they ate in the medieval times. Also I thought it would be interesting to compare and contrast medieval eating schedules and customs along with food preparation to the 21st century.
The first thing that seemed to be very odd while reading about medieval eating was the time(s) they ate. Today, the majority roughly go by the following eating schedule: Breakfast between 6-8AM, Lunch (Dinner) between 11AM-1PM, and Supper between 6-8PM. The reasoning is so that you will not have too much time between meals so you will not get too hungry. Also I believe that these were applicable times considering their work schedule. It stated in A Companion to Chaucer and His Contemporaries that “dinner (anywhere from 9 or 11 a.m.) and supper (as early 3 p.m. in winter)…” (pg. 24) The only reason that I could think of why they did this is because they might have gone to bed a lot earlier than they did today or either gorged themselves at each meal so they were not hungry later.
Their eating schedule was one of the many ways in which they differed from the 21st century. Another thing that shocked me was how eating determined class. Today as we know there are a lot of things that determine class from money, clothes, to even simple things like how you talk. It stated in A Companion to Chaucer and his contemporaries that “Food was of paramount importance in medieval society.” This is saying that food was very, very important in Chaucer’s time, the medieval period. Food was basically the center of their society and also an indicator of class in many different ways. The poorer peoples, who usually lived off of the land, ate things that were straight from their land. They were usually eating fruits and vegetables or any other type of food that the animals (if they had any) from their land produced. Today gardening and eating from the land is something that is very popular and from my experience done by all classes. While on the other hand the rich medieval peoples were far from conservative. They were known for having large banquets where they would sit and eat for hours. They were big hunters for sport and for eating. They ate a considerable amount of meat on a daily basis which was the main indicator of class separation.
Today people are constantly looking at the back of packages to see what is in their food and where it comes from, the second we find out we are grossed out. We try to put a veil over what goes on behind the scenes to get to the end, edible product. During the medieval times they just accepted the fact that the preparation of food was not a pretty thing. The attention was more so concentrated on the quality of the food. At the end of the day one thing that we can say both medieval and 21st century use food for social bonding reasons. Whether it be family or friends it is always nice to have a conversation along with a good meal.
After doing my research I still have questions about the medieval eating times. All I can do at the moment is an educated guess. If we have any other opportunities for papers I would probably dig deeper into the eating schedule in the medieval times.
Works Cited
Chaucer, Geoffrey. The Canterbury Tales. Trans. David Wright. Rev. ed. Oxford:
Oxford UP, 2011. Print.
Amtower, Laurel, and Jacqueline Vanhoutte. A Companion to Chaucer and His Contemporaries: Texts & Contexts. Peterborough, Ont.: Broadview, 2009. Print.