Tudors Food

And Drink

Vegetables were considered

to be the food of the poor and

were not often eaten my rich Tudors.

The diet of rich Tudors was based around eating meat.

They would have eaten the same types of meat as listed above, but they also would have eaten more expensive meats, such as: swan, peacock, geese, boar and deer

They used honey and syrup to sweeten food,

and It was much cheaper than sugar.

Rich people only ate meat and drank wine/beer.

Poor people could not afford meat.

Rich people ate nearly everything sugary .

People kept animals all year round and would kill

them just before they needed to be eaten. This meant

that the meat was always fresh.

Three-quarters (75%) of the rich Tudor diet was made up

of meat such as oxen, deer, calves, pigs, badger or wild

boar. Birds were also eaten, such as chicken, pigeons,

sparrows, heron, crane, pheasant, woodcock, partridge,

blackbirds and peacocks.

Some meat was preserved by rubbing salt into it.Bread was eaten at most meals. You could tell the class of

a person by the bread they ate. Rich people ate bread made

from white of wholemeal flour where as poor people ate bread

made from rye and even ground acorns.

Instead of drinking water with their meals, they often drank ale

and the rich drank wine. Water was often unfit for drinking because

it as contaminated with sewage.

People ate a lot of pottage throughout the ages, since they had first made cooking pots that would withstand heat. In Tudor times, it was still the main part of an ordinary person's diet. It is basically a vegetable soup, flavoured with herbs and thickened with oats.

Poor people in the Tudor period would eat vegetables, bread and

whatever meat they could find, such as: rabbits, blackbirds, pheasants,

partridges, hens, duck and pigeon. They also used to eat fish caught

from rivers and lakes.