40 Foods Medieval Villagers Actually Ate Everyday

From Medieval Way

Medieval Way explores the culinary realities of fasting periods in the Middle Ages. This look at the specific ingredients and preservation methods used by village families highlights how diverse, often inventive, strategies were employed to navigate the strict religious dietary rules that governed significant portions of the year.

Why would a medieval bishop call a goose a fish? Because around eleven eighty-eight, in parts of Ireland, some of them did. Gerald of Wales reported bishops and monks eating barnacle geese on fast days with a clear conscience. The bird, they said, was never flesh. It grew on driftwood, like a barnacle. That is how badly people wanted a way out. Depending on the region and the century, meat was off the table for roughly a third of the year. Every Friday, all of Lent, often Advent, and the eve of the great feasts. In Lent the eggs, the butter and the milk usually went too. A bishop could argue about geese. A village family had no such argument, and the sea was days away. So what was actually in the pot? Today we go through forty foods that carried a village through the fast, from salt herring to pease pottage, the techniques that made them last, and the loopholes the village never got, including that goose.