What did people eat in the Middle Ages?
Medieval cuisine is as fascinating as it is bewildering. Between lavish, spice-laden banquets and frugal peasant meals, it's easy to get lost in romanticized images. However, thanks to culinary manuscripts, accounting archives, archaeological digs, and period treatises, we can now reliably reconstruct the foods consumed in the Middle Ages, between the 13th and 15th centuries.
Here is a summary of medieval eating habits, focusing on France and neighboring regions.
⏱ Estimated reading time: ~ 6 minutes
Table of Contents
- A Grain-Based Cuisine
- Legumes and Garden Vegetables
- Meat: Abundant or Rare Depending on Status
- Charcuterie and Preservation Techniques
- Dairy Products
- Fruits and Natural Sweets
- Spices: Taste and Prestige
- Cauldron Cooking: Heart of the Home
- Bread and Soup: Pillars of the Diet
- Drinks
- A Codified, Rustic, and Refined Cuisine
- FAQ
A Grain-Based Cuisine
As in antiquity, the foundation of medieval eating remained bread and cereals. Wheat was reserved for the wealthy and urban populations, while the countryside primarily consumed rye, barley, oats, or buckwheat (introduced in the 15th century), depending on the region.
Cereals were eaten as bread (brown bread, black bread, white bread, or mixed-grain bread), porridges, thick pancakes, flans, or flour to thicken sauces. White bread remained a luxury reserved for nobles and clergy.
Legumes and Garden Vegetables
Legumes played a central role in medieval diets, especially for peasants, for whom they provided the main source of protein. The variety cultivated was much wider than what we know today:
Peas — the queen legume of the Middle Ages, consumed fresh, dried, as a purée, or in soup.
Broad beans (and field beans, their smaller variant) — a staple of popular diets, dried to last through winter.
Lentils — cultivated since antiquity, used in stews or thick soups.
Chickpeas — mainly found in the south (Languedoc, Provence, Italy), a Roman and Arab legacy.
Vetch (Vicia sativa) — very common, attested in the majority of peasant stocks unearthed by archaeologists.
Grass pea (Lathyrus sativus) — cultivated throughout southern France, precious in times of scarcity.
Bitter vetch (Vicia ervilia) — an ancient legume, sometimes predominant in village reserves.
Cowpea or black-eyed pea (Vigna unguiculata) — often mistakenly confused with the American bean, which would not arrive in Europe until the 16th century, after Christopher Columbus's voyages.
All these legumes were used in soups, purées, and stews cooked in cauldrons, where they complemented cereals and, along with bread, formed the daily nutritional foundation.
Medieval vegetable gardens provided simple but nourishing vegetables all year round: cabbage, turnips, leeks, ancient carrots (yellow, purple, or white — the orange carrot would only appear in the Netherlands in the 17th century), parsnips, onions, garlic.
People also consumed greens, beetroot leaves, watercress, nettles, and other wild greens gathered near hamlets.
WILD BOAR STEW WITH LENTILS, RED WINE & DRIED BLUEBERRIES / Medieval cuisine.
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Meat: Abundant or Rare Depending on Status
Nobles consumed a lot of meat, often as part of banquets or codified meals: game (deer, wild boar, hare, rabbit), noble poultry (swan, peacock, heron), and farmed meats like beef, mutton, lamb, and especially pork.
Common people ate pork, backyard poultry, or offal. Meat was often salted, smoked, or stewed in a cauldron. The lean days imposed by the Church prohibited meat several days a week: during these times, people consumed fish, eggs, or dairy products.
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Charcuterie and Preservation Techniques
Charcuterie was very common in peasant and urban cuisine. Smoked bacon, black puddings, sausages, andouilles, pâtés, and meats preserved in their fat were found. Salting, drying, and smoking allowed meat to be preserved for several months. These products were also incorporated into soups and stews to enrich them.
Dairy Products
Milk was rarely drunk plain, but transformed into curdled milk, fresh cheese, or aged cheeses. Butter was mainly consumed in northern regions, cream in certain noble recipes, and whey used in soups.
Dairy products played an important role in the lean diets prescribed by the Church.
Fruits and Natural Sweets
Apples, pears, plums, cherries, blackberries, walnuts, chestnuts, and hazelnuts were common. Fruits could be eaten raw, dried, or incorporated into sweet-savory dishes.
Cane sugar was a luxury import, reserved for the aristocracy. Honey was more common and used to sweeten, preserve, or flavor. Jams were often medicinal in origin (electuaries), or prepared in thick syrups.
Spices: Taste and Prestige
Medieval noble cuisine was renowned for its generous use of spices: pepper, ginger, cinnamon, cloves, grains of paradise, nutmeg… They were expensive and symbolized wealth and refinement.
These spices were used in sauces, stews cooked in cauldrons, and even porridges. The desired taste was often sweet-and-sour, with the use of verjuice, vinegar, acidic fruit juices, or herbs like parsley, sage, marjoram, or hyssop.
Cauldron Cooking: Heart of the Home
In all social strata, the cauldron was the central utensil. Suspended in the hearth, placed on a tripod, or directly on embers, it was used to cook almost all daily dishes.
It was used to prepare:
— thick soups, potages, porridges
— meat, vegetable, and legume stews
— thick sauces made from bread and spices
— dishes simmered for several hours
Cooking was done on a bed of embers, without direct flame, at around 95 °C. It was a cuisine of patience and slowness, but also of great efficiency: few utensils, lots of flavor, and even cooking.
The cauldron was associated with warmth, survival, and sharing.
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Bread and Soup: Pillars of the Diet
Some peasant recipes allowed bread to be baked over embers, directly in the cauldron, by placing the dough on a bed of straw or leaves. The ever-present bread was often dipped in soups or stews. For the most modest, a meal sometimes consisted solely of a slice of dark bread dipped in a potage.
Soup, a generic term, referred to any hot liquid containing bread, vegetables, grains, or leftovers. It was the most common dish, shared daily around the cauldron.
Drinks: Wine, Beer, Cider, Mead
Wine was widely consumed, even diluted with water or boiled.
Common people mostly drank cervoise (a fermented grain-based drink flavored with herbs, an ancestor of beer), cider, or mead. Hoppy beer, as we know it, spread from Flanders and Germany starting in the 14th century. In France, the word "bière" officially appeared in 1435 in an ordinance from the Provost of Paris, marking the distinction between traditional cervoise and the new hopped beer.
There were also herbal infusions, and sometimes fermented broths.
Water was rarely drunk alone, often mixed with other ingredients to avoid contamination.
A Codified, Rustic, and Refined Cuisine
Medieval cuisine was structured by seasons, religious prohibitions, social status, but also by a great capacity for adaptation. Noble cooking manuscripts reveal an inventive, refined, and flavorful cuisine. But popular cuisine, more sober, showed great creativity in using leftovers.
Cauldron cooking was one of the cornerstones of this culinary culture: simple, but generous.
Want to rediscover authentic wood-fired cooking?
The cauldron has always been at the heart of convivial meals and festive gatherings.
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FAQ — Medieval Cauldron Cooking
What did people eat daily in the Middle Ages?
The daily diet primarily consisted of bread, grain porridges, and thick soups. Legumes (peas, broad beans, lentils) and garden vegetables (cabbage, turnips, leeks) completed the meal. Meat was rare for common people, more frequent for the nobility.
Did people in the Middle Ages cook with a cauldron?
Yes — the cauldron was the central utensil in all social strata. Suspended in the hearth or placed on embers, it was used to prepare soups, stews, porridges, and even bread. Cooking was done slowly, around 95°C, without direct flame.
Were spices really widely used in the Middle Ages?
Yes, but mostly by the nobility. Pepper, ginger, cinnamon, cloves, and nutmeg were imported luxury goods. Common people primarily used local herbs like parsley, sage, marjoram, or hyssop.
Can medieval cauldron recipes be recreated today?
Yes, and it's simpler than you might think. A cast iron cauldron, a few simple ingredients, and a wood fire are enough to rediscover the flavors of the era. Approche Libre medieval recipe boxes allow you to cook these dishes directly over a fire.
To go further
→ What to cook in a cauldron? 30 historical recipes for wood fire cooking
→ Traditional cauldron: How did the Gauls cook?
→ Cast iron cauldron: traditional and family French cuisine of the 1930s
→ Our guide to choosing your cauldron well
→ How to manage fire for slow and controlled cooking
→ Complete guide to maintaining your cast iron cauldron
→Cauldron cooking: A practice spanning centuries
→ The cast iron Dutch oven: a return to essentials
👉 Discover your cauldron now and switch to more authentic cooking.
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To go further:
– Le Viandier de Taillevent (14th century), ed. T. Scully
– Le Ménagier de Paris (1393), ed. Brereton & Ferrier
– Odile Redon et al., La cuisine au Moyen Âge, ed. Stock
– Bruno Lemesle, « Le feu et la cuisine domestique au Moyen Âge », in Archéologie Médiévale, 2002
– Jacques Thirion, Le Chaudron et l’Alambic, CNRS