What did people eat in the Middle Ages?
Medieval cuisine is as fascinating as it is perplexing. Between spice-filled banquets and frugal peasant meals, we often get lost in idealized images. However, thanks to culinary manuscripts, accounting archives, archaeological excavations, 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
Summary
- A cuisine based on grain
- Legumes and garden vegetables
- Meat: abundant or rare depending on status
- Cured meats 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 sophisticated cuisine
- FAQ
A cuisine based on grain
As in antiquity, the foundation of medieval food remained bread and grains. Wheat was reserved for the wealthy and for cities, while the countryside mainly consumed rye, barley, oats, or buckwheat (introduced in the 15th century), depending on the region.
Grains were consumed in the form of 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 held a central place in the medieval diet, especially for peasants for whom they were the main source of protein. The cultivated diversity was much greater than what we know today:
Peas — the queen legume of the Middle Ages, consumed fresh, dried, as a puree, or in soup.
Broad beans (and field beans, its small-caliber 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 most peasant stores excavated by archaeologists.
Chickling vetch (Lathyrus sativus) — cultivated throughout southern France, precious during times of famine.
Bitter vetch (Vicia ervilia) — an ancient legume, sometimes predominant in village reserves.
Cowpea or black-eyed pea (Vigna unguiculata), also called mongette — often confused, mistakenly, with the American bean which only arrived in Europe in the 16th century, after Christopher Columbus's voyages.
All these legumes were used in soups, purees, and cauldron-cooked stews, where they complemented cereals and, with bread, formed the daily nutritional foundation.
Medieval vegetable gardens provided simple but nourishing vegetables all year round: cabbages, turnips, leeks, ancient carrots (yellow, purple or white — the orange carrot would only appear in the 17th century in the Netherlands), parsnips, onions, garlic.
People also ate greens, beet leaves, watercress, nettles, and other wild greens gathered around 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.
The common people made do with pork, barnyard poultry, or offal. Meat was often salted, smoked, or stewed in a cauldron. Fasting days imposed by the Church prohibited meat several days a week: people then ate fish, eggs, or dairy products.
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Cured meats and preservation techniques
Charcuterie was very common in peasant and urban cuisine. Smoked bacon, black pudding, sausages, andouillettes, 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 integrated into soups and stews to enrich them.
Dairy products
Milk was rarely drunk as is, but transformed into curdled milk, fresh cheese, or aged cheeses. Butter was mainly consumed in northern regions, cream in certain noble recipes, and buttermilk 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, hazelnuts were common. Fruits could be eaten raw, dried, or incorporated into sweet-savory dishes.
Cane sugar was a luxury imported product, reserved for the aristocracy. Honey was more common and was used to sweeten, preserve, or flavor. Jams were often originally medicinal (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, cauldron-cooked stews, 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 allowed almost all daily dishes to be cooked.
It was used to prepare:
— thick soups, potages, porridges
— meat, vegetable, and legume stews
— thick sauces made with bread and spices
— dishes simmered for several hours
Cooking was done over a bed of embers, without direct flame, at around 95 °C. It was a cuisine of patience, slowness, but also 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 omnipresent bread was often dipped in soups or stews. For the most modest, a meal sometimes consisted only of a slice of dark bread dipped in a pottage.
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. Hopped beer, as we know it, spread from Flanders and Germany from 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 on its own, often mixed with other ingredients to avoid contamination.
A codified, rustic, and sophisticated 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.
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FAQ — Medieval cauldron cooking
What did people eat daily in the Middle Ages?
Daily food mainly consisted of bread, grain porridges, and thick soups. Legumes (peas, broad beans, lentils) and garden vegetables (cabbages, turnips, leeks) completed the meal. Meat was rare for common people, more frequent for the nobility.
Did people in the Middle Ages cook in 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 mainly by the nobility. Pepper, ginger, cinnamon, cloves, and nutmeg were imported luxury products. Common people primarily used local herbs like parsley, sage, marjoram, or hyssop.
Can medieval recipes be recreated today in a cauldron?
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's medieval recipe box sets allow these dishes to be cooked directly over the fire.
To learn more
→ What to cook in a cauldron? 30 historical recipes for wood fire, bushcraft, barbecue, and van life
→ Traditional cauldron: How did the Gauls cook?
→ Cast iron cauldron: traditional French family cuisine of the 1930s
→ Our guide to choosing your cauldron
→ How to manage fire for slow and controlled cooking
→ Complete guide to maintaining your cast iron cauldron
→Cauldron cooking: A practice that spans centuries
👉 Discover your cauldron now and switch to more authentic cooking.
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For further reading:
– 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” [Fire and Domestic Cooking in the Middle Ages], in Archéologie Médiévale, 2002
– Jacques Thirion, Le Chaudron et l’Alambic [The Cauldron and the Alembic], CNRS