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Tell Me What You Eat, and I'll Tell You Who You Are

Written by Anette Pedersen

Food and Cooking According to Class in 1632

Introduction

In the Germany of 1632 the difference between the food available to the rich and to the poor was immensely bigger than it is today. Not so much because of the various class-based anti-luxury decrees aimed at cutting down on expensive imports—those were largely ignored—but because there were very few stores selling anything not locally grown or produced. Only those rich enough to arrange their own imports could usually supplement what they—or their neighbors—could grow and preserve for the winter.

This article is concerned with what was eaten by whom, when and why, but with the most attention to how the major part of the population lived. Anyone looking for descriptions of royal banquets and elaborate feasts can find those in library books about the Renaissance. The information in this article is presented in four sections concerning respectively: the householdless, the poor households, the middle-class households, and the upper-class households. In a final section there are some speculations on the changes caused by the arrival of the Americans.

The Householdless

Street-beggars were usually not allowed in German towns. A few of the more respectable poor—such as crippled soldiers and impoverished widows of local origin—were sometimes given permission from the council or parish to go from door to door—back-doors, of course—and beg leftovers from the kitchens. The major towns would have a poorhouse, while in smaller towns and in rural parishes those not able to fend for themselves would be housed and fed in a rotation system. Typically this worked as a part of the tithe (church tax) arrangement, and all major farms and households were assigned a certain number of days in the year in which they were to feed and house one or more of such non-working persons. The people thus housed were not limited to cripples and widows unable to find employment, but would include the old and the senile as well as those born with a physical or mental handicap. In fact, any disabled person that the rest of the society preferred to keep out of sight and forget about. These people, depending as they did on the generosity of others for their food, might do fairly well in times of plenty, but as the war created shortages, they were the first to suffer.

Somewhat better off than the non-working poor were the apprentices, farm-workers and the lower servants. These people, which together with the small farm households formed the major part of the population, would have little or no money of their own, and were almost completely in the power of their employers. It was, however, a major part of their wages that they had a place at the table of the household they served, and while the food at the lowest end of such a table would be coarse and dull, they rarely went hungry unless the entire area was starving. Also, while it wasn’t possible for people in this group to marry and set up a household of their own, there were opportunities for advancement to journeyman, farm foreman or upper servant, and thus to a life with far better prospects for independence.

A third group too poor to afford an independent household were the day-laborers, poor students, non-famous artists, and others who would rent a single room with no way to prepare their own meals. Instead they would go to the cheapest taverns and ale houses twice a day and buy a bowl of soup or stew along with bread smeared with drippings (fat from roasting meat) and beer. These people had more freedom—and often more money—than those mentioned above, but there was no kind of security to their livelihood, and the wages offered by the hiring armies often seemed an attractive alternative to starving. In most areas this group of poor independents would be quite small, but in the major towns—and especially those with a harbor or a university—there would be enough such persons to keep several very cheap eating places going. Including students in this group might seem odd, since only young men with a wealthy family or patron could afford to pay for the tuition at a university, but a father/patron willing to pay tuition did not necessarily mean a father/patron willing to pay for an expensive lifestyle. Contemporary journals and letters show that many university students did in fact rent an attic room and eat the cheapest meals for sale.

For soldiers and sailors the situation was somewhat different, as they would often have money, but rarely much freedom in planning their life and meals. The common soldiers and low-ranking officers could—and often did—have their family with them on campaigns as a kind of mobile household. The army the soldiers served in would be expected to provide the basic food items such as porridge grains, rye bread, beer and salted meat or fish as a part of the wages. These foods could either be eaten without cooking, or simply mixed in various ways and boiled over a campfire. From time to time there would also be opportunities to supplement this dull diet by plundering, trading or gathering other items. The sailors would normally have a home-port where they could keep a permanent base with a family supported by their wages. While on ship their diets would however be limited to what could easily be stored and transported, namely porridge grains, hardtack/ship’s biscuit, beer, salted meat, dried and salted fish, sauerkraut, cheese, mustard and vinegar.

The Poor Households

In the smallest households, be they in the country or in towns, two questions really decided how poor you were. First: could you buy a piglet in spring, and let it roam to fatten for slaughtering in autumn? Second: was it possible for you to grow a few plants of your own on a small fenced plot? If the answer to both was yes, the household should do all right—unless the pig died or was stolen. If the answer to both was no, then chances were that everybody would get so weak and malnourished during the winter that any disease could kill them.

That having a pig to slaughter could literally mean life or death to a family seems unbelievable in modern terms, but a low-income household in 1632 would not have the cash to buy the 150-200 pounds of meat-products a pig was expected to provide. And as this was likely to be the only fat and the only animal protein available during the winter, its production and preservation was vital.

If you had a small plot—called a kailyard— of your own, the bought winter vegetables could be supplemented by fresh winter-hardy kale plus stored onions, roots, and garlic, thus adding not just variation, but also some sorely needed vitamins and minerals to the winter meals.

During the summer the danger of malnutrition—or outright starvation—was less for this class, partly because the prospects of earning a wage were bigger during the growth-season, partly because even the poorest family could supplement their meals by gathering wild plants such as young nettles, dandelions, wild onions, lovage, ground elder, and angelica.

Aside from salted pork and fresh kale, the winter food in a poor household was likely to consist of bought grain for porridge, a few of the cheapest vegetables, plus the coarsest bread from the baker and the cheapest small beer from the brewer. If any kind of spices were bought they would most likely be mustard and vinegar, but other flavorings would be limited to whatever herbs and berries could be gathered or grown.

Which vegetables were the cheapest would, of course, vary from area to area. Some food items such as beans, turnips/swedes, oats, and millet were considered too coarse to be digested by anyone but those doing the coarsest labor, and were thus found exclusively on the tables of the poor. Other items such as peas—and, in some areas, cabbage—were cheap to buy, but eaten by everyone. The peas, by the way, would not be the fresh, green summer vegetables we think of today, but the hard yellow or green split-pea types, allowed to mature fully on the plants before being dried for storage.

Buying the rye as whole grain or flour to be baked to bread—and the barley as whole grain or crushed malt to be brewed to beer—would often be cheaper than buying the finished products, but making these items in a small house created other problems.

A small house in 1632 might be just a single room, and the kitchen might be nothing more than a hook over the fire to hang your clay pot on. This would serve to boil the grain porridge, pea soup or kale gruel that was the usual meal. To save firewood this would often be done only every other day. The leftovers would then be served cold the next day.

Without an oven it was possible to make a primitive dough of flour and young beer, and bake this to a kind of bread in a lidded pot placed on the embers after the main meal was cooked. It was also possible to bake clay wrapped items—such as roots—in the ashes, but real bread could be made only by paying a fee to use a big brick oven that belonged to somebody else. The fee wasn’t fixed, so if that “somebody” was the local baker, there might not be anything saved compared with buying his cheapest bread.

Drinking beer instead of water was not a luxury, but something necessary in even the poorest household. There was no piped water available, and the buckets of water somebody from every household had to carry to the house would come from a common well or the village pond. The pond was also the place used for watering the animals. Even if the water was drawn from a closed well, the lack of sanitation made the water much too dangerous to drink. Once the water was used—for bathing, washing or housecleaning—the dirty water, along with any refuse (including human and animal urine and feces), would be thrown into the open gutter or onto the midden. All water—be it clean or dirty—runs down-hill, so the filthy water and waste would eventually end up in the same location.

Making the simplest ale did not demand a lot of expensive equipment, but did require more space for trays and containers than might be available in a small house, and it required more firewood. So—as with the bread—it might be necessary to buy the lowest quality rather than make something better yourself.

A special problem in poor Catholic households were the many meatless days—often three days a week plus the weeks of Lent—where some kind of fish, shellfish or snails had to provide the needed protein. The cheapest option was to buy a barrel of salted herrings imported from the Baltic area, and a single barrel was expected to last a whole year in a small household. It was, however, to be paid for in cash. If that much cash wasn’t available the fish either had to be bought in smaller portions at a higher price, or the household had to make do with bread, beer and vegetables.

Theoretically—based on religious instructions—there were only supposed to be two meals during the day: one around nine or ten in the morning and one around five or six in the evening. In reality, nine in the morning was much too long a wait for people who had often been working since dawn. Working people would therefore start the day with a breakfast around five o’clock in the morning, after feeding the animals on a farm, and before starting work in the town. The next meal—the largest in the day—would be served around noon or a little earlier, and finally there would be a smaller evening meal around sunset. In between these meals those doing hard manual work would have small snacks—usually a piece of rye bread and a glass of beer—if they could afford it.

Breakfast in a poor household would be cold to save firewood, and would most likely consist of beer with rye bread or cold porridge from the day before—and perhaps a herring straight from the barrel, just with the salt brushed off.

The warm meal in the middle of the day would most likely consist of grain, pulses or vegetables boiled to a gruel, soup or stew. If some salted meat was added, this would first be soaked a bit, and then boiled in the liquid forming the base of the meal. Rye bread and beer would also make up part of the meal.

The lighter meal in evening would most likely be a soup—perhaps made by diluting the leftovers from dinner. In any case, beer and bread were certain to be included.

The meals in a small and poor household would be served by placing the food at the center of the table, and each person would then eat directly with a spoon from the common pot. In addition to the personal spoon—which would be licked clean after each meal and stuck somewhere until the next meal—each person would bring a personal knife and get a piece of bread. The bread could be used as a trencher in the Medieval fashion—that is: to place any firm parts of the meal on for cutting—but it could also be broken into bits and used to soak up liquids from the common pot, or it could be spread with fat or mustard and eaten during the meal. In the country this way of serving the meals would continue in the smaller households for several centuries after 1632, but in the towns the fashion for individual bowls or platters slowly spread down the social layers.

Beer would be served with all meals to all classes, but in the poor households there wouldn’t necessarily be individual mugs to drink from. Instead a tankard would be passed around and each person drank in turn. Such tankards—and mugs—had to be covered to keep the flies out. In the poor households, where hinged metal lids would be too expensive, the cover would simply be a slice of dry bread—thus "drinking a toast" when you removed the bread to drink.

The Middle-class Households

In households where starvation or malnutrition were not just around the corner, the range of food products was quite a lot wider; in the towns because you could buy from the farmers and merchants, and in the country because the farm would be arranged to provide almost everything needed for the household.

As in the poor households, the most important meat products on a farm would come from the pigs. But there would also be oxen to slaughter once they grew to old to work as draft animals, as well as a few cows producing milk to be preserved as cheese and heavily-salted butter, some sheep or goats for wool, milk and meat, and poultry for meat, eggs, down and feathers. The pigs, however, were the only animals raised solely for their meat, and—to save the cost of feeding the animals during the winter—most pigs slaughtered in late autumn and the meat preserved in various ways.

On a fair-sized farm in central Germany you’d also expect to find a large vegetable garden in addition to the fields of grain, peas and swedes. In addition to the vegetables that were grown in the small household’s kailyard, such a large garden would also contain head cabbage, leeks, spring turnips, carrots, parsnips, and beet-roots, as well as several herbs such as thyme, marjoram, dill, horseradish, and caraway. A row or two of fruit trees or grape vines would also be expected, and if the soil and climate were suitable this might have been expanded to a small arbor with the fruit grown as a cash crop.

In order to buy the few things the farm could not produce—such as salt and salted fish—at least a few cash-crops were needed. Aside from apples for cider, this could be grapes for wine, cabbage for sauerkraut, or flax for textiles, or—if the acorn production in the forest looked good— a few extra pigs might be fattened for sale. Especially in Catholic areas there could also be fish ponds for carp or pike, either on major farms or owned in common by a village. Many farms would also either sell any excess products at the weekly market in the nearest town, or have arrangements with one or more major town household for delivering meat, vegetables, eggs, butter, etc. The main purpose of the farm was, however, to supply the food for the household, and many of the more isolated farms had very little trading with the rest of the world.

In the town household of a well-to-do craftsman or merchant you’d find all the local farm products, as well as imported goods such as rice, chickpeas, wine, spices and sugar. A big household would most likely also have a few pigs in a sty behind the house, where they would be fed on the garbage and leftovers from the kitchen. A few chickens, and perhaps a cow for milk, were also quite normal, as was a pigeon coop for squabs.

In the larger fireplace of a middle-class household there would be other ways of cooking than boiling. At least some of the pots hanging from the kettle hook would be of metal, usually brass, suitable for braising meat, and the fire itself could be both logs supported on fire-dogs, and coals in iron-baskets. An iron grid placed over such a basket filled with glowing coal, was the fore-runner of the barbecue. An iron frying pan on legs, used the same way, allowed the option of fried and broiled food, in addition to the boiled dishes of the poor. Poaching delicate food such as fresh fish or dumplings was also possible by placing a small pot or pan filled with water over one of the smaller fires.

A large household might also have a baking oven of bricks and clay, either build into the kitchen wall or as a big hive-shaped structure outside. It would be fired only once a month or so, but in the weeks between the baking days the bread could be supplemented by various kinds of pan- and griddlecakes as well as deep-fried donuts-like fritters. There would, however, still be no access to clean water. Such a household would probably also brew its own beer—but that’s another story (The Daily Beer, Grantville Gazette, Volume VIII).

Boiling was, of course, also done in the bigger households, and here—where the firewood wasn’t limited—a large metal cauldron filled with water could be left to simmer for hours with various sealed pots and bundles tied to its handles to keep them suspended in the water or steamed just above. The pots would be of clay with a lid glued on with a mix of flour and water, and could contain—for example—a rabbit stew or what would today be called a casserole. The bundles could contain vegetables or puddings of meat or dough, which would be tied or sewn into a cloth, and boiled or steamed in the manner still used in the UK and Holland.

The meals in a middle-class household tended to follow the same pattern as in the poor household, but with a bit more flavor and variation. The average breakfast would consist of a warm porridge of barley grains or rye bread boiled in beer, served along with beer and either a boiled or broiled herring or a slice of some kind of pork product. Warm beer—perhaps with an egg beaten into it—and a slice of fine bread with honey would be the luxury version of a breakfast, and would sometimes be served as a treat or to an invalid.

The big meal in the middle of the day would most likely include a kind of soup, gruel or stew, but it would be served with boiled, baked or fried meat or fish—and perhaps vegetable side-dishes as well. And in addition to the bread and ...