Eat like a Peasant?

Food, Nutrition and Agriculture
ForgeCorvus
Posts: 3035
Joined: Fri Feb 08, 2013 11:32 pm

Eat like a Peasant?

Post by ForgeCorvus »

Low meat diets like Bread & Pottage have come up in a couple of threads, so rather then clutter up other subjects with off topic discussions I thought I'd start one to talk about them both from a historical perspective and as a possible Prepper 'tool'.

Its only been in relatively recent history that anyone other then the rich and powerful had access to meat and sugar at every meal.
For pretty much everyone else meat would of been uncommon (chicken even more so*1) and sugar a rare treat, Tudor people (to pick one Period in which Bread & Pottage was the staple) did masses of backbreaking work (burning through an estimated 4000 calories a day). Cheese and butter were called "White Flesh" and were regarded as poor peoples food

In the Napoleonic Wars (1803-1815) British Soldiers were supposed to receive a daily ration of:
1½ lbs Bread or Flour, or 1 lb of Ship’s Biscuit
1 lb Beef, or ½ lb Pork *2
¼ pint Dried Peas
1 oz Cheese or Butter
1 oz Rice
5 pints Small Beer, or 1 pint Wine, or ½ pint Spirits
The food was thought of as one of the benefits of joining up, I can only assume that a good percentage of recruits weren't eating as well at home.

Roman Gladiator training manuals (yes there are a few) recommend a Vegan diet.





*1 Hens have a greater value as egg producers so it would only of been extra cockerels and old birds that were eaten.
*2 This was a precut portion and could include a large proportion of bone, gristle and fat.... Jansman would run away screaming in horror.
jennyjj01 wrote:"I'm not in the least bit worried because I'm prepared: Are you?"
Londonpreppy wrote: At its core all prepping is, is making sure you're not down to your last sheet of loo roll when you really need a poo.
"All Things Strive" Gd Tak 'Gar
User avatar
Le Mouse
Posts: 427
Joined: Mon Mar 27, 2017 10:39 am
Location: Area 4

Re: Eat like a Peasant?

Post by Le Mouse »

I often cook a slightly modified version of Mujaddara which is lentils, rice and fried onion. It's apparently medieval Arabic poor people's food: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mujaddara

I cook it with coconut oil (seems to last forever so good for storage) and I add garam masala for a bit of interest. Plus I have two batches of onion - one that gets fried up first while the lentils are parboiling and then become part of a 'pilaf' arrangement with the lentils and the rice. The other batch gets fried separately to go on top. I get two good sized meals for me on 1/3 cup of both lentils and rice and two onions and a couple of gobbets of coconut oil and a bit of spices. If I'm feeling fancy I make a tahini, garlic and lemon juice sauce to go with it.

Not only is it wonderfully filling and tasty (and cheap!), there is some satisfaction in it being vegan and a really old recipe enjoyed by people for hundreds of years.
User avatar
diamond lil
Posts: 9756
Joined: Sat Nov 27, 2010 1:42 pm
Location: Scotland.

Re: Eat like a Peasant?

Post by diamond lil »

I think that historically, peasants and workers lived longer and stayed healthier for longer than the well off.
The rich in portraits are often fat and have gout etc. I've got a book somewhere called The Good Scots Diet. It tells how Scots 200 years ago were renowned and welcomed in the new world for their health and strength which they said was down to a very healthy diet. When you think of it the pottage/soup/broth thing is a perfect diet isn't it.
As long as I can have some sweeties after the damn stuff.
jansman
Posts: 13622
Joined: Thu Dec 30, 2010 7:16 pm

Re: Eat like a Peasant?

Post by jansman »

What an interesting topic!

I feel that in the future,such food may become more commonplace.I especially like the dish that Le Mouse eats. Going to try that one. Energy restraints, which affect growing,transportation of food and actual cooking will be a great consideration IMHO.

Diamond lil quite rightly,describes broths etc. as a perfect food. An old employer of mine back in the early 80’s developed cancer. He underwent what was,then, radical chemotherapy.Boy,it knocked him about! The only thing he could keep down was the meat and vegetable stew that his wife kept constantly on the go.He always swore that it kept his strength up,and kept him alive.

Interesting what ForgeCorvus says about Napoleonic butchery.Up until relatively recently,butchery was very , shall we say,basic.Just about everything was sold on the bone.When I was an apprentice I was taught that meat was bought by weight,and where possible it was sold with the bone at the correct mark up,The concept of such things as chicken fillets or lamb steaks was truly unheard of! Indeed, the Halal butchers still do still sell meat in that way.Most of our Asian customers have lamb and chicken cut in a very ‘rough’ fashion.I have had to teach my young colleagues how to do this,as they are used to fussy ,modern customer demand for ,”All the nasty bits cut off”. :lol: Cutting meat on the bone,properly, is something of a lost art now.

My old boss ,who survived on stew, had been a soldier in North Africa.He told me that when supply lines were cut,his platoon,like others, had to fall back on what they could scavenge.Horse was common,and it was roughly butchered in the manner ForgeCorvus describes,to maximise the yield,and also to speed the process from slaughter to cooking,as it was hot out there.And it was just turned into- you guessed it-a great big stew.

Legend has it that Coq au Vin was invented by Napoleons personal chef,to deal with scraggy farm yard fowls .I am guessing that being a civilian in the path of a marching army was not a lot of fun!

The history of food is fascinating.
In three words I can sum up everything I have learned about life: It goes on.

Robert Frost.

Covid 19: After that level of weirdness ,any situation is certainly possible.

Me.
jansman
Posts: 13622
Joined: Thu Dec 30, 2010 7:16 pm

Re: Eat like a Peasant?

Post by jansman »

In three words I can sum up everything I have learned about life: It goes on.

Robert Frost.

Covid 19: After that level of weirdness ,any situation is certainly possible.

Me.
GillyBee
Posts: 1047
Joined: Tue Apr 07, 2020 6:46 am

Re: Eat like a Peasant?

Post by GillyBee »

My late Dad was a Royal Navy engineer in the times of ships like HMS Belfast. He told me that the engineers used to keep a stew pot permanently on the go, mounted on top of one of the boilers to supplement the rations. Into it would go anything they could find. The best find was a completely flat rabbit found when working on one of the ships freezers which does make me wonder what went in the rest of the time as it clearly wasn't meat.
grenfell
Posts: 3951
Joined: Thu Jul 04, 2013 7:55 pm

Re: Eat like a Peasant?

Post by grenfell »

Reading historical books not necassarily about food sometimes throws up interesting items . For example i've read that during the first world war the average British recruit would put on about a stone in weight simply because they were fed better than the civilian population as a whole. Watch any Edwardian film and you'll have more chance spotting Waldo than you will of spotting a fat person. Another book i have is about coopering , the making of barrels and casks. The author talks about how in the past coopers would buy pig carcasses towards the end of the year a time when animals wrre slaughtered rather than trying to keep them through the winter. The meat would be hung in the roofs of the coopers workshops. Casks were fired , that is a small fire of chippings and shavings lit in the part formed cask to help soften the wood and the smoke produced would not go to waste as it would smoke the hanging meat. This would give the cooper either bacon or an alternative source of income.
I re-enact medieval life and there's generally a pot of pottage on the go. We also used to have fresh bread when the oven came with us . We also tend to cook something else as well. Partly because it's actually quite nice to have something to go with the pottage and partly because we are putting on a show and watching someone making vegetable stew or lobby isn't much of a spectator sport.
Arzosah
Posts: 6323
Joined: Fri Jun 22, 2012 4:20 pm

Re: Eat like a Peasant?

Post by Arzosah »

It's definitely true that there were issues with health during WWI and WWII. I managed to find my great grandfather's military record from WWI - he was in his mid30s when he joined up in 1914, he'd done physical work on Liverpool Docks all his life, but army training accentuated a pre-existing hernia. He managed to carry on till the end of the war, but during May 1919 he was ill with all sorts of things:-

Heart is irritable and weak in action: a little irregular and quick pulse, 120p/minute. Slight dilatation.
A complete left Inguinal Hernia.
17 days in hospital with Bronchitis.
He is a very thin, emaciated working man.
Each disability is in a final stationary condition. Together, the two conditions are assessed as bringing about a degree of disablement of 20%.


And there's also his granddaughter, my mother, who went along to a Christmas lunch for poor children locally and stole food to take back to her sister and brothers - it was one child per family. When she was evacuated to a farm, the food was so good, she put on half a stone in a fortnight.

Urban working class people had a hard time of it until the 1950s or so.
Vitamin c
Posts: 1070
Joined: Mon Sep 21, 2020 1:16 pm

Re: Eat like a Peasant?

Post by Vitamin c »

My dad (now 96yrs) joined the royal navy aged 17 after being turned away when 16 .
He told me he put on 1.5 stone after 3 months he was not fat just lean he said the food was good and plentiful unlike at home when he was often sent by his mum to a soup kitchen where he would get a large jug of vegetable soup and a loaf of bread and that would be it for the day for mum dad and 3 kids that was with his dad working full time at the Millwall docks.
Talk about jam.
Just about managing.
Fill er up jacko...
jansman
Posts: 13622
Joined: Thu Dec 30, 2010 7:16 pm

Re: Eat like a Peasant?

Post by jansman »

Arzosah wrote: Sun Feb 14, 2021 12:17 pm It's definitely true that there were issues with health during WWI and WWII. I managed to find my great grandfather's military record from WWI - he was in his mid30s when he joined up in 1914, he'd done physical work on Liverpool Docks all his life, but army training accentuated a pre-existing hernia. He managed to carry on till the end of the war, but during May 1919 he was ill with all sorts of things:-

Heart is irritable and weak in action: a little irregular and quick pulse, 120p/minute. Slight dilatation.
A complete left Inguinal Hernia.
17 days in hospital with Bronchitis.
He is a very thin, emaciated working man.
Each disability is in a final stationary condition. Together, the two conditions are assessed as bringing about a degree of disablement of 20%.


And there's also his granddaughter, my mother, who went along to a Christmas lunch for poor children locally and stole food to take back to her sister and brothers - it was one child per family. When she was evacuated to a farm, the food was so good, she put on half a stone in a fortnight.

Urban working class people had a hard time of it until the 1950s or so.
The former boss I spoke of told me that the rate of rejections of recruits in Leicester was very high. The city was a very poor place, and a lot of the lads were suffering from nutrition deficiencies.

My own father joined the Royal Navy in the late fifties because “ there was no grub in the house” , and he said that the navy grub ,whilst not great,was better than home.He said that a couple of years later after a spell of shore leave,he went back to a fantastic menu! As a member of the Devonport Field gun team ( he was one who carried a wheel on his shoulder over the ravine) they got an extra ration too, and one reason he volunteered! :lol:

Makes you think; we have been relatively well off for quite a short period of time.
In three words I can sum up everything I have learned about life: It goes on.

Robert Frost.

Covid 19: After that level of weirdness ,any situation is certainly possible.

Me.