Hey Veeky Forums what sort of foods would they have eaten in middle earth or the dark ages...

mutton scraps, chicken hearts, gruel

Did they really have pizza back then? I read it online

>I know they ate roasted chicken

Not so sure about that. Chicken might not have come to Europe yet.

Chicken was still in China. Potatoes are native to South America and would have been nonexistent in the Dark Ages diet.

Geese and root vegetables like parsnips, yams, etc are what you're looking for, but they were special occasions.

potatos are american.

...

Medieval times? Absolutely had chickens. They were domesticated some 6000 years earlier.

>"It has been claimed (based on paleoclimatic assumptions) that chickens were domesticated in Southern China in 6000 BC.[28] However, according to a recent study,[29] it is unclear whether those birds were the ancestors of chickens today. Instead, the origin could be the Harappan culture of the Indus Valley. Eventually, the chicken moved to the Tarim basin of central Asia. The chicken reached Europe (Romania, Turkey, Greece, Ukraine) about 3000 BC.[30] Introduction into Western Europe came far later, about the 1st millennium BC. Phoenicians spread chickens along the Mediterranean coasts, to Iberia. Breeding increased under the Roman Empire, and was reduced in the Middle Ages.[30] Middle East traces of chicken go back to a little earlier than 2000 BC, in Syria; chicken went southward only in the 1st millennium BC. The chicken reached Egypt for purposes of cock fighting about 1400 BC, and became widely bred only in Ptolemaic Egypt (about 300 BC).[30] Little is known about the chicken's introduction into Africa. Three possible routes of introduction in about the early first millennium AD could have been through the Egyptian Nile Valley, the East Africa Roman-Greek or Indian trade, or from Carthage and the Berbers, across the Sahara. The earliest known remains are from Mali, Nubia, East Coast, and South Africa and date back to the middle of the first millennium AD.[30] Domestic chicken in the Americas before Western conquest is still an ongoing discussion, but blue-egged chickens, found only in the Americas and Asia, suggest an Asian origin for early American chickens.[30]"

dried fruits
sweeteners like honey, tree syrups, fruit syrups
root vegetables, including wild roots
lots of foraged fruits and herbs
game, fish, fowl
gruel/porridge
bread soup (soup made with fermented rye bread, usually)
vegetable soups, and if you were lucky, you'd have a piece of carcass or bones to throw in there that your lord and master had bestowed on you.

>Only rich people ate meat
Where did you think they got the meat from? Raising livestock is hard work. Even with chickens, fucking everything wants to eat them. Losing a couple in a decent flock was probably devastating if you have to rely on what you're raising for meat. Rabbits were probably common to eat but you cant live in just that.

Lots and lots of boils and stews though. It's easy, fast, can throw just about anything into a pot and continue surviving.

Oh and if not chicken, I guess pheasant is a thing. Not sure about quails. You'd still have to take the time to hunt it though, if you were even allowed to hunt.

Roast chicken?

>chicken

Nope. Why would you eat something that gives you a regular source of protein (eggs)?

Chicken was prohibitively expensive for virtually everyone until the early 20th Century. Try quail and capons OP.

Look on youtube for Supersizers go medieval.

This desu

Medieval fantasy is not medieval reality. LOTR hobbits eat vastly different things (and in vastly different quantities) than a farmer in the dark ages.

>Why would you eat something that gives you a regular source of protein (eggs)?

You don't eat the hens, silly. You eat the males. Ideally castrated, so they form capons rather than roosters. You also eat the old hens once they don't lay anymore.

No potatoes
Potatoes are from America

youtu.be/oH5O_fCstyI

I dobut they had meat at all. Cows where expensive, you didn't kill a milk giving cow if you even had one.
Maybe some old meat preserved in salt for celebrations and some actual fresh meat when there was some lords marriage.
Maybe some chicken and rabbit too

The chickens we eat tend to be ones bred to lay more eggs, lay longer and lay more often. Its a more recent thing to the extent we have now.

They dont just constantly lay eggs every day.

What?
No having a cow meant being rich, lords had cows. Presents where supposed to work the Lord's lands for free two days a week and tend to the animals. If they got any meat at all it was from stealing it

Honey was fairly common. Probably a more liberal use of herbs than we do nowadays.

Well yeah but it was hard chicken that was years old instead of months and had plenty of space to run and was raised on what it could find and half starved.
If anything it wasn't roasted but boiled, they did have eggs tho and flour so baking was common place, no sugar but plenty of honey and fruit

>Game
It depends, how are they going to hunt without weapons?

This is bait.

>I dobut they had meat at all.

Sure they did. Someone was raising animals for the rich people's table. The rich got the prime cuts, and the peasants got the organ meat and the less-choice scraps.

They owned the cattle of course
Everyone owned land but lords owned most land, better land
Fish sure if they knew how to fish and had nearby rivers
I think the ones who ate best where the ones who served the Lord's army, they got access to trade and maybe got to keep something, also they probably stole from the Lord all the time, small things tho

>without weapons?

Who said they didn't have weapons? Bow & arrow, or slightly later the crossbow, were common. And used for hunting.

The bigger problem was that they weren't allowed to hunt because unless you were a lord, you didn't own any land and hunting on somebody else's land is poaching.

Because chickens grow old and are no longer able to lay eggs
Plus during good times maybe they could afford to

No, nobody raised cattle for the Lord, the Lord has his own land with his own cattle

Also I don't even think organs where common for for them.
Sausages yeah, blood of course, blood pudding but anything beyond that I don't think so. Sausages are heart, lungs and kidney

What bow and arrows? Who taught them how to use them?ho taught them how to make them? In the castle sure there where blacksmiths but in slow villages?

>and hunting on somebody else's land is poaching.

Yep. But that happened often. There's all sorts of historical items--poaching alarms, booby traps, etc, that were invented in an effort to curtail poaching. Given the number of those inventions it's clear that poaching must have been a major problem, and therefore common.

So who actually raised the animals? Surely not the lord himself. It was done by peasants under the lord's. The lord himself did not eat the pig's feet and snouts.

Soldiers during war pillaged the shit out of everything, you got to walk into a farmer's house, kill his milk cow for lunch, take all his food, take his tools and boots and even raped his daughter, burned the crops and then raped his daughter again, if they had any honey, whine or cheese even better

The presents worked two days of the weeks at the Lord's land for free I already posted this

You have got to be kidding.....of course peasants had weapons. Everyone did. You needed to be able to defend yourself and your family from insurgents. Even the poorest serfs had weapons whittled from wood and an axe or two.

I highly doubt they where allowed to keep weapons.
In Rome a farmer who could afford a sword and join the army was rich
In China farmers invented weapons out of everyday shit, nunchucks where made out of the shit they used to ride horses out of desperation
I'm pretty sure the Lord owned the weapons and kept them in his tower
They had an old knife? Some axe for cutting wood, a big stick?
There was nobody to work metal and no metal to work with, sure an arrow can be fashioned with wood and a rock and a bow can be made with the hair of a horse but you have to know how first and nobody did
Kids today learn more in the first grade than peasants knew in their whole life

This is why they where able to take towns so easy
Soldiers unless the Lord was incredibly rich where just farmers, maybe a knight or two to train them if they had any weapons they could put some sorth of fight

I mean think about knights, a knight had a horse, he may even own a good horse if they had the favour of some Lord, they owned their armor and their sword and where rich as fuck and got to do anything to presents as long as the Lord liked them

You are so very, very wrong. Stop spreading such ridiculous misinformation.
Serfs were not allowed to have "functional" weapons, such as swords, battle axes, longbows, etc. They most certainly could fashion their own out of what they had available to them, and I'm certain they did. Of course there was metal to be had, however they were most likely too poor to buy it, and had to filtch it from somewhere, or used found metal (old weapons dropped in fields, other bits of metal tools that were broken, etc.). The most likely metal tool they had that could also be used as a weapon would have been a sickle or scythe for cutting grain, and/or a few knives. (which, it doesn't take a genius to figure out how to strap a blade to a long stick for jabbing people).

Even if they could recycle metal who would work it? The local blacksmith? Good luck finding one or a furnace in a fucking town full of farmers, again maybe they had bows if someone knew how to make bows, it's not an exaggeration to claim some of them still used wood knives

I'm no expert but cattle require a shitton of food and were very important as beasts of burden. More so than horses, I'd say. It takes a lot for a small herd, and being that you'd have to wait for gestation and calves to grow older(unless they wanted veal), they weren't cranking them out like we did. I'm also speaking purposefully vaguely since the theme of this seems to mostly be "general medieval times" in England, Scotland, etc rather than mostly what OP was looking for. It's related enough.

Cattle pulled a lot of carts, a lot of shit in general and could plow. Sheep and goats are more manageable if you are looking for food when it comes to ungulates. Goats esecially. Meat, milk, they grow up fast, not uncommon for them to have twins and triplets, etc. They can eat just about fucking anything and in general are hardy, less flighty than sheep. Goats have always been pretty popular.

Also by weapons I meant "functional weapons"
I don't even know what you mean by weapon you haven't disclosed that yet
Sure they had wood, anything made out of wood is possible, maybe a dagger too, maybe an axe

>The most likely metal tool they had that could also be used as a weapon would have been a sickle or scythe

Yeah they probably had goat since they definitely had sheep.
Cows can graze so it depends if it's winter and it depends on how much land there was.
In England with its long prairies I don't see any problems.
England is a bad example tho, England is an island there where little chances of being attacked

>I don't even know what you mean by weapon you haven't disclosed that yet

>weapons whittled from wood and an axe or two.

You're a real genius.

Well you are brilliant because I was claiming that all along
Maybe if we use weapons to refer to weapons and not toold we could have a mutual understanding conversation

youtube.com/user/jastownsendandson

probably something like this. Cooking couldn't have changed much in the centuries apart other than the introduction of spices.

You know, they probably fashioned knives out of bone.
Good luck hunting with that tho

Medieval farmers actively changed fruit and vegetables via selecting crops

Op here. What would hobbits and royalty eat to get back to the subject. Did the books ever mention seed cakes or desserts?

Biscuits, biscuits where the shit back then. Biscuits could be kept for months without rotting, they often baked flour into biscuits just to preserve it

If you like the hobbit I can't really recommend soiaf but the knight of the seven kingdoms which is a short book that takes place 100 years before is great and has a one which is really different from soiaf and much more Tolkien like

Cattle I believe can live on mostly grass, especially because of their weird digestation and 're-eating' what they already ate without passing it to get even more nutrition. Not sure how much dairy they consumed back then but I know dairy coes need much more than that since a lactacting cow requires more since it takes up so much energy to lactate. They only lactate when they are pregnant or have a nursing calf, and you can't suck the cow dry if you want that calf to survive.

This thread would probably be better off in Veeky Forums. Half of it is /pol/ but the other half is /the/. At this point I can only provide /an/.
I mentioned England and Scotland because that's he generic go-to for medieval times and fantasy stuff. A history lesson may help OP if they can get the Veeky Forums guys on it and see who was in contact with who, imports and exports of goods, etc.

>hobbit deserts

P I E S
I
E
S

>/the/
I just spent 30 seconds looking for this board, fuck you

Fun fact pies are Egyptian

Well they need a bull to fuck the cow and keep it pregnant
I'm not entirely sure why lesasents didn't have cows since one would guess one cow is enough to make plenty of cows, maybe they didn't own enough land to kept more than one cow fed, maybe having two cows meant being taxed way too much.
I know cows in America where a boom,they just let them roam around and they doubled in number every year

...

Here's a question guys. In the books the fellowship would be in the wilds for weeks at a time with no contact with town's. What foods would they be able to carry in their bags that wouldn't spoil in a few days?

Nobody brings up trapping which is way more efficient that trying to shoot something with a bow. All you need is a trap (very cheap and simple) and a stick/rock to bash the little fucker.

Probably dried fruits and nuts along with something like hardtack. They probably foraged and hunted too.

Weren't longbows so effective because they had been used for hunting for so long? No need to train a guy who has been using this thing to eat for years.

Aragorn would have been the GOAT hunter. Plus gandalf would've been able to help with preventing food from spoiling, Legolas was a quality archer also.

Legoland had a bow
Anything that can be killed with a bow
Legoland was the most important member

Well yeah but it's not like they knew the land they where traveling or could stay put for that long

>relying on elves

>oh wo is me I am but a poor farmer with >a broken plow and there is no smithy to >repair it.

Do you even comprehend how fucking daft the notion that there would be no blacksmiths sounds? This is of course ignoring the fact that BY LAW every English man was requires to train the bow an hour a day.

Longbows aren't useful in the woods
As long as a farmer knew how to fashion a bow then making a bow was no problem, thing is how the fuck was a farmer that did nothing but fa ever since he was old enough tl walk going to know how to make a bow

Long bowman took years to train and it was a huge expense in resources. The common rabble didn't have long bows.

No, blacksmith where a thing in castles and towers. Why would there even be a blacksmith in a fucking town when there wasn't a source of metal, did the blacksmith fix a couple tools and then back off for most of the year?
If enough farmers broke their toold the Lord probably got his blacksmith to make more if he had metal and a blacksmith, if he didn't he had to trade or male a deal or even send his army to war depends on where and when we are speaking of

I'm drunk, sorry. Mistakes happen. I never meant to hurt you, user.

Intact bulls are often aggressive and dangerous. Again, it was common to use them as beasts of burden. You needed an animal that did what you wanted and it was pretty important. So they castrated bulls. Even today we castrate them despite not using them as often as beasts of burden, because it makes them easier and less dangerous.

It's not as simple as just having one cow and one bull. Pregnancy takes time, and if you want to raise the calves, the cows need time to raise them and will not get pregnant again until they are at least weaned. They give birth once a year. This is a lot of time if you actually have to worry about raising your own food for your livelihood.

In America we've had large herds, and went on witch hunts for predators. We still do that. But we also have a lot of fruit, veg that we not only already had here but what we brought over, shit ton of different animals, etc so at least you got to mix shit up more often. Cattle farming became very popular, no one gave a shit where the cattle grazed so as long as no one stole them or they got eaten by predators - they survived, especially in the warmer areas of America.

Yup

Remember why crossbows got banned?

No, there were different levels of smithing. The Lord did have one that probably specialized in weapons, but there were often village ones as well. They got enough business making nails, arrowheads, fixing farming equipment, etc.

I'm sure they also ran the risk of having the Lord come by and take whatever they wanted or order them to make something in their skill level.

m.medieval-life-and-times.info/medieval-life/medieval-blacksmith.htm

You are confusing the time period we are talking about 600 - 1400

I don't know, where did all the metal even come from?
A blacksmith only makes sense under a constant source of metal, that wasn't the case in the dark ages

But that's wrong you fucking mong . Being a peasant doesn't magically jettison some poor fuck back to the stone age to toil away with a fucking rock because muh metals to good for you. Hand tools need to be maintained constantly there is a legitimate difference between a swordsmith ,an armorer , and a country blacksmith one of which still exists in FARMING communities to this day

We have passed the bronze age long ago and are well within the iron age ore is not only plentiful but high quality

Are blacksmithz wizards? Who was metal?

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mining_and_metallurgy_in_medieval_Europe

Open the section "Miners and smiths in society."

Tolkien went into detail about the food, it's all real British stuff.

How the fuck does your soft city ass not know what a mine is?

Dirt poor pig fuckers could kill knights with a hail of bolts and lords and kings were losing way too many trained men. Any peasant can be given a crossbow, some basic training, and be a knight-killer.

We answered this already. Mining iron ore became a regular thing in 800.

In fact, it was easier for miners and smiths to set up their own villages near mines or reside in villages closest to the mines.

Listen seriously a blacksmith can only exist if another blacksmith trains him, there is metal to work with and there is a furnace.
We aren't talking about 1600 here, we are talking about a bunch of farmers with a small church and not much more of anything, most masters lived and worked in the city. The city wasn't anywhere near as full as it is now

I only mentioned America because the other user did. The rest of what I said is still relevant. A bull and a cow is not sustainable if you're poor as fuck and plan on using the two of them for your main source of meat an/or income.

Did you not see

Or
?

We had fucking flintlock guns by the 1600s.

>What is apprentice-journeyman-master?
>What are guilds?

.Ines wherent everywhere, presents wherent able to just fuck into a mine and take metal, metal belonged to the king and depending of the era to the Lord.
There where mining towns where everyone was a miner and sent the metal directly to its owner

Where? Was there a local mine in every single town? who mined? Who taught them how? Who provided the tools or made the mine?

>merchants never existed
>medieval Europe was a borderline communist hell hole

Just ..just stop please , go to the library and read a book ANY book before posting again