Food & Drink

The rich members of Tudor society could afford to eat well with a wide variety of meats and vegetables regularly on the menu. They could also afford some of the more expensive luxuries such as sugar, spices and potatoes which had recently been introduced from America.

The poor had a much more restricted diet, consisting mostly of meat and bread. Food could not be frozen or easily transported so poorer households also relied heavily on producing healthy crops of seasonal fruit and vegetables, and raising their own lifestock to provide them with meat and dairy products.

Cooking was done mostly over an open fire using a cauldron or spit. In the Merchant’s House, this same fire was used to heat the house.

Wooden Trencher

In the 15th century even the wealthy would have eaten their food from a communal pot, sipping their soup from a shared bowl and taking their drink from a shared cup. Diners would also have been provided with a big pot of salt in the centre of the table to dip their food into. Before plates, food was often eaten off large slices of bread called trenchers, which could then be eaten at the end of the meal or given to the dogs, or servants.

By the 16th century these slices of bread were replaced with slabs of wood, also called trenchers. These had a hollow in the middle for food and a smaller one in the corner for salt. It became impolite to dip your food into the salt pot so now you were provided with your own salt at each meal.

The Tudors had very strict table manners despite eating mostly with their fingers.Knives and spoons were used solely for serving food and forks were not introduced until well into the 17th century.

Ale Mug

In the Tudor period clean water was very hard to find. In towns and cities the water supply came from lcal rivers and streams and was often contaminated with sewage which made it very dangerous to drink.

Rich people could buy water from ‘water carriers’ who collected it from the countryside. Those who couldn’t afford to buy fresh water drank alcohol such as beer or ale. An average person is thought to have drunk around 8 pints of ‘small beer’ a day. This was much weaker than today’s beer and could even be served to children.