A pint of water was added, and this should all be cooked at lower heat until the pottage is thick and no longer watery. We put the peas and chopped in a pan heat them and to speed up the process we blended them, before adding them back to the pan with other ingredients. To make the pottage for the two of us we took 450g of peas, although other English beans could be used, two onions, a sprinkle of salt and sugar, and a spoon of oil (of course olive oil was not common in England but this isn’t going to affect the recipe dramatically). Peas pottage was probably the archetypal evening meal for a Medieval peasant. Legumes, cereals, and if you were lucky, meat, was all used to make pottage. Essentially it was a dish ate in a ‘pot’ or bowl and during the Medieval era consisted of foods slow-cooked until the broke down. Pottage was a staple food for the everyman throughout history was a cross between soup, chowder and stew. We decided to make three recipes peas pottage which was a staple working-class main course, cherry pottage which would’ve been a fine dessert for those who could afford sugar and white bread, and leeks with sops and wine which represented a high-class version of a dish enjoyed by people from all backgrounds in the Middle Ages. Of course fermentation would make water safe to consume, so even children would drink ale. People would drink mainly weak ale made from barley, as it was safer and more pleasant than water, although milk too was drunk. Nobility and those with money could enjoy meat, sugar, imported spiced, fish from ponds, and white wheat bread fairly similar to that of today. Those living by the sea might be able to take advantage of seafood.

Therefore brown rye or barley bread and vegetables were the mainstay for peasants, and in the afternoon whilst working in the fields villagers would eat a ‘ploughman’s lunch’ – bread, cheese, and ale. Hunting game in the lord’s domain was punishable by having your hands cut off as a peasant, so wild animals were a no-go, and birds would’ve been difficult to hunt before shotguns and air rifles existed. Believe it or not, sheep were slender, the size of dogs, and had long tails, so were worth more kept for wool than slaughtered for meat. Meat was less-commonly eaten by peasants apart from that of pigs, because they could find their own food such as acorns in the woods and could rough out the winter just fine by themselves so were cheap to keep. The thicker and therefore more broken-down the pottage was, the more refined the dish.

Either way, foods like pottage were essentially stews slow-cooked to reduce the contents to a homogeneous mass. Perhaps this was a way to avoid eating nasties and getting sick, or just a result of fashionable refinement that frowned upon having raw foraged plants straight from the outdoors. However, would you believe that in the Middle Ages people desired to have their food produced as much as possible? Raw stuff was just not popular. This is arguably the result of technology becoming so advanced that it is effortless to manufacture food, giving people a desire to return to simpler times.

Obviously processed food is far more available today – its easier to eat a ready-made meal than it is to grab basic ingredients, causing a backlash of pro-healthy eating interest in raw fruit, veg, and even unprocessed meat. How exactly did Medieval food vary to what we eat today? In some ways, not much- they still ate soup, stew, roast meat if you had money, and regardless of money lots and lots of bread. A woodcut shwoing pottage being slow-cooked

High class medieval foods