How Did Medieval Monks Survive On Such A Lacklustre Diet?
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- Опубликовано: 29 июн 2024
- Food for monks in the middle ages consisted of what was grown within the monastery and what could be begged from nearby towns. Their main foodstuffs included vegetables such as turnips or salad, dark breads, porridges, an occasional fish, cheese curds, beer, ale, or mead. Fish was smoked and meat dried to increase their longevity.
Having said this, Cistercian monks were adamant that neither meat nor lard should be eaten within the monastery, although an allowance was made for the seriously ill and hired craftsmen.
The Cistercians also objected to the laxity and gluttony of other orders and ruled that, in accordance with chapter 61 of the Rule of St Benedict, the monks should eat once a day.
How did medieval monks survive on such a lacklustre diet?
In this video, Dan Snow tries some of the food options for those monks who lived a life of chastity, solitude and gratitude in the medieval period.
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I have come to the conclusion that Dan is deathly afraid of warming his food before eating it.
people who are basically absolutely inable to cook any proper food themselves should not do such videos. It is absolutely possible t cook very tasty meals eith the stuff allowed in fasting time. If they were in constant delirium because of beer consum, it did not matter anyway
Or at lest the makers should consult Historians and/or scientific sources before doing such half correct/half very wong stuff.
@@andyking957 I mean, their beer was different than what we drink now days, which is mostly garbage with little to zero nutritional value, so it's very likely that it not only had less alcohol than ours do, but it would probably be better ingested, since it was hefty with "food". People who wanted to get hammered would probably drink hydromel or something like that...
And has never heard the phrase "Don't eat with your mouth full".
@@andyking957 Were monks allowed to enjoy their food or would that have been seen as sinful?
@@bcayeI think you mean don’t talk with your mouth full haha 😂
I think Dan's got this quite wrong. People were not stupid; they knew how to cook. Vegetable soup or stew is lovely. Many cultures still put a piece of salt fish into many dishes to season them. A pickled fish would taste great as a contrast to plainer fare. I also know of recipes in which a stew was cooked in ale, for flavor. In general, Medieval cooking was Not Awful.
They invented cheese cake therefore survival was definitely possible
Plus, with one meal a day, the monks had the best spice of all, hunger;).
@silverjohn6037 As an ex soldier I can confirm this! After a long hard day tending the gardens and not eating that pottage and bread would be quite nice and that fish would be an absolute feast.
Go try pickled fish and then come back 😂
@@asef698pickled herring is the shit my dude. Thems fightin' words
Trenchers of bread wouldn't have been made out of nice soft bread, but out of hard bread. That's why that bread was used as a plate.
Erm, with the ingredients available at that time you can cook good tasting foods. There is no reason to believe that their food tasted bad.
Makes a less entertaining video apparently.
Just because you can, doesn't mean that they always did
Just considering the ingredients he had on the table, there were many tasty recipes that could be made. Cold pottage without cooked herbs, bread, pickled herring and beer sounds like a packed lunch to me. Made by a lazy cook.
Yea, humans wanting tasty and good food isnt a recent idea.
@@Naturallystated Veggies with beans, garden herbs and a bit of salt sounds like a perfectly good meal. Add a bit of lard or smoked meat or salt fish if you want. And what's wrong with porridge. You could use milk to cook it, add a bit of honey, dried fruit or crushed nuts. If you want your porridge as a breakfast for a farming family, add lard or butter and salt it. it's probably not the most spectacular meal, but perfectly eatable as the basis for a day of hard work.
Dan is overlooking the mediaeval definition(s) of what constituted fish. Otters, beavers, barnacle geese and whalemeat were all included in this category.
Hell even I remember somebody argue that deer was a fish because he shot it down at a river crossing
It just occured to me.. monks invented the hoodie!
fr
this diet actually sounds great to me - whole grain bread, pulses, loads of veggies, heaps of herbs, cheese, eggs, fish, and plenty of beer. healthy and delicious. pretty sure they had fire and could eat meals warm too! what does dan have against hot food??
And if you're sick of fish, eat vegetables, bread and cheese. Nothing wrong with that.
That along with our modern access to spices and salt - though maybe with less of a heavy hand - and that's just perfect
Yeah I think that if it wasn't for the lack of medical advancement and good sanitation back then, they would have been living far healthier and longer lives than we currently do. I was reading that the soil these days is less fertile than it would have been hundreds of years ago. I am sure they had highly nutritious diets for the most part, even the poorer would have eaten food that likely contained more nutrition than what we eat today. Also, they were more active too, less sedentary. If there was equivalent of modern medicine and sanitation I would go back to those times, I'm sure I'd be happier as a person.
The average person had more protein than these soyboy monks. Most medieval English people lived near a stream because they farmed. So a common supper was salmon with peas and bread. Monks only ate fish on special occasions. Also last year a study revealed that most monks had tapeworms so they were unhealthy.
People forget than modern food is pumped with sugar. And yes, even fish and meat before you cook it
Difficult to imagine Europe without potatoes
it made making a chip butty , quite hard
Don’t forget tomatoes! Also a New World food and it took people some time to realise tomatoes were not poisonous because they are part of the nightshade 💀 family.
@@amandagrayson389
Both potatoes and tomatoes were poisonous until about 6,000 years ago. There were some awfully brave plant breeders back there in Peru, for potatoes, and North America for the nightshade.
@@TheDavidlloydjones - wow, I didn’t know that. So what happened? Lots of selective cross cultivation, or whatever it’s called?
Potatoes and sweet potaoes saving lots of lives of the commoners in the time of harvest failures and below average harvest
I feel like I've yet to see Dan actually enjoy anything lol
He did one video about The Tudor banquets where he did!
@@kimberlypatton205 yeah he wasn't wholly against the eels. and seemed not to against some of the Georgian stuff
Eats veggie soup/porridge
- this is cold, tasteless, mushy
Then its not a good veggie soup isn't it?
Imagine you cooked this for days, made an effort with herbs, and eat it hot after a day of hard physical labour, I am certain this is amazing.
You referred to St. Bernard of Clairvaux as a Franciscan. He was a Cistercian. Also, when you showed the Cistercians vs Benedictines towards the beginning, you actually depicted Dominicans and Franciscans, two orders which are not monks, but friars.
I noticed that too. Glad to see someone else catch it.
Correct.
Not sure this is the right niche, however if anyone's interested in very very hard core Medieval history I recommend Schwerpunkt's videos series. He deals with lots of issues such as these in depth
He's an acquired taste tho. His content does go very in-depth compared to other channels, and he's quite reliable, however, his videos aren't very concise or well organized. He goes on (complaining) tangents, assumes a good amount of prior knowledge (doesn't really give much context), and has a semi-strong accent.
Still tho, there's no other source of medieval content on RUclips so reliable and detailed. Not to mention he has thousands of videos on even the seemengly less relevant topics. I watch him pretty regularly, mostly as a podcast in the backgroun
Beer in those days wasnt just for a clean water source, it was also very low alcohol and full of vitamins and minerals, so much so it was a staple and given out as a rations, in some cases. It was seen as a supplement to the days meals and very much needed for most work was hard and manual, and was a cottage industry for women to make extra pennies.
In fact, it wasn't about clean water at all, since you need good water to make decent beer in the first place.
@@ItsJakeTheBrake There's a saying I heard once "Beer is just Liquid bread"
and i imagine that may have some truth to it.
it's just the better water !
not that water fresh from the well or spring was bad (you need clean water to brew beer btw) but just bc beer was, is and always will be better than water !
What is the evidence that it was low alcohol? I don't believe it was. There was something called "small beer" which was weak, but that was only for children. If you've got bread yeast beer brews itself to a pretty high ABV all by itself.
@@GTMarmot small beer was consumed by people of all ages. People (workers) drank loads of it for calorie consumption and quenching thirst, so getting drunk off it would've been an undesirable side effect. Also, yeast will not just bring the beer up to a high alcohol content, without enough sugar. Grain back then was not like our grain today. Even disregarding the evolution of the grain itself, their yield was much lower because they lacked modern fertiliser. To have the same amount of sugar in the mash, to get to a modern average alcohol content of around 5-6%, they would've needed to use a lot more grain. Paired with a lower yield in grain, the cost of making a strong beer was a lot higher. Also, they didn't even know about yiest, so they didn't have the refined yiedt cultures we have today, that are specifically made, to brew beer. Their beer brews could and did fail quite often, simply because they might not have had yiest in it, or the wrong kind of yiest.
If we travelled back in time, what they called beer, in many cases might be unrecognisable to us.
Dan’s a great historian, all the videos I’ve watched of him doing historical food reviews have had endless comments attacking him for being condescending or saying they wouldn’t have done this or that but I watch a lot of his videos where he’s very serious and informative personally I see these food videos as a light hearted type of video generally talking about old food rather than carved in stone ‘this is what everyone ate and this is how they ate it’ type of thing I’ve enjoyed them. Thank you for a nice break from just lots of facts
Fisch dish is actually what we still eat it in Germany and especially northern Germany, it’s called Fischbrötchen. Personally not my type of food but lot of people love it😄
I'm so glad he talks with his mouth full.
How decadent are we that even a historian struggles to get his head around the motivations of medieval monks?
@@ajitadonismanilal9105how can you not understand that these were not ordinary persons - but persons with deep spiritual motivations?
@@erinharkiewicz7239Marxists don't believe in spiritual, hence 'historical materialism'.
@@erinharkiewicz7239 Suicide bombers can also be persons with deep spiritual motivations. Deeply spiritual is not always a good thing.
@@cf7571 Hitler drank water too!
@@ajitadonismanilal9105 A simplicity view.
Why on earth would he assume pottage was eaten cold?
Because eating food at a hot temperature was not practical. The food would be placed into a bowl or bread bowl at room temperature (which is to say, the outdoor temperature, ie. 10C or 15C - no indoor heating), this would cool it down very quickly and you would serve the dish to multiple people at the same time (thus it had more than enough time to cool down). Unless you're were cooking for yourself, you mostly would eat cold or at best, warm food.
@@kurtmac My dude, food doesn't cool down that fast, not even if you leave it entirely outside in the winter (and room temperature is not equivalent to outside temperature, even in a medieval monastery, especially if you consider that the refectory would usually be right next to the kitchen where they had a fire going). Besides, it would be served from the pot it was boiled in and that pot would retain heat. It would come hot from the pot into your bowl and at that point would still take a while to cool down. It's not like you are somehow forced to wait 20 minutes between the food being served and you starting to eat.
@@darthplagueis13 Sorry, but you obviously never cooked before! Trying to coordinate or time the dishes to be served to people (hint: they didn't have a microwave to keep the food warm, while waiting for other food to be ready (second hint: they didn't serve multiple courses either). Look it up, they ate food cold or warm. For the most part, they did not eat "hot" food.
@@kurtmac Sorry, but you obviously have no idea what you are talking about.
1: At least in the case of cistercian monks, we're talking one main dish to be served alongside things such as bread which don't need to be warm.
2: Have you heard of this little invention called "fire"? You do not need a microwave to keep food warm. All you need to do is maybe move the pot out of the greatest heat and occasionally stir so it doesn't burn.
Some food would be eaten cold, sure. Things that didn't need warming through, anything that would be consumed during field work, occasionally leftovers... But they wouldn't just have cold vegetable stew if there was no need for it. You needed to heat the veggies through anyways for them to be palatable so there was no reason to serve them cold.
But think about it. We're talking about one big pot of pottage over a fire and an assortment of bits and bops to be served on the side. This isn't like a restaurant where an entire menu of different dishes needs to be ready.
You've got a number of people who are all going to get the same food and they are all going to be eating at the same time in the same room. Since you know when they are going to eat, you can plan for your main course to finish up just as they are ready to eat. At this point, all you need to do is carry the pot into the refectory, take a ladle and fill everyone's bowls with some pottage.
It's not rocket science. It's not even modern gastronomy. Have you really never made a big old pot of stew to serve to your family?
@@kurtmacPottage takes mere minutes to serve. You simply ladle it into bowls. It would be kept over the heat until ready to eat, they would time the cooking so it would be ready when they wanted to eat. This is something we even do now, leave a slow cooker on for a few hours in the day and time it to be ready for dinner time.
Pottage in a large pot also stays hot for literally an hour or two, plenty of time. It's "warm" for a good 3 hours. People ate food hot all the time, why wouldn't they.
Also, as for "it's to time food with many dishes" maybe it is, but Pottage is such a simple food to make, and it was the sole dish apart from maybe some bread. So this argument doesn't stand at all
Great video as always
I have really enjoy watching your videos. I just subscribed to your channel. Keep up the great work. Cheers
The idea that pottage was bland and gross is an odd misconception that a lot of popular historians have. Like, yeah, it could be on the low end of pleasant, but a lot of the time it would be lovely with tons of fresh veg and or seasonal herbs and flavourings and ingredients we just don't use anymore because they don't sell them at the store, but which anyone who knew how to cook at the time could basically just go out and grab from nature or their gardens. Hell, a lot of the things the British now consider weeds to be destroyed on sight were readily enjoyed by the medieval people, and they'd let them grow in their gardens to a certain extent because they provided fresh nourishing and often tasty veg while the slower-growing deliberate crops were waiting to get started, and even protected the new crops from animals.
You obviously made your pottage wrong. LOL! I eat almost nothing but a pottage made with beans, wheat, oats, & peas, along with wholemeal bread during the winter. I find it filling & delicious & pickled herring is always a nice treat.
Oh... that sounds great
Great video. Thanks!
Haha, Scotland would like a word with Dan.
I grew up in Scotland in the 70s & that was basically our diet [we did get mince, tatties & peas as well though]. Most households would have Scotch broth at least twice a day [lunch & dinner] & its basically pottage. We did tend to heat it up first though which History Hit never seems to do with their food. Its an inexpensive way to fill a family up with nutritious veg, beans & barley. Plus I still love pickled herring or mackerel with oatcakes or bread for a packed lunch or snack.
So not only good for you, tasty [if prepped properly, inexpensive but we weren't relying on racking up food miles with imported goods.
The thing with Pottage is it could be taken to the fields so therefore it would be cold.
Ruth Goodman talks about it in some of her books, she’s a historian who spends months at a time living the lifestyle of a medieval peasant, or a Tudor etc.
In one of her books she says how pottage was like a modern day pot noodle, but imagine it being transported to the men in the fields. Not always a way to warm it up.
Monks may have had more ability to warm it up but it being serviced cold or lukewarm isn’t totally untrue.
@@kimberleysmith818 I agree & growing up on a farm there's still a tradition of this going on. Especially at busy times of year like harvest, lambing...etc, food would be brought out to the workers. Though in colder months most would gather in a byre, barn or the likes & something warm could be brought from the house. In summer it was usually cold fare anyway. Serving up food, beer, milk was often considered part of the contract for labouring, & still is on smaller farms.
Ruth Goodman is excellent & one of my favourite historians, she really gets stuck in.
In most of Europe it was usual to partake of two meals a day for most people. One may be out in the field, but the evening meal would usually be taken indoors & so be warmed up.
A good/well made, pottage/soup can be just as good cold. I just get a bit annoyed at Dan as he never seems to like of appreciate the food he eats on screen.After a hard days work, most sustenance tastes good. As I commented on another of his videos, I don't think Dan has ever been properly hungry!?
Some of those pots were kept on the fire for weeks, months and in some cases years at a time. "Perpetual Stew".
"A batch of pot-au-feu was claimed by one writer to be maintained as a perpetual stew in Perpignan from the 15th century until World War II, when it ran out of ingredients to keep the stew going due to the German occupation"
I don't think Dan is cut out to live in any time period but this one , as he never likes the food ! Wish they would get Andrew Zimmerman from Bizzare Foods to do these types of videos , he's used to eating weird food.
I am astonished that you mentioned Chris Columbus in connection with potatoes. I’m fairly certain that he wasn’t involved in bringing potatoes into Europe for several reasons the dates (if i remember correctly) he toured the islands were much too early and he didn’t have anything to do with the 1519 Spanish invasion of South America he was never there for he died in 1506 potatoes arrived in 1570. Spaniards took some time to recognize just how nutritious potatoes are . Thank you for inspiring my comment I liked your video but felt the need to share some facts🤷🏼♀️🤓👌✌️👍👍👍🍀🌟🍀🖖🖖🖖👋🏻🧝🏼🤚🏻
Agreed! I believe the "sweet potato" was discovered in Peru and again, I believe, not by Columbus. The "new" or "round" potato was discovered in North America at a much later date. Side note: Thank god the new potato was discovered, as I loathe the sweet potato and despise turnips!
Sir Francis Drake bought them to England but a quick google search also talks about the Spanish in Peru bringing them to Europe but they weren’t popular straight away.
I’m English and god I love potatoes.
@@kimberleysmith818 I am Canadian Eh I love potatoes and sweet potatoes 15 percent of the production for Canada is in my Province New Brunswick add Prince Edward Island potatoes we supply fifty percent of the potatoes for Canada. We like our potatoes i remember making scalloped potato sandwiches when I was a child . Sadly but gladly I no longer eat bread or make scalloped potatoes but I enjoy potatoes in moderation because I don’t count carbs . I have my own personal healthy diet….my PHD has been successful in helping me maintain a healthy weight . It was an English governor colonel Charles Lawrence in 1750’s or 60’s who popularized the growing of potatoes by mandating Its planting for the settlers of Lunenburg N . S. I think that because Potatoes arrived in the 16 hundreds we Maritimes were a bit slow in recognizing the importance of potatoes.🇨🇦👍👍👍⭐️🖖🖖🖖🍀🫶🏻🥔🫶🏻👋🏻🧝🏼🤚🏻🤭
Dan went around this the wrong way; first get smashed on beer, then eat.
Gonna be real: Dan is not a medieval historian and in videos like this, it shows.
First of all: What's the deal with having the pottage cold? The cistercian monks weren't fond of over-indulgance but that didn't mean they wouldn't have had their food freshly made - especially since it was only one meal a day. Also, whilst they probably wouldn't have used pepper or other more expensive imported spices, they certainly would have used some salt (it wasn't *that* expensive, especially not in england where the sea is never that far away. The reason one could make a lot of money selling salt is because the demand was very high; salt was essential for food preservation and flavouring dishes) and they would have added those herbs in before cooking to properly season the vegetables.
Second: The sewage water thing is a commonly repeated myth. You cannot make clean, drinkable beer from contaminated water. Water that's good enough to brew with is also good enough to drink and in fact, people still did drink loads of water. The prevalence of beer is related to two factors: First of all, it's because it tasted better. Why do you think soft drinks are so common today? Because people enjoy drinking something other than water, something that's more interesting. And when you then consider that liquids would often be carried in wooden buckets and kegs which have a tendency to impart a somewhat rotten flavour, then you're all the more happy to actually have a strong tasting alternative beverage. The second reason is simple: Nutrition. Beer has a lot of calories and when you're working in the fields and don't have time to sit down for lunch, or when you belong to an order that only tolerates one proper meal a day, well at times like this it's quite nice to maybe have a pitcher of liquid bread to keep you going all day long.
Of course, most medieval beers had a lower abv percentage than they do today, after all they weren't supposed to get you buzzed.
Beer wasnt weaker in those times and the idea that it had to have been weaker to keep away the buzz is just stupid.
You dont get drunk if you drink 6 beer over a day.
@@nox5555 The commonly drunk beer called "smallbeer" was actually significantly weaker. Look it up.
You absolutely can make contaminated water drinkable with alcohol. People have been doing that for as long as alcohol has existed and is the the primary reason why so many people drank it in the medieval era. It was the safest thing to drink
and monks ate cold food all the time, many orders did so deliberately as a form of penance
@@JS-wp4gs First of all: Beer is not alcoholic enough to become safe to drink.
Second: I repeat - you need clean water to make beer. If you've got the wrong kind of germs in your water then you won't end up with beer but with moldy rotten sludge. For beer to develop any alcohol it needs to ferment first, the fermentation is handeled by yeast and the yeast doesn't tolerate competition from bacteria and fungi.
Third: Whilst beer was safe to drink, it wasn't the only safe beverage. People then still drank more water than anything else, and water from a well or spring would still generally be clean. These people weren't stupid. They didn't get their water from right downstream from where the local farmer fertilized his fields with dung. Access to a safe source of clean drinking water was one of the most important assets for any settlement and many villages and towns were founded specifically nearby such a water source.
Think about it: They didn't put beer in everything and not drinking water would hardly have helped if they used water for cooking and cleaning every day anyways.
Regarding your claims about monks: Frankly, sounds like a lot of bull to me. Certain orders would limit their diet to the exclusion of certain ingredients, but if there truly had been a rule of not eating hot foods, then they would have simply stuck to cold foods, instead of wastimg time and fuel to heat something up and cook it just to let it get cold before eating it. Doesn't matter though, as there's nothing impious about eating warm meals.
Besides, penance for what? The point of religious orders was to live piously and in accordance to gods will, not to punish yourself for something. Penance is what you do in order to seek forgiveness for your sins, not a tenet of everyday life in a monastery.
Oh, my! How I miss pickled herring! Salted or pickled herring in many variations was one of my favourite fish dishes when I grew up, I don't have it as easily available nowadays and I miss it grately. 😃😍
Obviously went to a boarding school to learn how to talk with a mouthful of food. Had to mute and read cc.
Yup every video, so gross
Why does the food always seem to be cold in these videos??
This actually all sounds very nice, pretty much as healthy as it could be
I'm actually just researching my next novel, so thank you for this demonstration; most useful.
I would honestly take a lot of this video with a grain of salt, no pun intended. A lot of it is not accurate
@@laurieb3703 LOL, yes, indeed. Trust me, I'm doing a LOT of research. This was light relief in amongst the drudgery. ☺ And as I used to work there, it was doubly lovely to see.
Thank's for taking one for the team Dan . I hope the person sharing a car ride with you will forgive you in advance . I bet they want you to roll the window down LOL. It's a shame that you didn't get to try the smoked fish because it is about the only thing that sounds even remotely tasty besides the bread and beer and more beer. LOL Thank you again.
Dan's next video.. how did Tigger survive in the Ashdown Forest on such a terrible diet? I can't wait to see Dan try Honey, Haycorns, Thistles and Extract of Malt. All cold - of course.
Hi, interesting history video I enjoyed it. 😊 next video could you do how Victorian people ate in history
We've already done it! Watch it here 👉 ruclips.net/video/5jI6Na2NhU4/видео.html
I agree, it is hard to consumplate things like the outdoors and being self sufficient when you’re drinking the best tasting (and strongest, wink, wink) ale to honor god. Very good joke 😂. I do subscribe and enjoy your humor and your very well done videos .
image at time stamp 5:33 seems to show a star of david, curipus where this image is from and why a monk would be shown with that symbol. tysm, love the videos!
Tried reverse image searching this, and found one source that said:
In the Handbook of Brewing: Processes, Technology, Markets
edited by Hans Michael Eßlinger (2009) p. 16:
[using the hexagram] "as a icon for beer brewing and selling originates from its ancient meaning as a protective symbol and has little in common with the same symbol used by the alchemists or the Magen David used for the first time by the Jewish militia in neighboring Bohemia in 1350".
I believe one factor is size. Most people in ancient times, are far smaller than we are today. They simply needed less.
We still eat pickled herring today up here in Scandinavia. With creme fraiche, Dill and fresh potatoes. Its alright. Nordic food is heavy on sweet and salty. As well as alot of dill for some reason.
The medieval period circa 1066 to 1485. Beer was not available till circa 1362 in England imported from Amsterdam into great Yarmouth, the latter med. It was first brewed in 1412, in Colchester using imported hops from Germany, so the earlier period they drank ale... weak by comparison to beer hence the large volume drank. 1520 was the first time approx. They were planted hops in Kent after the medieval period had ended.
Please consider the following diets for a video: Vikings, Romanic Britons, Celts, early Medieval Irish (Niall of the Nine Hostages’ period)
Should the trencher around the herring be made of coarser grains? Or was that close enough and showing mercy on Dan?
'It was Beer or sewage water'. I didn't realise Thames Water had been around that long.
I brew beer at home frequently, and have gotten pretty good by now. Usually 10% ABV or even higher, drunk at room temperature or chilled after bottling and ageing. Nothing quite like brewing your own tasty beers, ales and stouts.
Fresh bread, pickled herring (with pickled onions and dill of course), and beer is afternoon socializing treats! Throw in a bottle of snaps and its the beginning of a party! Dang! Now I gotta go to the shop and get pickled herrings and beer!
Nice introduction....of Monarchy diet ...i think 🤔 it was preserved health balance...however it was more healthy than fast foods 😅 of nowadays
Pickled herrings AKA rollmops are gorgeous
I reckon they (Cistercians) used to whack a load of butter in the potage, when the ascetic chappie wasn't looking. ⭐👍
The history of beer is interesting, but here in Suffolk, two of our brewery came from monastic back grounds. These breweries are greene king and abbot's
Pretty sure I inadvertently lived of pottage as a uni student
Actually, during Lent, you’re not supposed to eat fish either. Some forms of seafood are allowed, but that was very difficult to get in those times and even today seafood is quite expensive and not known well in many parts of the world. The orthodox Christian churches still follow quite strict fasting rules, with no meat, dairy or fish throughout lent and advent. Obviously, many laypeople follow their own rules or don’t fast at all, but monks and clergy take it very seriously.
As far as I know, medieval Catholic people were allowed to eat fish during Lent. They also made up a loophole, by categorising beavers as fish, they were allowed to hunt and eat it.
@@CrisSelene and how they exterminated beavers almost completely. But even when beavers were around, ordinary people could hardly get them, maybe just occasionally.
In the same time not eating meat - same is true for fish - is well within modern ecology science - better to eat 10 kg of grains in some form, than to eat 1-3 kg of meat used to feed feed farm animals.
Ocean suffers from overfishing almost in every place, so fish must be reduced to the minimum. Fish is not really extending the life expectancy, it's a myth.
@@user-nu1vn3yy9s Beavers were also prized for their hides. I read one accounting for prices from the 1300's (? going from memory here so not 100% on the date) that had a prime beaver hide costing more than a common farm pony.
@@silverjohn6037 fur was really important back then, as even by the 1600-700s the King of France was not able to heat his Versailles palace - just some rooms.
And even royal family members suffered from cold. Buying enough firewood was too expensive even for the King.
@@user-nu1vn3yy9s I believe it was Sweden where some local cantons? (local jurisdictions) could pay part of their taxes in squirrel furs as those were used to line the wool underclothes of the royal family
Hasn't the whole "they drank beer because the water was so bad" myth been disproved a dozen times over? People didn't have wells?
I think so too. I just came back from a trip to southern germany that was famous in the middle ages for it's clear and fresh drinking water, which apparently they exported all over europe...
So long as your well is not downhill from livestock or
or the loo you should be fine.
Yes there was plenty of safe fresh water people drank, particularly in the countryside where the vast majority lived.
yeah, this short episode seems to just highlight some of the myths of medieval life. Beer was produced as a HUGE source of easily consumed calories, NOT because of "bad water", also the beer produced was very much weaker than most beers today. Pottage was never served cold either. To be honest from the diet Monks were very usually very healthy, lots of vitamins, roughage, low meat intake, pulses & other foods we're now realising are not only healthy, low fat but very good for our cardiac health.
Beer was better than water not so much because of the alcohol content, but the process of making beer involves boiling the water used, which sterilizes the water.
During the 12th century, industrious Benedictine monks transformed a once marshy land into a working dairy farm, where grazing cows began producing a surplus of milk. To use the extra milk, they began making a savory, hard cheese.
The 17th-Century Benedictine monk Dom Pierre Pérignon discovered a way to make sparkling Champagne.
FYI Chris Columbus did not bring back the potato, it was the Spanish, around the 1600's. But the gist of your message is right , it wasn't around at the time you're talking about.
Hey Dan. Love your work 👍
No they didn't drink beer, they drank ale! It's ale if made without hops and beer if made with hops, which for the most part it wasn't. Hops were a fairly late 'import' from Flemish territory and much looked down upon by proper English folk.
Looks good
Pickled Herring is amazing 😊
If I can figure out how to make delicious food from only whole plant foods then I'm pretty sure people could do the same a few hundred years ago. The idea that food was terrible back in the day is something I don't quite believe in. I think there have always existed both great and terrible food in all regions.
I like the pottage I make but I don't eat it cold and I do use salt and pepper at the very least.
The beer made the pickled herring endurable.
I love how Dan wears a terra cotta colored hoodie to look like a monks robe! Dan’s so great!
I love pickled seafood, herring, cockles mussells etc
It has to be remembered that most people of that age ate because they truely were hungry. Most worked long hard labor hours. Most food will taste very good on an empty belly. Most people in a developed country eat because of the time of day, not neccesarily because they are really hungry. Of course, even in this day, there are millions who are close to starvation, and eat whatever they can get.
I mean, if you eat pottage cold and unseasoned of course it’s going to taste bland and not good. But I’m pretty sure the monks ate the food right after cooking it and they seasoned it, so that it wasn’t like it was in the video.
The point is that the monks were not trying to make themselves miserable.
They ate little, only once a day, and practice restraint, and not always succeeded, that’s why they’ll go to confession, but that didn’t mean that the food they ate was unflavored and cold. Also, they ate in community, with their brother monks, so it wasn’t isolated like Dan was here. Eating with people is always a more pleasant experience.
Also, they added milk, cheese and butter to their diet, which made it more flavorful. And although Dan spoke of Lent, the most restrictive time of the year, you also omitted Advent, the 40 days before Christmas time, a time of rejoicing in which the diet was better, more meat was included because of the slaughter of the animals like geese, pigs, lambs and calfs that’s supplemented their diet.
Overall, it was not sunshine and roses all the time, it wasn’t bleak and nasty all the time either.
“This (awful) herring is offset by the nice soft bread”.... so you mean not from your local mill, ground by millstone leaving it very coarse and grainy, but instead smoothly made from ultra refined modern flour.
Pickled herring is amazing. It's still a part of most traditional meals where I live, and we eat it year round as well. You can pickle it in a variety of ways adding various herbs and spices to get different experiences. I have always preferred the standard version with mostly just onions though, though I think the preferred way for most people to eat it these days around these parts is with a curry sauce on top.
I always have pickled and smoked herring available and I eat it on a weekly basis, at least.
Where do you live?
@@HaNNibal97smiTH Denmark
@@NATIK001 ah I've been to Denmark last year. Nice country! There I've had pickled herrings with different spices and sauces and I agree with you, the standard version is the best
No pickeld heringericht is yuck. There is only one proper way to eat heringericht and that is the Dutch way. Raw and salted. Unions optional.
Well when the threat of starvation is present and you consistently eat it, it tends to become more bearable over time.
I think (for experience) this says more about your cook than their diet. If well cooked, pottage is nice (and why would you add the herbs post cooking?)
i like his makeshift monk outfit
he looks like he's about to drop a mixtape of gregorian chants
PO-TA-TOES. Boil em, mash em, put em in a stew.
"He sounds like a blast" 😂😂
Dude, remind me think VERY CAREFULLY before signing up to be a medieval Cistercian monk. 🤦🏻
Amen
Human Beings dont need much to keep going; today we eat double what we need to. The stomach is the size of a grapefruit, and it doesn't take much to fill it, especially with freshly cooked bread from the ovens, smothered with butter/beef dripping, and all the variety of hot farm vegetables and herbs. A bit like a filled yorkshire pudding today. They were very much into their savory, and sweet wasn't even a thing. With wine and cheese, what more does a man need?
Are you sure they added hops? Wasn't it gruit? I'll have to check the dates.
Frankly, the medieval Roman monks (as in, from the Roman east) had incredible food, and that's why they lived so long, and still do.
Trenchers weren't supposed to be eaten. They were more like brown bread were the food was placed on top of as a plate.
Why would a so-called historian claim that there was "lots of sewage in in the water?" simply not true. Medieval folks were very aware of the importance of clean drinking water, and apart from the sewage system (if there was one) most towns and villages had a drinking water well that they kept as clean as possible.
Salt in every church: am I Protestant to you?
I’ve loved pickled herring and salted dried fish since i was a little kid. He acts like eating it is an ordeal. He must be used to bland food or fast food.
Monastic granges were outlying landholdings held by monasteries independent of the manorial system. The first granges were owned by the Cistercians and other orders followed. Wealthy monastic houses had many granges, most of which were largely agricultural providing food for the monastic community. A grange might be established adjacent to the monastery but others were established wherever it held lands, some at a considerable distance. Some granges were worked by lay-brothers belonging to the order, others by paid labourers
I think their palates would have been very different from ours 😅but I respect the poor young monk’s boredom with fish.
Agreed! In medieval times, eating was mainly for survival purposes, not to enjoy (don't tell the French this)! If you were drinking a lot of beer with it, you couldn't really taste how bad the food was and if you could tell, then you needed to drink a lot more beer! 😜
He didn't stop eating the fish though...
Insert the youtubers who show that old food wasnt slop and mud...
Medieval Italian Recipes, Jas Townsend, Max Miller, Etc, like i think people would try to make food at least tolerable if not enjoyable back in the past.
Haven’t looked at all the comments but the beer they drank daily was small beer of less than 3% alcohol. The stronger stuff would cost more to make and buy.
When a british person complains about the food you KNOW it was bad
Pickled herring is an acquired taste?
LAUGHS IN DANISH
I imagine pottage could be nice if it was hot and seasoned enough. Vegetable soup can be delicious.
Was it worth the hardship of being a monk just for the ale? Without access to spices, I would want beer 3 times a day to make up for it.
The best historians are free of prejudices.
I recommend Tasting history channel if you want to know more accurately what food tasted like back then.
Dan was also wrong about Dominicans (who wear the Black Mantle over their white habit) being Cistercians and about them being monks because the Dominicans are Friars. Monks are cloistered but Friars (both Franciscans and Dominicans) are not. It is a common thing for friars and monks to be confused.
So many inaccuracies in the video. The one that was the final straw was the access to clean water part. Dude just go to a well, collect some rain water, find a river.
Turnips and brassicas delicious mate
One wonders what Dan has eaten all his life if he is so shocked by pickled herring. Chicken nuggets and oven chips?
but didn't the beer have to be made from locally available water? if that was polluted then were they counting on the fermentation to kill things with alcohol rather than boiling everything (and would that mean their beer would have an added flavor of local water?) if they had access to pure streams untouched by settlements then they could have just drunk that water?
With all the beer that the monks drank, how were they not too pissed to do mass?