Food During The Elizabethan Era

Food during the Elizabethan Age Today in the modern world, people eat what they can afford. The rich people usually eat higher costing foods and the people who are not as fortunate usually eat cheaper foods. This is just like how it was for the people during the the Elizabethan age. The most important thing about food during the Elizabethan age was a person’s social class. A person’s social class decided what he or she may eat, where they will buy their food, and how their food would be cooked. During the Elizabethan age, what a person would eat depended on if the were wealthy or if they were poor. The wealthy usually ate the highest ranked foods. The higher ranking foods were believed to be the animals that flew close to heaven such as cranes, pheasants, peacock, swan, goose, and other birds (Elliot). The peasants ate the lower ranking foods which were believed to be the foods that grew closer to the ground such as onions and turnips. The wealthier people had varied diets while the poor had unvaried diets. “The rich ate well, enjoyed all kinds of meat, beef, pork, lamb, mutton, bacon, veal, and deer, and a

For the wealthy, their food was usually cooked by chefs. The chefs used brick ovens, boilers, working tables, smoking, salting, and pots and pans to cook the food. The lighter foods were brought to the table for them before the heavier foods because the lighter foods were thought to prepare the stomach for heavy foods (Elliot). “The table would be set first with soup, boiled and roasted meat, chickens, pies, and a sweet custard”(Thirsk). Meanwhile, since every household didn’t have an oven, it was common for the poor to send their cake rounds and pie to the baker. The housewifes usually cooked at the open fire spiking joints (Alchin). They also boiled vegetables in a cauldron and cooked soups and stews in large pots