12-14th century England and Scotland questions

I believe grains such as wheat, rye, and barley would have been commonly produced. Vegetables weren't very popular during that time period and even up into the 17 and 1800's, as people associated root vegetables with the devil. But onions, carrots, turnips, etc. would have been common food for the peasant class.

I can't cite a reliable source for the information other than knowing that thick, grainy breads were the staple of most diets, and that meat was a luxury for the lower classes.

For herbs, I would consider looking up some common roots online and seeing what you can find about their medicinal history. Herbs that grew well in those areas are things like mint and lavender - probably many of the herbs that still do well today.

Sorry, no potatoes "Spanish invaders encountered potatoes in 1537 during their search for gold. A Spanish explorer took some tubers to Europe in about 1565."

Read more: http://historicalresources.suite101.com/article.cfm/potatoes_in_history#...

This article may help:
http://www.medieval-life.net/food.htm

No potatoes, But carrots, barley etc would have been staplkes. As for herbs, "Cuilpeppers" was written a centuryt later, but a lot of what is in there should be be relevant.

Staymaker

There’s some basic information on this link which could point you in directions for more info.

http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/food_and_drink_in_medieval_engla.ht...

In the north of England, the growing season is (or it was before global warming!) about a month shorter than in the south, and it shrinks even more the further you go into Scotland. The predominant crops would be those that could stand in the ground through winter; leeks (especially leeks! There is still a strong tradition of growing leeks competitively in Northumberland and Durham), also turnips and Swedes. Beans and peas could be dried.
Wheat is an expensive crop to grow so mostly only available to the upper classes. Peasants could ‘glean’ the fields after harvest – ie, gathering up the stray ears of wheatgrain left behind. Maslin was a common bread, made from a mix of wheat and rye, usually, but could also be barley, which grows well in the north.
Meat would be rare for the peasants, and it was usually pork which could be preserved by salting or curing to make bacon. On the other hand, the lords would probably have several kinds of meat at every meal. They also has a taste for highly spiced food, and it was normal to mix sweet foods with savoury, a custom which has survived in only a few cases these days – pork with apple sauce, ham and pineapple etc.
There is a fascinating book called A Taste of History, which traces the history of food in Britain through the centuries. You could probably get one from your library or on Amazon. The ISBN is 9780714117881.

First of all, no potatoes. These didn't arrive in Europe, much less the north of England and Scotland, until after they were imprted from the Americas, after Columbus in other words.

The place of potatoes was taken by other root crops which included parsnips, turnips and swedes.
Grains included oats and barley in addition to wheat.

Greens include kale, cabbage, leeks and very probably marrows. Meat would most probably have been pork at this date, with pigs feeding in the woods as well as mutton after the sheep had produced enough wool.

Poultry would have included geese as well as chickens - with some villages specilising in raising chickens.

Many villages also had fishponds and orchards for apples.

Most of the land was held in common, with strip farming predominating, village greens were used for poultry, swine etc..

"Most of the land was held in common"

Not sure about this. Most of the land was owned by lords - the descendents of the barons who came over with William the Conqueror. The peasants were allowed small areas of land on which to grow their own crops in exchange for spending most of their days working for the landowner. The common land belonged to the local lords too, but couldn’t be fenced in or cultivated for crops because it was designated common land for grazing animals and collecting wood for fuel. Here again, the commoners weren’t allowed to fell trees but were entitled to any branches they could lop off with billhooks or break off by pulling on it with a shepherd’s crook – hence the saying ‘by hook or by crook’.

Wool was a big industry, thus there were many sheep. Wills of the period generally speak of fields of oats, barley and peas. I agree--no potatoes.

Nope, no potatoes, corn, chocolate, nor most squash, beans or sugar. Here's a useful site- http://www.foodtimeline.org/
on the right are links to several medieval cookbooks. The Forme of Cury is good, and le Viandier de Taillevent is really useful, even though it's French.
Land all belonged to the king, granted to his vassals to support their military duties, they in turn alloted some to their vassals for military duties and to peasants in return for a percentage of their produce, protection and a certain amount of work on the land that they retained, & other duties. It was divided into hides, fertile land farmed in strips, usually by communal effort, in order to divide the best and worst land evenly, enforce good husbandry, and maximize communal resources like plows/oxen/harvesting/marl, fertilizer etc. Usually a 2-3 field rotation system- grain, then peas, then fallow for a year, so as not to wear it out.
A knights fee (fief) was the amount of land required to support one armed knight and his horse, worked by peasant vassals. (approx 100 acres)
Most common crop was maislin- mixed grains, incl wheat, rye, barley, oats, making maislin bread. Peas and maislin were both used for porridge, you might also get barley and oat porridge. Oatcakes and pancakes/crumpet things could be cooked at home on a fire, since ovens were communal. Oats could be ground at home, other grains needed milling, which was expensive. Barley could be brewed into beer, apples to cider, other berries to fruit wines. Lords often had huge fields devoted to a single crop, usually wheat for fine (manchet) bread, barley for beer, hay for feed. Rights to straw could be problematical.

Peasants usually had the right to graze animals on the common land, although the feudal lord sometimes required them to graze them on his fallow fields for the manure/fertilizer/fuel. They usually had pigs and chickens, sometimes Oxen and milk cows, goats, sheep, other poultry. Pigs produce litters every year, fattened and slaughtered every fall for preserved meats, lard, hides, because one breeding sow can subsist on waste from one or two families all winter, then produce several piglets. Other animals would not be slaughtered as long as they produced milk, eggs, wool, or were useful harnessed as work animals. Peasants (and serfs) might also hunt trap rabbits&other rodents like weasels, predators like foxes for meat and fur, and fish. Sometimes they had to poach rabbits&salmon, just like venison, which was a royal perogative. He might grant hunting rights to noble vassals along with land, but rarely to peasants.
Forests usually belonged to the king or Lord- sometimes peasants and commoners had the right to graze pigs in the forest and collect nuts, etc for a percentage, but never to cut trees or hunt there. They could only collect deadfall- but would sometimes create deadfall by knocking branches down with hooks, etc. :) Certain exceptions for holidays or building materials might be made.

They also had gardens for vegetables and herbs, sometimes small orchards-apples, cherries, apricots, pears, nuts, and sometimes wood lots. The hedges were usually berry bushes that also housed birds to eat. Other resources were wild birds, fish, wild plants.
There are lots of medieval herbals for medicine and useful plants- Culpepers and Gerards are available online and pretty exhaustive, although late period.

Scotland used oats and barley as their staples, rather than wheat or rye, as these were best suited to the conditions. these were made into things like porridge, bannocks, oatcakes and scones. Vegetables like turnips (swede/rutabaga), parsnips, carrots, kale, and so on would have been grown on plots by the houses, and the farmers may have kept a couple of cattle and a few sheep. Try researching the crofting system if you want to find out more about the way peasants ran the tennancy of their farms.

Diets would have been heavily supplemented by seasonal forage foods, especially hazlenuts which could be ground to make flour, and hunting. Berries like wild raspberry, wild strawberry, bramble, blaeberry, and crab apples would be turned into stews or mixed in with other things to add flavour, as would fungis. If they lived near the coast, the crofters would collect seaweed, molluscs, shelfish and perhaps even fish themselved from small boats.

Food For Free by Richard Mabey and Wild Food by Ray Mears and Gordon Hillman are brilliant books if you can get hold of them.

According to the Time Traveller's Guide to Mediaeval England..... (I love this book, by Ian Mortimer, and recommend it as a good read, as well as very informative):

There are no carrots, since in the fourteenth century the edible variety hasn't yet been bred - carrots are still inedible and purple, and grow wild.

There is however 'corn' - not corn on the cob, or sweet corn, but something which the natives call corn. Corn is whatever grain is grown locally and is sold in Corn Markets, in places with names like Cornhill, by Corn Merchants - terms and buildings in use in England well before the discovery of America.. As is said this is likely to be wheat, barley, rye and oats - oats predominating in the north.

2005: The Cheese Gate Guard
2006: The Heron's Bridge
2007: Fair Warning
2009: Valley of Thorns

A sixth century Greek herbal show and describes an edible yellow-orange variety of carrot grown in gardens.
http://www.carrotmuseum.co.uk/history.html http://www.carrotmuseum.co.uk/history5.html#orange

The table shows domestic carrot appearing in Britain in the 1400s - the British being behind France, Germany and the Netherlands. They are still not carrot coloured until the 1500s.

So there is no evidence of edible domestic Carrots in Scotland or England in the 14th century, though the wild type might have been grown for medicinal purposes.

2005: The Cheese Gate Guard
2006: The Heron's Bridge
2007: Fair Warning
2009: Valley of Thorns