Shakespeare and bake: Elizabethan-era food

Fruits were preserved in honey and mostly enjoyed in tarts, cakes and pies. Photo: Flickr/Karen Roe

Amidst the topics of love, tragedy, kings, queens and madmen, there is another subject that appears in many of William Shakespeare’s fine works. Food. The Bard mentioned food over 2,000 times in his collected works, and the word “feast” appears well over 100 times. Let’s not even get started on wine.

Although Shakespeare introduced ghastly recipes such as the three witches’ disgusting gruel in Macbeth or the pie containing the flesh of Queen Tamora’s sons in Titus Andronicus, rest assured that “wool of bat and tongue of dog” or “lizard’s leg and howlet’s wing” weren’t high in demand at dinner tables during the Elizabethan era (1558-1603).

The banquets and feasts enjoyed by the royals, nobles and upper class then were indeed magnificent and truly befitted a queen.

The royalty’s penchant for exquisite food was influenced by Queen Elizabeth I’s father King Henry VIII’s competitiveness with the French King Louis XII. What the French-man could do, the Englishman had to do better. Cooks employed during the Tudor era copied the French high standards and strived to prepare banquets of similar capacity for the English nobles, and the Elizabethans followed suit.

The 1577 Holinshed’s Chronicles notes, “In number of dishes and change of meat the nobility of England (whose cooks are for the most part musical-headed French-men and strangers) do most exceed, sith there is no day in manner that passeth over their heads wherein they have not only beef, mutton, veal, lamb, kid, pork, cony, capon, pig, or so many of these as the season yieldeth, but also some portion of the red or fallow deer, beside great variety of fish and wild fowl, and thereto sundry other delicates.”

The Bard mentions food over 2,000 times in his collected works, and the word 'feast' appears well over 100 times. Photo: Flickr

The rich ate good and not just at home. A 1988 research, published in Museum of London Archeology’s The Rose And The Globe: Playhouses Of Shakespeare’s Bankside, Southwark shows the result of the excavations of two famous Elizabethan theatres that were home to many of Shakespeare’s plays.

The distribution of food leftovers on the sites indicated that there was a class divide in the consumption of snacks. The upper class at the gallery seating watched Shakespearean plays while enjoying meat pies, crabs, sturgeons, peaches and dried figs, while commoners at the yard ate mostly oysters. Lobsters and oysters were considered staple diet of the poor back then. Oh, if only they know how times have changed.

Vegetables and fruits were also regarded as food for the poor, as the rich considered anything from the ground to be lowly. The rich ate little fresh vegetables and few fresh fruits, but occasionally consumed turnips, carrots, radishes, onions, garlic and leek.

Fruits were preserved in honey and mostly enjoyed in tarts, cakes and pies, like the Warden Pie mentioned in Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale. A favourite in the Elizabethan period, the pies were made with rock hard Warden (Worcester Black) pears that kept well and were popular during winter. The rich also liked to enjoy their meat in savoury pies.

Food was also closely tied to medicine back then. The Mrs. Sarah Longe Her Receipt Booke, written in around 1610 has three separate sections for “Preserves and conserves”, “cokery”, and “Physicke and Chirurgery”. It shows that “cookery” and “surgery” were very much intertwined in that era.

But despite consuming food for its medicinal values, both the rich and the poor still had imbalanced diets. The lack of Vitamin C resulted in many cases, scurvy among the people. They also suffered from serious dental issues, no thanks to their sugar cravings.

The rich enjoyed a variety of meat that were served during dinner. The meats were often heavily flavoured with imported spices. Photo: Terry Love

The upper classes had a taste for sweet and spicy food, and could afford the imported spices and sugar to create exotic recipes. Shakespeare’s Supper on history.com notes that during the Bard’s time, spices and sweets were heavily used even in savoury dishes. Cinnamon in chicken dishes, and black pepper, cloves and honey in rabbit stew were very common.

Bread was also a staple Elizabethan diet, and people of different classes ate bread of different makes and qualities. The upper classes ate fine white bread called “manchet” while the poor ate coarse bread of barley or rye.

Most households served three meals a day, although breakfast was not always substantial. It consisted of bread, served with butter and sage, washed down with ale. Water was not clean for consumption during this era. Therefore, they drank lots of wine and ale instead. The rich drank both, but the poor mostly consumed ales brewed with malt and water.

Wine was mostly imported although the rich consumed locally produced fruit wines as well. But the wine and ale had low-alcohol count and it is estimated that an Elizabethan consumed at least four litres of such drinks. How they got any work done is definitely a question to ponder.

The main meal was dinner that was usually had around noon. The upper classes would enjoy dinner with several courses that lasted for hours. It happened in relays. Once the master, family and guests had dined, the servants ate what was left. Any leftovers were given to the needy.

Then supper, a much simpler affair than dinner, was had in the evenings.

The rich, though privileged, weren’t allowed to flaunt their wealth too much especially when food was involved. According to historyextra.com the “Sumptuary Law of May 31, 1517” dictated the number of dishes per meal in a noble household.

“A cardinal could serve nine dishes, while dukes, marquises, bishops and earls could serve seven. Lower-ranking lords were permitted to serve only six, and the gentry class could serve three.”

Bread was a staple Elizabethan diet, and people of different classes ate bread of different makes and qualities. Photo: Flickr/Keith Wiliamson

The law didn’t affect the poor too much as most of them could not afford anything more than pottage. The rich had pottage too, but instead of the basic cabbage soup with barley or oats, theirs would contain almonds, ginger, saffron or perhaps wine.

Seasonality also played an important role in the 16th century diets. Small-scale farmers were unable to feed their livestocks through winter, so most of the animals were slaughtered and the meats preserved. Herrings were pickled and pigs were smoked. Only the wealthy were allowed to hunt game throughout winter, and poaching by the poor could mean having their hands cut off or worse, death.

The Elizabethans consumed huge amounts of food, if only to survive a lifestyle that required more calorie intake than is needed today. They hunted, danced and travelled on foot a lot. Bear in mind that the houses were often cold without carpets or curtains, and they needed lots of sustenance to keep warm and energised.

Now, the Brits don’t hunt for food or ride on horsebacks to get to places anymore, but if Shakespeare were alive today in the second Elizabethan Era, he would still find sonnets on love, tragedy, kings, queens and madmen as relevant.

And after 400 years, Shakespeare would only have more to write about food, feasts, wine, dine and perhaps even a thing or two about fast food and takeaways.

Spicy chops off the Bard

Twelfth Night: Act 1, Scene 1

If music be the food of love, play on. Give me excess of it; that surfeiting, the appetite may sicken, and so die.

Henry IV Part II: Act 2, Scene 4

A man cannot make him laugh – but that’s no marvel; he drinks no wine.

Romeo and Juliet: Act 4, Scene 2

Tis an ill cook that cannot lick his own fingers.

Twelfth Night: Act 2, Scene 3

Do you think because you are virtuous, that there shall be no more cakes and ale?

Twelfth Night: Act 1, Scene 3

I am a great eater of beef and I believe that does harm to my wit.

As You Like It: Act 3, Scene 5

I pray you, do not fall in love with me, For I am falser than vows made in wine.

Othello: Act 2, Scene 3

O thou invisible spirit of wine! If thou hast no name to be known by, let us call thee devil!

The Merry Wives Of Windsor: Act 1, Scene 1

I will rather trust a Fleming with my butter, Parson Hugh the Welshman with my cheese, an Irishman with my aqua-vitae bottle, or a thief to walk my ambling gelding, than my wife with herself.