Food

Bread

In the Middle Ages, food was one of the many things that varied significantly between the social classes of the medieval social structure. Bread was one of the things that could easily label whether a person was a commoner or a nobleman - brown bread made out of barley or oats was consumed by the peasants, while the nobles had access to white bread - which was made out of wheat. The practice of leavening bread was not available at the time of the High Middle Ages, and most bread was simply unleavened, which was dense and difficult to digest, so it was made thin. A common practice amongst the rich and poor alike was to use the bread as plates(also known as a Trencher) to hold the meal they were consuming, and as they ate their food, the juices from it would soak through the bread and make it more flavorful and easier to eat, which meant that it was usually the last part of the meal to be consumed.

Food for commoners

A commoner was limited to eating from whatever came from their produce, or if they were a town resident, had the option of buying food from their local market. Depending on the region of a person or their direct residence, they would have varying access to food - if a person were to live near a lake or a stream, fish such as salmon, trout or eels would be available to them, while people who dwelled in coastal regions had access to saltwater fish such as herrings, mackerel, and codfish - that is, if they ever knew how to fish. Most meals that commoners consumed were cereals (oats, rye, barley, buckwheat and etc.), legumes(various types of peas and beans), fruit (dependent on region, however commonly for Flintwhenia - apples, pears, plums, figs, and dates), vegetables(cabbage, onions, garlic, and carrots and etc.) and pottage - which is a broad term to define a thick soup or stew made by boiling vegetables, grains and depending on availability - various meat and fish, though it usually consisted of easily available ingredients for the poor.

Meat

Hunting was an activity that only the lords of the land and people who were specially permitted to hunt by their liege had the privilege to engage in, and those who illegally hunted were regarded as poachers and were punished accordingly. Because of this, commoners did not have easy access to meat other than chicken, pork, and fish, which they still did not consume - keeping it only for special occasions or for winter, while the nobility could regularly enjoy a fresh variety of hunted game such as hares, venison, boar and much more.

Etiquette

A meal was a communal affair - which meant that an ordinary family or a group of people would usually eat together, while for nobles, it was quite dependent on whether they were willing to eat with their entire household or only a select few of people who would be greatly honored to be invited into the lord's chambers in order to share the lord's table - which normally had a political purpose, such as rewarding allies or engaging in diplomacy. Food was served in stew pots or trenchers which were made of bread. Forks were not used until the Late Middle Ages and were even heavily condemned, with a famous example of the Empress Consort Theophanu, widely believed to have been the first person to introduce the fork to Western Europe, was met by great astonishment when she used a golden prong to bring food to her mouth instead of her fingers, which was the commonly accepted norm at the time. Instead, spoons and bare hands were used to consume food and knives were also used at the table. Nobles often extended their pinky fingers outwards and never used them to touch the food, instead, they were dipped in whatever spices available - which gives origin for the name 'spice fingers'.

Food preservation

During winter, food was not quite easy to come by as it was in summer, so food preservation was essential. Various methods such as salting, drying or smoking meat were very common and have been in practice since antiquity. A very common way was to expose food to heat in order to remove any moisture and thus reduce the activity of water-dependent microorganisms that cause decay in food. In a warmer climate this could easily be achieved by leaving the food out in the hot sun, and for colder climates - exposure to either the cold weather or a warm oven indoors for several days could do well. Salting was one of the easiest and most convenient methods to preserve food, all sorts of food ranging from vegetables to meat were entirely covered with salt and - depending on how cold the climate actually was, the food could be preserved for years. A small inconvenience related to salting was the fact that before consuming, the salt itself had to be removed, and even then it was still very salty. Fruits were preserved most commonly through drying.