What did Medieval People call their Meals?

what do you call your evening meal is it dinner sapper or tea what is a pudding is it sweet or savory did you know that breakfast and dinner actually mean the same thing what time did people eat during the medieval period and did they have three meals a day today I'll let them talk TV we're going to look at the history words relating to meal times so grab yourself a crumpet and a Cupa and B up of tea to find out the history of all the words we need to go back back and our journey begins in the Anglo-Saxon period around 1,000 a a peasant couple in early medieval England are awoken when the cockro crows at the break of dawn and they tend the small plot of land next to their house for a couple of hours and then return for the first meal of the day the Moran meta or morning meat which might consist of some bread made from barley some butter or large a few wild Beres perhaps and a glass of Ale Moran meta literally meant morning meat but a at one time meat could mean any type of food or a meal what time people at and what people at depended a lot on their social position the religious calendar the seasons and there would also been some Regional variations and some personal preference too but for most people the main meal of the day would have been the Nona the noon meal you would think that the noon meal would have been eaten at noon it was but it wasn't or rather it was but not with the current meaning of noon did you know that the words noon and nine are related noon literally means the 9th hour of daylight people got up around 6:00 a. m. depending on the season so noon and the Nona would have been eaten around 300 p.

m. meal times were closely associated with the times of daily prayers and the nonnus were the prayers at the 9th hour of daylight and monks would have taken their main meal after the known as prayers but it wasn't just the monks the church had a huge influence on people's daily lives and almost everybody else tended to follow this religious convention for meal times in medieval England the evening meal was known as the Ethan meta the evening meet what did people eat well whatever was available really they would have eaten a lot of bread mostly made of barley Rye or if you were of a higher Social Status you might have had bread made of wheat which was more expensive there was butter lud eggs beans fruit and vegetables that were in season if you needed something sweet they would have eaten honey some meat was eaten but not a lot once again it depended a lot on your social status even if you were Rich enough to have a cow it didn't make much economic sense to kill it because it would deprive you of milk though you would Slaughter it you got too old for milking and if you killed your chickens then you wouldn't have any eggs you'd sometimes have bacon and this is because many peasants re a pig after the Norman conquests of 1066 the monarchy owned and had exclusive rights to the hunting in forests across England so hunting an animal that belonged to the king could cost you dear pun intended you could could be executed for poaching deer or wild boar however there was no such restriction on hunting rabbits or small birds or hedgehogs if that's your thing you would drink ale or meat or water no tea no coffee at that time and a peasant would have had a light evening meal maybe some broth with some bread some chopped meat or some bone marrow spread onto the bread some seasonal fruit and vegetables as we just said but of course no potatoes or tomatoes or corn because Europe hadn't reached the Americas yet and while I was doing this research I read about medlers which was a very popular fruit in medieval times they look like this and I can't say I've ever had a medler have you let us know in the comments now around the 1200s the nonous prayers were moving moved from around 300 p. m.

to around 11:00 a. m. or midday and the meal the NOA moved along with it yet we still call midday noon even though it's no longer the ninth hour anyway as people were eating the main meal of the day much earlier they expected to wait until then before eating in fact it became morally unacceptable to eat in the morning it was viewed by the church as gluttony the Christian Church believed that a period of not eating was good for Spiritual discipline and this period of abstinence was known as fasting fasting was very much part of Christian practice in the Middle Ages for example during the 40 days of lent you were supposed to fast until 3:00 p.

m. the hour of the Lord's death some Christians fasted every Friday and there were many other fast days throughout the year the exception was for children the sick the elderly and soldiers but almost everybody else was expected to fast until they took a break from work to have their noon meal it was their religious Duty nevertheless despite this disapproval of the church some people got hungry before midday so they'd have a little snack nothing substantial but perhaps some barley bread a little cheese and some ale to drink whatever was available a lot of Ale at that time this meal didn't have a name until the mid 15th century when it got to be called you guessed it breakfast break and fast and it wasn't just medieval England by the way in Spanish breakfast is desuno and means the same thing break and fast auno means fast and in French too deun means breakfast J means to fast but deun is actually lunch while putty di is breakfast literally small breakfast this will become relevant in a moment let's carry on let's talk about lunch now the origin of the word is disputed at one time there was a meal called nonion or nonan with an N first recorded around 1270 once again it cognates with noon and depending on when where and who you were it could be taken between 11:00 a. m.

and 400 p. m. nonin was largely replaced by the word lunch first recorded in the 1570s and we're not exactly sure why it was called luncheon it could come from Spanish the word l means a slice of something so you have like a slice of meat or a lump of meat for your luncheon and maybe lra and lunin got merged into one word but that's just a theory the first recorded use of lunch not lunchin isn't until 1786 let's move hungrily on to dinner dinner has come to mean the main meal of the day now when I was at school school dinners were around midday and nowadays for most people dinner is in the evening and in the English speaking world it's quite Regional dinner comes from old French disne in modern French D and ultimately from in this junar do you see where I'm going here this junar literally translates as breakfast so we have two breakfasts in English but less in the French who have three little breakfast followed by breakfast followed by another breakfast that's a lot of bules the word dinner was first recorded in English around, 1300 it's time for tea which depending on where you live is either a drink or a drink with a few cakes and sandwiches or the evening meal or all three tea the drink arrived in England in the 17th century we take the word from Dutch who are the main supplies of tea for England and most of Europe and they got the word from the Min dialect of Chinese tea sometimes refers to a light meal served around 4 p.

m. it's sometimes known as afternoon tea or cream tea the sort of tea where algenon serves cucumber sandwiches in The Importance of Being Earnest and now I'll have a cup of tea and one of those nice cucumber sandwiches you promised me certainly AR austa in the north of England and in Scotland the evening meal for many people is known as tea sometimes referred to as high tea now there is a class distinction here with people from a working class background more likely to call their evening meal tea while the middle classes and upper classes opting for dinner or supper we'll come on to that in a second so what about saer once again it comes from old French so and you might not be surprised that it cognates with the word soup presumably because this lighter evening meal might have been a bowl of soup or grow with some bread so there are three names for the evening meal dinner supper and tea now I did a non-scientific poll on this Channel's Community page asking what people call their evening meal and this was the response dinner 73% supper 16% tea 6% what about you what you call your evening meal but some people supper is not the evening meal but rather the fourth meal of the day A light meal at the end of the day especially if you've had your evening meal early and are hungry again once again all this is very Regional so do let us know in the comments what is supper for you one interesting thing I came across while doing my research on this video was an article in Wikipedia which quotes surveys giving the different times of the evening meal in the United States Peak dinner time is 6:19 p. m.

very precise however in Pennsylvania it's 5:37 p. m. and in Washington D.

C it's 710 p. m. in the UK we tend to eat later the average UK time is 7:47 p.

m. and speaking from my own experience living in London if you don't finish work till around 6:30 you get on the Underground you get don't get back home until about 730 you're going to eat pretty late however I went to University in Leeds and there people would have had their tea as they called it around 5:30 or 6:00 p. m.

I haven't been to leads for a long time so I'm not sure if it's still like that but if you are from Leeds or from Yorkshire from that region then let us know and if three or four meals a day isn't enough you might enjoy a late breakfast or an early lunch known as brunch a port manant word mixing breakfast and lunch brunch is a meal but a lighter meal around 11:00 a. m.