In thinking about camp kitchens, and Medieval cookery, it has dawned on me to ask 'What should we be properly eating?'.

I dabble in Medieval cookery myself - although admitedly a "piker" compared to AM and Gwen, and I have a fair collection of decent Medieval cook books. The problem I see with my collection, is that they are mostly collection of recipies for the upper class (their chefs really).

What should we be eating in the field? In examining this question myself, I suspect the common soldier would be making due with a lot of pottages/soups/stews, based on a vegetable soup. I would imagine that we would be recieving a couple of loaves of bread a day in addition, with perhaps some dairy products such as cheese.

Would meat on the hoof be driven along with an army, to be slaughtered and consumed fresh? (obviously not on a fast day, or during Lent) I know that some effort was made to supply troops with salt fish for Lent/fast days - if we can go by "the Battle of the Herrings" as an example (A English supply train carrying salt herrings to the besiegers of Orleans 1429 for Lent).

Obviously the Nobility, Gentlemen, Officers and Men at Arms would eat better than the common soldier, with each social divison eating a little better than the one below it, except in extreme cases. Should we as Living Historians show this class difference in quality of meals - at least with the public present? (nobody wants to eat brown bread and cabbage soup with nothing else all weekend!)

Anyhow, any thoughts on the subject would be greatly appreciated.

1) What time of year is it? Obviously you're going to eat better on the Continent in summer than in England in the winter. Probably why most campaigns shut down for the winter.

2) How well the person paying for your food pays i.e. are they cheap or generous in their food allotment money

3) How successful the foragers are in finding food to buy from the locals

4) Whether the locals like you enough to sell food to your foragers

5) Where you are and how long you've been there. Obviously if you're in a place for a while, the food sources may become depleted.

But really, this is all hypothetical, and what we really do eat is usually anpother thing. I'm in charge of food for the RedCo. and I admit that we eat much too well for common soldiers- too much meat, too much food, too many sweets, etc. *sigh* I think we eat much closer to what the household of Knight or military captain might eat in the field, but certainly not what grunt soldiers would eat. There's the rub though- who wants to eat cabbage pottage, turnips and brown bread for a week? Maybe a real medieval soldier would be grateful for it, but my guys would stay home if I tried feeding it to them.

So, in fact, I try to be realistic within those parameters- feeding the personal retainers of a military captain.

I think our breakfast is perfect (and Jeff agrees)

We shouldn't eat lunch, but if I tried to cut it out the guys would revolt - so what do I do about that?

I only serve what is correct for the time and season. This last event it would have been early spring in England, so we ate fish, a bit of cabbage, some apples and pears, grains, dairy products and meat. By the end of the weekend, everyone wanted vegetables, but that's the way it would have been in period, right?

We ate "worts", and I was very clear in telling the public how lucky we were to have them. I said it had been a long winter and the new spring greens were just getting big enough to harvest and eat, and that we were lucky the Duke provided for us so well.

We eat no meat on Friday, but that's the day I make fritters and other yummy things. Actually, we're so used to it, and the food is so good we hardly notice that there's no meat.

I guess I'd have to say it's not too difficult to figure out what we *should* be eating, the difficulty lies in sticking to it since it's so limited.

I have some second hand knowledge about what UK re-enactors eat at outdoor events, but maybe I'll tell you what us Dutchies eat and drink at our camps. First: lots of rough wheat/rye breads in the large bun-form. You can get these at special bakers overhere, because the Netherlands are very into natural foods. Then we make our own beer; sometimes 'gruyt' which has herbs in it, sometimes ale-types. We drink that, as well as white Rhine or Mosel wines (very well liked in the MA, and imported in huge vats in my native town of Dordrecht), then mead and ciders. We also sometimes have spiced wines like hypocras and malvesey. On our bread we put butter, salt, different cow and goat cheeses. We also eat the meat of the season: lamb in spring, veal and rabbit in summer, pig and beef in late summer, autumn and winter, hams and bacon the year through. We make pottages with these last meats together with the vegetables of the season and grains. We sometimes bake pastries with either meat or vegetable fillings and also fruit or cream flans and apple filled raviolles. Most of these are spiced with cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, ginger, etc. Then we do blancmangers with almonds and chicken, and cream custards with cherries, etc. etc. In summer we have camps with open fire cooking (ribs, chicken on the spit, lambcasseroles, etc) and in winter we have mostly indoor meals, which are sometimes real banquets.