• mlg@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    No one before the 1930s had access to such a large breed of chicken lol.

    They probably would have confused this picture with a miniature Turkey.

  • ArmchairAce1944@discuss.online
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    2 days ago

    Peasants? Even many nobles didn’t eat like that every day.

    People think that the typical nobleman in the Middle Ages ate like King Henry VIII. That isn’t true. Did you know that they determined that at least at a few points in Vlad the Impaler’s life he was basically living on a vegan diet? They ate a hell of a lot of vegetables and grains because meat was still expensive for everyone involved.

    • Lucky_777@lemmy.world
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      2 days ago

      This. You had a steady diet of vegetables and bread. Maybe eggs if you had chickens and some small bit of land. Those times were harsh as fuck

      • vga@sopuli.xyz
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        20 hours ago

        Or our lives are abundant as fuck, which makes everything else look like absolute poverty.

      • ArmchairAce1944@discuss.online
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        22 hours ago

        Also they weren’t guzzling wine and ale at all hours and when they did drink it was usually cut with water or what they called ‘small beer’ and very young wine (which didn’t have time to properly fermented and reach full potency) that had limited alcohol content. Also they did drink water. In the same way that in places in the world where they have limited water treatment facilities they still drink water even if it isn’t the best.

        Again… they weren’t stupid. They might not have had the depth and breadth of modern medical technology on how alcohol affects you, but people knew what it did and they know what addiction is (even if they made it out to be a personal weakness) and how terrible it was.

  • Damorte@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    A medieval peasant would be eating gruel, not fancy white bread (that’s for royalty basically) or the egg creating machine, because that’s what makes the eggs which you will also not eat because the royalty nicks them all as “taxes”.

    • SpongyAneurysm@feddit.org
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      22 hours ago

      The roast chicken is usually not an egg creating machine though.
      They are fairly young male chickens, that have been raised just past their maximum growth rates.

      I guess that wouldn’t have been that much different in medieval times. The difference nowadays is, that we have specialized breeds for egg-laying or meat production vice versa and the respective ‘wrong’ sex of each will just be ‘discarded’ right after hatching.

  • Iron Lynx@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    It looks basic but quite tasty if the prep and spicing has been done right.

    Not every good meal has to be a Michelin Star affair, y’know. Sometimes, all you need is fries and two kroketten to be satisfied.

    • Jännät@sopuli.xyz
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      1 day ago

      Not every good meal has to be a Michelin Star affair

      Is eating a vegetable your threshold for “Michelin Star affair”?

  • manuallybreathing@lemmy.ml
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    2 days ago

    Even in the 1960s eating a whole chicken would have been a luxury, this isn’t peasant food, that’s the gout inducing diet of a king

      • Faildini@lemmy.world
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        2 days ago

        I used to work at Boston Market, and there were definitely customers that would order a whole chicken just for themselves and eat it. Not every day or anything, but it wasn’t rare enough to raise eyebrows either.

  • arc99@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    A lazy supermarket special - a roast chicken in a bag and a baguette roll picked up on the way to the checkout. We’ve all been there and I’m sure it makes a passable meal, but cooking is a skill everyone should endeavour to be proficient in.

  • Tattorack@lemmy.world
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    3 days ago

    Soft white bread? Nobody but rich upper class people could afford soft white bread until well past the industrial revolution.

    That’s also a pretty large roasted bird that’s being eaten in complete absence of stew.

    • webghost0101@sopuli.xyz
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      3 days ago

      King Richard I was once captured for ransom while traveling undercover trough Austria.

      His cover was blown specifically because he tried ordering a roast chicken.

      There are a few variations of the details in this story though, a peasant could definitely have owned a chicken and eaten it when it died but it was probably way more valuable to sell it.

    • Denjin@feddit.uk
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      3 days ago

      Doubtful, most common meal for peasants would have been a sort of stew of vegetables and oats called pottage.

      A whole chicken would have been prohibitively expensive either to purchase or in lost money from sale at market, same for pork or beef.

      Fish though would be plentiful and cheap and a valuable source of protein. Oysters were considered peasant food until pretty much the 20th century.

      Wheat bread similarly would have been a rare luxury, especially made from refined white flour, rye and buckwheat, roughly ground would be far more common.

    • mech@feddit.org
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      2 days ago

      Depends on time and place, of course. Peasants in the late medieval period in England ate more meat than we do today (about 40% of their calories).

    • AA5B@lemmy.world
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      3 days ago

      A roasted bird? Why not? Y’all are making assumptions that this is a chicken and the peasant a small farmer but why not a traveling mime trapping pigeons from the square?

  • john_t@piefed.ee
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    2 days ago

    “What is the charge? Eating a meal? A succulent chicken meal?”, “Get your hand off my baguette!”