elizabethanfood

Foods For the well to do, eating during the Elizabethan and Jacobean periods was a fancy affair. A king or queen when going abroad could expect banquet tables filled with hundreds of dishes--for just one meal! There was much pageantry and entertainment. At Leicester, Queen Elizabeth I (predecessor of King James VI & I) were greeted with a pageant of welcome displayed on a temporary bridge. There were cages of live birds--bitterns, curlews, hernshaws and godwits. …

…spotted cowslip. Bread wheat, white, rye, barley. In times of dearth bread made of horse-corn, peas, beans, oats, tares, lentils, acorns. Fruit oranges, cherries, rasberries, strawberries, mulberries, peaches, apricots, cornels, currants, raisins, lemons, gooseberry, plums, pears, apples, grapes. Sweets custard, jellies, eringoes, comfits, suckets, codinac, marmalade, cakes, pastries, sugar bread, gingerbread, flan, seed cake, pudding, mincepies, sugar, honey. Drinks stale ale, spirits, milk, buttermilk, whey. Tea and coffee were unknown until well into the 1600s.