Food is central to the daily life of everyone who has ever lived, and the Carolingians were no exception. What did they have available to eat? What was on the menu of a peasant, or a lord?
For this post I will rely heavily on secondary sources, as the primary sources simply don’t touch on food that much. Discerning patterns in food production and consumption requires a survey of historical and archaeological sources that span centuries and frontiers, and then coming up with inferences and suppositions based on experience and scholarship. I will leave that to the experts. But let’s see what they have to say.
Let’s start with what was available. The age of the hunter-gatherer had passed, and the populace lived a settled, agricultural life. Cultivated grains included wheat, barley, rye, and oats. While wheat produced more seed per plant, it was not as hardy as some of the others.1.Pearson, Early Medieval Diet, p.4. Growers of the time thought in terms of two types of vegetables. Legumina, or legumes, grew in the fields, and included beans, chickpeas, lentils, peas, and others. Olera, or roots, grew in a garden, and included leeks, garlic, carrots, onions, etc.2.Riche, Daily Life, p.173.