Western Civilization - History Of European Society

Daily Life in the Old Regime335

Most of Europe lived chiefly on starches. The bibli-
cal description of bread as “the staff of life” was true,
and most people obtained 50 percent to 75 percent of
their total calories from bread. Interruptions of the
grain supply meant suffering and death. In good times,
a peasant family ate several pounds of bread a day, up
to three pounds per capita; in lean times, they might
share one pound of bread. A study of the food supply
in Belgium has shown that the nation consumed a per
capita average of one-and-a-quarter pounds of cereal
grains per day. A study of eastern Prussia has shown
that the adult population lived on nearly three pounds
of grain per day. Peasant labors there received their en-
tire annual wages in starches; the quantity ranged from
thirty-two bushels of grain (1694) to twenty-five
bushels of grain and one of peas (1760).
Bread made from wheat was costly because wheat
yielded few grains harvested per grain sown. As a result,
peasants lived on coarser, but bountiful, grains. Their
heavy, dark bread normally came from rye and barley.
In some poor areas, such as Scotland, oats were the sta-
ple grain. To save valuable fuel, many villages baked
bread in large loaves once a month, or even once a sea-
son. This created a hard bread that had to be broken
with a hammer and soaked in liquid before it could be
eaten. For variety, cereals could be mixed with liquid
(usually water) without baking to create a porridge or
gruel.
Supplements to the monotonous diet of starches
varied from region to region, but meat was a rarity. In a
world without canning or refrigeration, meat was con-
sumed only when livestock were slaughtered, in a salted
or smoked form of preservation, or in a rancid condi-
tion. A study of the food supply in Rome in the 1750s
has shown that the average daily consumption of meat
amounted to slightly more than two ounces. For the
lower classes, that meant a few ounces of sausage or
dried meat per week. In that same decade, Romans con-
sumed bread at an average varying between one and
two pounds per day. Fruits and fresh vegetables were
seasonal and typically limited to those regions where
they were cultivated. A fresh orange was thus a luxury
to most Europeans, and a fresh pineapple was rare and
expensive. Occasional dairy products plus some cook-
ing fats and oils (chiefly lard in northern Europe and
olive oil in the south) brought urban diets close to
twenty-five hundred calories per day in good times. A
study of Parisian workers in 1780 found that adult
males engaged in physical labor averaged two thousand
calories per day, mostly from bread. (Figures of thirty-
five hundred to four thousand are common today

among males doing physical labor.) Urban workers of-

ten spent more than half of their wages for food, even

when they just ate bread. A study of Berlin at the end of

the eighteenth century showed that a working-class

family might spend more than 70 percent of its income

on food (see table 18.3). Peasants ate only the few veg-

etables grown in kitchen gardens that they could afford

to keep out of grain production.

Beverages varied regionally. In many places, the

water was unhealthy to drink and peasants avoided it

without knowing the scientific explanation of their

fears. Southern Europe produced and consumed large

quantities of wine, and beer could be made anywhere

that grain was grown. In 1777 King Frederick the Great

of Prussia urged his people to drink beer, stating that he

had been raised on it and believed that a nation “nour-

ished on beer” could be “depended on to endure hard-

ships.” Such beers were often dark, thick, and heavy.

When Benjamin Franklin arrived in England, he called

the beer “as black as bull’s blood and as thick as mus-

tard.”

Wine and beer were consumed as staples of the

diet, and peasants and urban workers alike derived

Expense Percentage

Food

Bread 45

Other vegetable products 12

Animal products (meat and dairy) 15

Beverages 2

Total food 74

Nonfood

Housing 14

Heating, lighting 7

Clothing, other expenses 6

Total Nonfood 27

Note: Figures exceed 100 percent because of rounding.

Source: From data in Fernand Braudel, The Structures of Everyday Life

(New York, N.Y.: Harper and Row, 1981), p. 132.

TABLE 18.3

Food in the Budget of a Berlin Worker’s

Family, c. 1800