I think a heavy meal at noon when sitting at your desk is a recipe for a nap, but I will say from my experience working on the farm that if you did not fill up during lunch it was very hard to maintain your energy during a day of hard labor. So this eating pattern makes a lot of sense for the context.
Having worked as both a teacher and in a factory I can definitely agree. In both circumstances breakfast was very light, a banana or toast or something like that. As a teacher you are more active than a standard office clerk, but it's not all too physically demanding so you can have a light lunch and a substantial dinner. But when I was working in a factory I noticed that that didn't work and even my wife told me I couldn't just have a sandwich at lunch anymore that I needed something more substantial. I still have a decent dinner though.
So I guess really it depends on what type of activity you’re doing. A heavy meal before sitting around can tire you out, but it has the opposite effect if you’re moving around and doing physical activity.
When I was growing up in Mobile Alabama, lunch for the office and construction workers downtown was 2 hours. My father would come home to a hot meal, take a nap on the den couch, then go back to work.
My grandfather on my mom's side had a farm in Minnesota, and he followed this almost exactly. At that time, nobody was a "specialty" farmer. He and grandma did everything. Grew corn for sale, grew hay for their beef cows, had a milk cow for the farm, etc. So he'd get up, milk the cow at 5:30 AM, come in around 6:30 for oatmeal and a cup of Folgers coffee, back out to work until around 11, then a big lunch with vegetables, pork chops, mashed potatoes, etc., then a nap on the couch for an hour or so (do NOT disturb), then back out to work until dark. In the summer, when dark wasn't until 9, a small break with a cup of coffee and a butter and bologna sandwich might happen. Then at the end of the day, a small meal; a roll with jam, maybe soup or some hot dish (and maybe on a weekend, a wedge of pie) then to bed. Rinse, repeat. When we'd visit, we'd all be eating toast, eggs and bacon on Saturday morning, and he'd have his bowl of oatmeal with warm cow's milk he'd milked that morning (occasionally with a bit of hay floating on top) and brown sugar or honey. Not too different a routine than the last century or so, apparently.
Fueling the body's furnace with caloric needs to match expected energy output made perfect sense back then. If you think about how a fire is "fed or starved" of fuel or oxygen. . . This old eating pattern could go back way further than anyone imagines!
I'm an 80s kid who grew up in Kentucky. Supper was our big meal, but we also had "bedtime snacktime" which was often a glass of cold milk with a piece of leftover cornbread crumbled into it, then eaten with a spoon. We called it Crumble In and it sounds a lot like this recipe! I like thinking we were just doing the same thing our great grandparents probably did.
70s and 80s kid here. My mom still enjoys cornbread in milk as a snack. And I've made the same assumption as you, that's it's been passed down for generations because it's simple and quick.
I work PM hours (Noon to 8pm) and oddly follow an 18th century meal plan. Small breakfast, large lunch, snacking or small meal before bed. Never gave this thought till this series.
I grew up in a big family, that is also how I was raised. Now I have coffee and toast after I wake then after a morning walk, a breakfast of cereal or eggs, lunch is the main meal and a light supper of maybe banana and yogurt or a cup of soup with bread or crackers on a cold night. Been doing this for 75 years now.
This video was very surprising to me. I live in a farmers family in Germany and we still eat like this today. A light breakfast, sometimes just coffee and water, definitely nothing savoury, lunch is a big warm meal where everyone comes too the table and dinner is cold, bread, sausage like salami or ham, sometimes fish and vegetables.
Well that's just it, it depends on the work culture. At the _vast_ majority of jobs in the U.S. you cram through your eight hours ASAP so you can get home. Quite a lot of people just eat something at their desks and continue working, even.
Very interesting! So how does everyone come to the table at lunch if everyone is working in different locations? Do you all head home for a long break and then go back to work until late?
@@andyl8025lunch is light convenient and solitary. Some people only get 30 minutes for lunch so there's not enough time to spend it with family. Some people skip lunch altogether. I would sometimes skip lunch if I had alot of work to do.
@@andyl8025 Basically. Me and my siblings come home from school at around one 1 pm. My mother usually has made lunch by then, she always goes into the kitchen between 11 and 12 am after having done most of her work outside for the late morning. My father also either comes home around this time or if he already is somewhere on the farm, he comes too the house. We usually either find him somewhere and tell him that lunch is ready or we just write a message into the family chat. With my grandpa it's the same but he really can't use modern electronics so someone always searches for him if he is on the farm. Sometimes he just isn't because he either has a bit more work or he is delivering produce and will come home later. Then everyone eats till 2 pm or longer and then it's back too work.
Another possible reason for the light supper in the evening is that in northern countries during the winter it gets dark early and it’s nearly impossible to cook by fire and candle light. I’ve tried this and definitely can’t see what I’m doing. Much easier to eat something leftover or already cooked earlier in the day, like bread and cheese.
You have to remember that with such a large mid-day meal, there would often be a siesta to nap and digest, and then a return to work, with a small dinner just before bed at 9 or 10PM. Modern industrial work days don't allow for this so the lunch was made smaller and more convenient. Also in the past folks often we working near their homes where a large meal could be prepared whereas in the modern era when working outside the home became the norm, smaller portable lunches became prevalent. Notice also how school is organized. In Italy for example, where the agrarian culture persisted longer, school ends around 1PM so children can join their family for their large "pranzo" lunch. In the US however, lunch is eaten at school, often in under 40 minutes, where schoolwork begins immediately after mimicking the modern workplace.
School in the US is partly a day care center for kids that just happens to educate kids. Since most jobs are 9-5, the school schedule is built to accommodate this so it goes from 7:30 to around 14:30 or 3:30 so parents can use lunch time to pick up kids, go home to family or do some after school program for few hours to get picked up by parents. As bad as the US school time system is, there are actually worse ones out there.
"A melancholy juice" also tells us that whoever wrote this believed pigeon eaten at night would unbalance the humours and possibly lead to illness. Many food and drink choices of the time were based on the humoral theory of medicine.
they are talking about indigestion I can imagine tough wild pigeon inducing indigestion and vivid dreams try going to bed with a tummy full of cheese and apples....always works for me to induce vivid dreams
Given what we now know about pigeons as disease carriers, and given the ovens may have run at a lower temperature, they weren't wrong about the result. I don't know exactly how much lower-temperature ovens could be, but I've heard of Tudor dishes which, in a modern oven, would come out as hard as bricks unless they're baked for much less time; less than half the time stated in the recipes.
@@Miss_Kisa941799 is pretty late for 'medieval'. Washington had bloodletting used as part of treatment for pneumonia. We could possibly quibble about whether the rationale was the humor theory, but it's still probably the case that holdovers stuck around whether adherence did or not.
This channel just understands their core audience. Bravo. Plus the camera work, editing, everything. You've come a long way. Now I'm hungry.... thanks for the great content!
I just wanted to leave this comment, I've been following you for.... Not sure how long now! But I remember a time when you were faltering a bit about the future of your channel and it brings me joy to see that it's not only gone the opposite, but it's thriving! I see other YT channels mention you hither and dither and it's always a joy. Cheers for many more old style cooking days! \o/
Here in Brazil, at least in my region, the meal sizes depend on the weather. When it's extremely hot (like right now), we tend to eat ligther lunches, more salads. During winter, we eat more (and a lot of heavy soups) at dinner. I imagine that had its place, especially back then as well. Great video!
I've noticed that to be common here in Minnesota, USA as well. It can get into negative temperatures during winter regularly so soups and roasts keep you toasty.
4:15 funnily enough, meat is very easy on the stomach since our body absorbs most of it, leaving a very tiny amount actually being converted to waste product.
Seniors tend to eat this way today, well at least in rural areas. Any rural person will tell you most restaurants have early bird specials for seniors who eat their main meal in the late afternoon. The older you get the worse your body handles a heavy meal closer to bedtime.
Where i live and how i was raised, we called our meals Breakfast (Morning meal), Dinner (mid day meal), and Supper (the evening meal). In addition i have heard this saying “Eat breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince, and dinner like a pauper.” ― Adelle Davis
Didnt know from who “Eat breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince, and dinner like a pauper.” came from, i heard it from my great grandma and grandma all my life. i just put it in to the "farmers know" category since thats what they have been doing all there life
Here in germany, lunch is the largest meal of the day for most people. I think it's intriguing to see the differences in food cultures around the world and throughout time :)
I thought I was alone here in America for only preferring a heavy meal during lunch and light meals for breakfast and dinner. I naturally preferred this way of eating after being on my own for some time, after leaving home and the school systems which forced me to eat with others and how others ate.
I always wondered why people referred to their evening meal differently; supper, tea or dinner. I'm Welsh and we have so many different dialects that I assumed that to be the reason, like the same way everyone has their own word for the tv remote 😂 thank you for answering a question I've long pondered over!
My bf's grandmother, a very dignified woman, referred to the last meal of the day as "supper." "Would you like to come over for supper?" Clarified the distinction between "dinner" & "supper" for me forever after.
In germany Dinner/Lunch (Mittagessen) was still the big meal in working class households in the 1980s/90s. Shifts often ran 6:00-14:00 and when father came home he wanted a big meal. School ran 8:00-13:00 and so either you waited (it took me almost an hour due to the public bus while father had 15min) and ate together or at least pupils and mother did. And Saturday/Sunday the family often sat down around 12. Breakfast and Suppen (Frühstück und Abendessen) where small stuff
Why in the 1980a/90s? That's exactly how it was during my school time and I was born in 1996. It's more or less still the same when I visit my mother. We wake up, have some bread and tea (because East Frisia) for breakfast, 11am we have some coffee, 1 pm we have lunch and then we have supper with bread in the evening.
I grew up in the UK in the 1960s/70s. The meal eaten at school was sometimes referred to as lunch, but usually dinner. The hour out of lessons was always called dinner-time and the meals schools served were suitable to be the main meal of the day. People who ate a large meal at 6pm (or there abouts) were in the minority in those days. You're describing the 20th Century more than you suspect.
Always interesting seeing videos like this since in my family in the North East of England the older meal names are still used alongside the evening meal being tea. Causes no end of confusion when talking to people when my dinner is their lunch and their dinner is my evening tea etc, though at least we can agree on breakfast. Supper is invariably a light meal but rarely eaten.
Love these videos. And they were right, a light supper is better for your digestion! This time of year it’s lovely to come back and re watch some of my favourite videos of yours. They just soothe the soul in these troubled times.
makes a lot of sense why they were eaten with ale, or how most suppers would have ale, as it would likely help relax the body and put the worker into a comfortable sleep. I for one have a glass of whisky when im up late or am too energetic for bed and i fall asleep like a baby. Great video as always!
I love videos like these. Learning things about how our ancestors existed and thrived always fills my day. Thank you, John and the whole Townsends team!
Thanks for another great video. I've wondered what seed cakes are since I first saw them mentioned in "The Hobbit" or "The Lord of the Rings". I'm definitely going to make some. By the way, "melancholy juice" would have made a great name for a 90's rock band.
I really enjoy Townsends videos. I live overseas and people sometimes ask me what the difference is between American and Canadian cuisine [I'm Canadian].....and I have had to answer..."honestly there is absolutely no difference at all".....❤❤❤️
Over here in Switzerland this meal plan is quite normal. Breakfast before we start working is rather small, we have a second breakfast at ~9 AM called "z'Nüni" where we also eat something small, then the biggest meal of the day for lunch around 12, then supper with something small around 7 PM. If you are working hard, then you have an intermediate meal around 4PM called "z'Vieri" or "z'Abe". I think it is quite a European thing to have a proper break at noon for eating instead of just eating a sandwich in between two strikes of a hammer or in front of a PC.
Very interesting topic! I am going to give this a try (but probably not this week considering Thanksgiving). I have been inspired to a much simpler way of living from watching this channel and look forward to each episode. I hope these continue for a while to come!
The townsends have gotten a lot of us through Covid and has become an essential part of our lives now. Keep up the great work and I will say that you and your channel are this generations Bob Ross of colonial knowledge.
Ironically, they had it right, light breakfast, heavy lunch, light dinner. During sleep is when your body does a lot of really amazing things for healing, you don't want your body spending all that energy on digestion
On some things they were actually ahead of their time. There was an excellent video he did a year or two ago about the medical practices of the Spanish, and they were actually somewhat close to what we do today (even if they didn’t necessarily know why).
This. For me I often don't get hungry until later anyways, so you can have a big lunch, small early dinner. A small breakfast, just enough to hold you over until lunch, if hungry early. I've seen with my heart rate monitor, elevated resting heart rate while sleeping if I eat too much, too near bed, and feel less rested in general if I do so. I'm also not hungry while I'm sleeping, so why would I eat before bed anyways? Still rarely hungry in the morning, so a coffee before starting the day is all that's needed.
@@TheSkillotron no, but your body is in a less rested state while digesting. I see it in my sleeping heart rate the next morning. I feel it, too. Less rested if my body wasn't as deeply resting. Less deep sleep, perhaps. Deep sleep is when the brain often gets flooded with cerebral fluid to clear out buildup
I have been watching your channel since 2012, and I just have to say thank you so much for all of your content. It is some of the most relaxing, entertaining, educational media that I watch.
Is the picture at 1:32, of farmers leaning against a shock of sheafs, from Tess of the D'Urbervilles? Im currently reading it and it reminds me of that scene in the book. Love the videos, brilliant as always, Jon et al.
Thanks for sharing with us Jon. This is valuable information that would help many folks today to live by those thoughts and eliminate many for our digestive and over weight problems along with diabetes and nightmares. Stay safe and everyone enjoy a great Thanksgiving Day with families and friends. Fred.
My great aunt, who was born in the late 1800s and died in the 1990s called the noontime meal 'dinner' her whole life. She was married to a New England farmer, and it very much showed.
In the North East of England (UK), it is also very common to call lunchtime 'dinner' even today, funnily enough. Pease pudding is also a regional dish here, most of the UK hasn't heard of it but it's one of my favourite comfort foods.
I thoroughly enjoy your videos. It is so nice to think about a place in time that seems simpler and free. Hard work and hearty meals. I really appreciate the escape. 🙏🏼 thank you 🙏🏼
Lunch/dinner being the largest meal just makes sense from a practical standpoint. Food is for energy and you don't need much energy to sleep, but you sure need it to toil in the fields and factories.
The link between the avoidance of heavy evening meals and overnight digestion is a brilliant, thank you for continuing to explore their relationship with food. Thrilled to see wiggs making an appearance too, along with varied levels of wiggs available to suit different circumstances. Looking forward to baking some some extra flavorful seed cakes in the approaching holiday season. Cheers!
another good one, John. I started watching you because I feel food is one of the best ways of knowing more about the lives of the average man in history. You don't disappoint. Thanks.
Carroway Seed apparently helps with digestion, i assume they understood this fact and if the premise is easily digestible like some of the writing you found suggests, it makes perfect sense why they show up so often.
I follow my Free Food Diet: what can I pick from my garden today? That translates to mostly soups and salads. I dehydrate same and it gives me winter soups. Sprouts and mini greens all winter. I bake bread, biscuits, crackers and make flatbreads. I started growing soft wheat a few years ago, better for flatbreads. I make vegetable relishes and slather relish on everything. Pickled peppers. It's a simple process, mainly vegetables. A dab of meat in the pot. My parents and grandparents ate from huge gardens, but the dab of meat was mostly wild game or backyard chickens. Mom traded eggs for raw milk. We made butter too.
ita always about fall/winter time where i find myself watching this channel, when the weather is colder and im always in search of anything cozy and comforting
My great grandma called lunch,supper and dinner (the late meal) supper. Her parents were born in Kentucky, so they used a lot of the old American terms for things. Supper is derived from the European root word for soup.
The luncheon-dinner-supper habit is an interesting one in both time and place. I was caught off-guard when I traveled to Europe many years ago and had opportunity to sup with a local family. I was used to the big American dinner as the last meal but they had their big meal earlier and ended with a light supper (generally breads, cheeses, and sausages). I went to bed hungry for a while before I could adjust 😂
Once I left school, I have eaten this type of meal plan. No we are both retired, we have our main meal at lunchtime, with sone fruit at tea time. Nb: my mutti (German mother) made caraway cake for my papa in the 1960s, no alcohol...
2:30 there's actually some interesting analysis done on if you call the afternoon meal dinner or the evening meal dinner. I think it's that more rural areas still call the afternoon meal dinner and the evening meal supper. Because the big meal was the midday one for longer there. Where working during the hottest part of the day didn't make sense. Whereas in the city, where industrialization has been the norm since at least the mid 19th C, dinner got shifted to the evening meal, since it was now the biggest meal of the day. Because you only had a very short lunch break, if at all, so you simply didn't have the time for a big meal
You had breakfast, Dinner and Supper back then. 80%-90% of the food intake was Dinner (Lunch today). Supper was a bit of left over Dinner, or maybe a slice of pie. Breakfast was anything lying around, like biscuits, made once or twice a week for the week.
A couple things to add on, from experience living a rougher life in the bush, and having jobs where the lunch was supplied. 1. Outhouse visits at night are not exactly everyone's personal preference. So anything that reduces the need to unload is a good thing, both for safety and sleep. 2. If you know you have a guaranteed lunch each day that easily fills your belly; you won't be spending as much on the breakfast and supper you might have normally spent more on.
Ale and condensed calories in the form of bread makes an excellent digestif for a working man. It was likely enough to fight muscle soreness or enable them to work the next day. Good stuff.
Me, a German: "So nothing would've changed, okay". I maybe eat two slices of bread for breakfast with some tea. Lunch should be the main meal for me in an ideal world and supper (German: Abendbrot, literally "Evening bread") is usually just bread again or some other light meal. Although it really depends how it fits into my day. I often don't have the time during noon to actually have lunch, so I often postpone it to 5-7 pm and don't have supper at all. And it can also vary what and how much I eat for breakfast. Like on some days I will make some fried eggs on bread or muesli or something.
I knew some old people who ate a hot meal at noon and bread in the evening. Their explanation was that this setup was easier on the wife (she could do the dishes in the afternoon instead of having to do it late in the evening)
"Supper" as a simple, light meal is still common over in Germany where they might pick up some fresh baked bread from a nearby bakery, and have it with butter, freshly sliced tomato, and maybe some deli meat; but it's something with nearly no prep time.
In German it is called Abendbrot, literally "evening bread". I wouldn't go pick up fresh bread just for that, but you'd likely have bread for a few days at home.The toppings you give are oddly specific, usually it's butter plus whatever you like; sausage or meat cuts, cheese, jam, honey and so on. Personally I do like to add some fresh greens as well, like sliced cucumber, tomato or bell peppers, but that's not universal. Incidentally, breakfast usually is exactly the same or some kind of cereal, granola, oats, not unlike the oatmeal in the video. A heavy breakfast with eggs, bacon and grilled sausages is not common at all, that would be considered something to have as main meal of the day at noon.
I think it's kinda wild how out of hand stories about people's diets in the past were. Like people forget herbs and salt were common in Europe, and most of the stories about the rarity of meat (as well as stories about not bathing) only apply to Victorians.
This is very true indeed different cultures where as u go south had different climates too.. History just shows how different mediterranean cousine is now too compared to the English
"and most of the stories about the rarity of meat (as well as stories about not bathing) only apply to Victorians." I mean, bathing sure, but meat? You're telling me some serf that might own some chickens for eggs is gonna be eating meat on a regular basis somehow?
@@colbyboucher6391 They fished and hunted, some reared a pig. Meals considered “poor” back then were actually healthier for you than the ones eaten by the rich.
@@terminallumbago6465Moderm people forget about how common game and salted/cured meats were in the past, the meat we eat today was rare or ocasional (beef and chicken mostly) but game birds and such were plenty, for example.
Any chance of a video on knives used in the time period? Pocket knife, utility knife, things that various people would carry with them on a daily basis.
Your videos are always so pleasant and informative, thank you for another wonderful lesson and recipe!! Your voice is so relaxing, I could listen to you read the phonebook.
I've been playing in church bands for about 17 years. Get to meet alot of musicians of different levels, interesting band leaders, new music weekly and practice musicianship that's sometimes missing in rock shows. And I'm not up until 3 in the morning
Bread in ale - or as we say in Denmark: *Ølle-brød.* Stale, shredded rye bread of the dense, dark kind we like en Denmark, soaked in ale or small ale. Ad a little sugar, and if you're lucky a little cream
The huge lunch and tiny supper is still very much a thing in many European cultures with kids coming home from school and adults coming home from work to gather as a family for a big lunch.
How is it possible to have a big lunch if all of the adults are working during the morning? When is there time to prepare the big lunch? Maybe prepared the evening before?
Depends on who you ask. In my country A: it is a cultural thing. It is common to have a 1 h lunchbreak during which workers go to a restaurant together (you get discounted prices in lunchtime). Some workplaces even have their own cook/restaurant/cantine. B: mothers get a 3 year "parenting" leave. I don't wanna get into the "women belong to kitchen" thing but yeah, if you have 2 children, that is 6 years of free lunches for you.😂
With the exception of Sat. & Sun. mornings, where he would have eggs, bacon, toast and coffee; my grandfather would have a bowl of hot or cold cereal for breakfast. At lunch he was served meat, potatoes, bread and vegetables. Supper was soup and sandwich, or left overs.
A very agrarian meal for the working laborers. Tied to the geographical climate and the availability of resources. Beer (of some form) is a very common source of easy liquid calories, and of course you have wheat bread too. It’s fascinating to see diets change and adapt as the working world does the same.
0:59 in germany until probably around mid 2000s lunch was still the biggest meal by far with dinner being not particularly big. and your points at 3:20 definetly applied to that too
What many lose is the concept of time of day. We in the modern world stay up very late because of our extra lighting. A working person of the 18th century was most likely asleep by 9pm at the latest. We in the modern world have shifted our waking hours much later based on our lighting and lifestyle.
Seed cakes are what I remember from The Hobbit; the hobbit has them made ready for his own mealtime- the Dwarves show up for the Unexpected Party and they are all eaten.
The French words diner and souper, which both mean to eat gives us the clues to the older meaning of dinner and supper in English. Diner is a big meal that typically consists of multiple courses. This was the meal that was served at midday when people came in from the fields after a few hours of work. This was designed to be eaten over a couple of hours and give everyone a huge boost in morale and energy for the rest of the day. Souper is a light meal at the end of the day. Because we didn’t do much after sunset without modern artificial lighting, it was a simple meal that could be eaten fairly quickly before retiring for the night.
Makes me wonder how much other old wisdom we have forgotten. They had it right even without the research we mostly ignore to back it. Cheers and thanks.
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I think a heavy meal at noon when sitting at your desk is a recipe for a nap, but I will say from my experience working on the farm that if you did not fill up during lunch it was very hard to maintain your energy during a day of hard labor. So this eating pattern makes a lot of sense for the context.
Having worked as both a teacher and in a factory I can definitely agree. In both circumstances breakfast was very light, a banana or toast or something like that. As a teacher you are more active than a standard office clerk, but it's not all too physically demanding so you can have a light lunch and a substantial dinner. But when I was working in a factory I noticed that that didn't work and even my wife told me I couldn't just have a sandwich at lunch anymore that I needed something more substantial. I still have a decent dinner though.
So I guess really it depends on what type of activity you’re doing. A heavy meal before sitting around can tire you out, but it has the opposite effect if you’re moving around and doing physical activity.
When I was growing up in Mobile Alabama, lunch for the office and construction workers downtown was 2 hours. My father would come home to a hot meal, take a nap on the den couch, then go back to work.
My farming uncles ate their main meal at noon. They then took an hour to rest and went back to work until work was done.
@@mmthomas3729I hate that lol. I want to get my work done and go home.
It's difficult for me to put into words how much I love this channel. This is the epitome of comfort content.
Yes - Townsends is just candy
But wholesome, like remembering happiness
Perfect to watch while eating honestly
Agreed. I just had a really rough day, but Townsends made it a little more bearable.
Same for me. I love this channel so much, and as one who often cooks at home, many of these recipes look so delicious and fairly simple.
Well spoken
My grandfather on my mom's side had a farm in Minnesota, and he followed this almost exactly. At that time, nobody was a "specialty" farmer. He and grandma did everything. Grew corn for sale, grew hay for their beef cows, had a milk cow for the farm, etc. So he'd get up, milk the cow at 5:30 AM, come in around 6:30 for oatmeal and a cup of Folgers coffee, back out to work until around 11, then a big lunch with vegetables, pork chops, mashed potatoes, etc., then a nap on the couch for an hour or so (do NOT disturb), then back out to work until dark. In the summer, when dark wasn't until 9, a small break with a cup of coffee and a butter and bologna sandwich might happen. Then at the end of the day, a small meal; a roll with jam, maybe soup or some hot dish (and maybe on a weekend, a wedge of pie) then to bed. Rinse, repeat. When we'd visit, we'd all be eating toast, eggs and bacon on Saturday morning, and he'd have his bowl of oatmeal with warm cow's milk he'd milked that morning (occasionally with a bit of hay floating on top) and brown sugar or honey. Not too different a routine than the last century or so, apparently.
Love this
Which part of MN?
Fueling the body's furnace with caloric needs to match expected energy output made perfect sense back then. If you think about how a fire is "fed or starved" of fuel or oxygen. . .
This old eating pattern could go back way further than anyone imagines!
@@cherilynnfisher5658hence the saying "food is fuel"
I bet grandpa went to town on your grandma after dinner hehehe.
I'm an 80s kid who grew up in Kentucky. Supper was our big meal, but we also had "bedtime snacktime" which was often a glass of cold milk with a piece of leftover cornbread crumbled into it, then eaten with a spoon. We called it Crumble In and it sounds a lot like this recipe! I like thinking we were just doing the same thing our great grandparents probably did.
70s and 80s kid here. My mom still enjoys cornbread in milk as a snack. And I've made the same assumption as you, that's it's been passed down for generations because it's simple and quick.
We ate this once in a while too. It's really just porridge. But, it's good.
Yum
I work PM hours (Noon to 8pm) and oddly follow an 18th century meal plan. Small breakfast, large lunch, snacking or small meal before bed. Never gave this thought till this series.
I do this too, with oats for breakfast, they're lovely with honey and butter.
I grew up in a big family, that is also how I was raised. Now I have coffee and toast after I wake then after a morning walk, a breakfast of cereal or eggs, lunch is the main meal and a light supper of maybe banana and yogurt or a cup of soup with bread or crackers on a cold night. Been doing this for 75 years now.
Yes. I do this as well.
Around some parts of the world it is still like that. Biggest meal (and more important socially) was the lunch. It still like this in Brasil
This is pretty common in New England.
This video was very surprising to me. I live in a farmers family in Germany and we still eat like this today. A light breakfast, sometimes just coffee and water, definitely nothing savoury, lunch is a big warm meal where everyone comes too the table and dinner is cold, bread, sausage like salami or ham, sometimes fish and vegetables.
Well that's just it, it depends on the work culture. At the _vast_ majority of jobs in the U.S. you cram through your eight hours ASAP so you can get home. Quite a lot of people just eat something at their desks and continue working, even.
Very interesting! So how does everyone come to the table at lunch if everyone is working in different locations? Do you all head home for a long break and then go back to work until late?
@@andyl8025lunch is light convenient and solitary. Some people only get 30 minutes for lunch so there's not enough time to spend it with family. Some people skip lunch altogether. I would sometimes skip lunch if I had alot of work to do.
@@andyl8025 Basically. Me and my siblings come home from school at around one 1 pm. My mother usually has made lunch by then, she always goes into the kitchen between 11 and 12 am after having done most of her work outside for the late morning. My father also either comes home around this time or if he already is somewhere on the farm, he comes too the house. We usually either find him somewhere and tell him that lunch is ready or we just write a message into the family chat. With my grandpa it's the same but he really can't use modern electronics so someone always searches for him if he is on the farm. Sometimes he just isn't because he either has a bit more work or he is delivering produce and will come home later. Then everyone eats till 2 pm or longer and then it's back too work.
@@edwardmarshall2035 not really, atleast not here. General culture in Germany makes lunch a quite big meal.
Another possible reason for the light supper in the evening is that in northern countries during the winter it gets dark early and it’s nearly impossible to cook by fire and candle light. I’ve tried this and definitely can’t see what I’m doing. Much easier to eat something leftover or already cooked earlier in the day, like bread and cheese.
You have to remember that with such a large mid-day meal, there would often be a siesta to nap and digest, and then a return to work, with a small dinner just before bed at 9 or 10PM. Modern industrial work days don't allow for this so the lunch was made smaller and more convenient. Also in the past folks often we working near their homes where a large meal could be prepared whereas in the modern era when working outside the home became the norm, smaller portable lunches became prevalent. Notice also how school is organized. In Italy for example, where the agrarian culture persisted longer, school ends around 1PM so children can join their family for their large "pranzo" lunch. In the US however, lunch is eaten at school, often in under 40 minutes, where schoolwork begins immediately after mimicking the modern workplace.
School in the US is partly a day care center for kids that just happens to educate kids. Since most jobs are 9-5, the school schedule is built to accommodate this so it goes from 7:30 to around 14:30 or 3:30 so parents can use lunch time to pick up kids, go home to family or do some after school program for few hours to get picked up by parents. As bad as the US school time system is, there are actually worse ones out there.
"A melancholy juice" also tells us that whoever wrote this believed pigeon eaten at night would unbalance the humours and possibly lead to illness. Many food and drink choices of the time were based on the humoral theory of medicine.
Wasn't that medieval? I think they knew a little more than that in the 18th century. Although they didn't really understand germ theory yet.
they are talking about indigestion
I can imagine tough wild pigeon inducing indigestion and vivid dreams
try going to bed with a tummy full of cheese and apples....always works for me to induce vivid dreams
Given what we now know about pigeons as disease carriers, and given the ovens may have run at a lower temperature, they weren't wrong about the result. I don't know exactly how much lower-temperature ovens could be, but I've heard of Tudor dishes which, in a modern oven, would come out as hard as bricks unless they're baked for much less time; less than half the time stated in the recipes.
@@Miss_Kisa941799 is pretty late for 'medieval'. Washington had bloodletting used as part of treatment for pneumonia. We could possibly quibble about whether the rationale was the humor theory, but it's still probably the case that holdovers stuck around whether adherence did or not.
@@Miss_Kisa94 Humorism was the prevalent theory of medicine in Europe since Ancient times (~500 BC) up until the 18th century,
This channel just understands their core audience. Bravo. Plus the camera work, editing, everything. You've come a long way.
Now I'm hungry.... thanks for the great content!
😷☕🦃
I want to bake biscuits now
Best comfort channel on UA-cam
I just wanted to leave this comment, I've been following you for.... Not sure how long now! But I remember a time when you were faltering a bit about the future of your channel and it brings me joy to see that it's not only gone the opposite, but it's thriving! I see other YT channels mention you hither and dither and it's always a joy. Cheers for many more old style cooking days! \o/
Yes - Townsends is just candy
But wholesome, like remembering happiness
Which other channels has mentioned this channel?
Here in Brazil, at least in my region, the meal sizes depend on the weather. When it's extremely hot (like right now), we tend to eat ligther lunches, more salads. During winter, we eat more (and a lot of heavy soups) at dinner. I imagine that had its place, especially back then as well. Great video!
I've noticed that to be common here in Minnesota, USA as well. It can get into negative temperatures during winter regularly so soups and roasts keep you toasty.
4:15 funnily enough, meat is very easy on the stomach since our body absorbs most of it, leaving a very tiny amount actually being converted to waste product.
Seniors tend to eat this way today, well at least in rural areas. Any rural person will tell you most restaurants have early bird specials for seniors who eat their main meal in the late afternoon. The older you get the worse your body handles a heavy meal closer to bedtime.
yeah, it’s called Old People Time! Final meal of the day at 4:30 to 5:30😂😂😂
@@asmith7876 yup! I'm old, I eat a piece of toast & jam for breakfast, one main meal about 4pm and have a light snack about 7. 👵
Where i live and how i was raised, we called our meals Breakfast (Morning meal), Dinner (mid day meal), and Supper (the evening meal). In addition i have heard this saying “Eat breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince, and dinner like a pauper.”
― Adelle Davis
I has a boss years ago who always called lunch dinner.
Didnt know from who “Eat breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince, and dinner like a pauper.” came from, i heard it from my great grandma and grandma all my life.
i just put it in to the "farmers know" category since thats what they have been doing all there life
What they did during their life was THEIRS and not there. Please help to save the English language. 😉 @@etaxalo
We say "Eat breakfast alone, lunch with your friend and give dinner to you enemy."
@@mar117117 is that according to a certain time era, or a certain location?
Here in germany, lunch is the largest meal of the day for most people. I think it's intriguing to see the differences in food cultures around the world and throughout time :)
I'm just learning how to make bread dumplings or Semmelknödel so I can stop buying the dried box variety.
I thought I was alone here in America for only preferring a heavy meal during lunch and light meals for breakfast and dinner. I naturally preferred this way of eating after being on my own for some time, after leaving home and the school systems which forced me to eat with others and how others ate.
Every time i learn a fact about Germans, I'm more convinced i was switched at birth with a German family.
The way U.S. "lunch break" culture works that's... not really possible here any more.
Living in Germany is where I learned the benefits of large lunch , small evening meal 55 years ago. Opposite in the US.
First time I've caught one this early! Really love the focus on the working man's day to day. Keep it up guys!
I always wondered why people referred to their evening meal differently; supper, tea or dinner. I'm Welsh and we have so many different dialects that I assumed that to be the reason, like the same way everyone has their own word for the tv remote 😂 thank you for answering a question I've long pondered over!
My bf's grandmother, a very dignified woman, referred to the last meal of the day as "supper."
"Would you like to come over for supper?" Clarified the distinction between "dinner" & "supper" for me forever after.
In germany Dinner/Lunch (Mittagessen) was still the big meal in working class households in the 1980s/90s. Shifts often ran 6:00-14:00 and when father came home he wanted a big meal. School ran 8:00-13:00 and so either you waited (it took me almost an hour due to the public bus while father had 15min) and ate together or at least pupils and mother did. And Saturday/Sunday the family often sat down around 12. Breakfast and Suppen (Frühstück und Abendessen) where small stuff
Why in the 1980a/90s? That's exactly how it was during my school time and I was born in 1996. It's more or less still the same when I visit my mother. We wake up, have some bread and tea (because East Frisia) for breakfast, 11am we have some coffee, 1 pm we have lunch and then we have supper with bread in the evening.
@@Kuhmuhnistische_Partei Because post that time frame I do not know if people still do it. Since I now work 9-17 and therefor eat my major meal late
man, with all the crazy bad news in the world, your channel is a blessing. thanks for the hard work bud, my stress level -10
I grew up in the UK in the 1960s/70s. The meal eaten at school was sometimes referred to as lunch, but usually dinner. The hour out of lessons was always called dinner-time and the meals schools served were suitable to be the main meal of the day. People who ate a large meal at 6pm (or there abouts) were in the minority in those days. You're describing the 20th Century more than you suspect.
The fact that we get free videos from Townsends on UA-cam is priceless ... Keeping the knowledge and entertainment alive. 👏👏👏👏👏
What makes you think it's free?
Always interesting seeing videos like this since in my family in the North East of England the older meal names are still used alongside the evening meal being tea. Causes no end of confusion when talking to people when my dinner is their lunch and their dinner is my evening tea etc, though at least we can agree on breakfast. Supper is invariably a light meal but rarely eaten.
Love these videos. And they were right, a light supper is better for your digestion! This time of year it’s lovely to come back and re watch some of my favourite videos of yours. They just soothe the soul in these troubled times.
It depends on your line of work. I work at home. Id be knocked out if i ate a good meal for lunch lol
makes a lot of sense why they were eaten with ale, or how most suppers would have ale, as it would likely help relax the body and put the worker into a comfortable sleep. I for one have a glass of whisky when im up late or am too energetic for bed and i fall asleep like a baby. Great video as always!
I love this channel. I don't even care what the video is about. It's so calming listening to the explanations and music.
Thanks!
I love videos like these. Learning things about how our ancestors existed and thrived always fills my day. Thank you, John and the whole Townsends team!
I grew up reading the Little House books. Dinner time was midday, especially in Farmer Boy. Bread and butter was often eaten for supper.
Thanks for another great video. I've wondered what seed cakes are since I first saw them mentioned in "The Hobbit" or "The Lord of the Rings". I'm definitely going to make some.
By the way, "melancholy juice" would have made a great name for a 90's rock band.
I really enjoy Townsends videos. I live overseas and people sometimes ask me what the difference is between American and Canadian cuisine [I'm Canadian].....and I have had to answer..."honestly there is absolutely no difference at all".....❤❤❤️
It's always so comfortable to tune into this channel. It's the perfect way to end the day for a comfortable rest
Over here in Switzerland this meal plan is quite normal. Breakfast before we start working is rather small, we have a second breakfast at ~9 AM called "z'Nüni" where we also eat something small, then the biggest meal of the day for lunch around 12, then supper with something small around 7 PM. If you are working hard, then you have an intermediate meal around 4PM called "z'Vieri" or "z'Abe". I think it is quite a European thing to have a proper break at noon for eating instead of just eating a sandwich in between two strikes of a hammer or in front of a PC.
You Swiss are CRAZY
Very interesting topic! I am going to give this a try (but probably not this week considering Thanksgiving). I have been inspired to a much simpler way of living from watching this channel and look forward to each episode. I hope these continue for a while to come!
I can’t help but continue to be charmed by your romantic retrospection on the concepts of meals like this 😊
Thanks Violet 😂
The townsends have gotten a lot of us through Covid and has become an essential part of our lives now. Keep up the great work and I will say that you and your channel are this generations Bob Ross of colonial knowledge.
Ironically, they had it right, light breakfast, heavy lunch, light dinner. During sleep is when your body does a lot of really amazing things for healing, you don't want your body spending all that energy on digestion
On some things they were actually ahead of their time. There was an excellent video he did a year or two ago about the medical practices of the Spanish, and they were actually somewhat close to what we do today (even if they didn’t necessarily know why).
Europe, specifically Italy, still has it right. Eat a heavy lunch and then rest.
This. For me I often don't get hungry until later anyways, so you can have a big lunch, small early dinner. A small breakfast, just enough to hold you over until lunch, if hungry early. I've seen with my heart rate monitor, elevated resting heart rate while sleeping if I eat too much, too near bed, and feel less rested in general if I do so. I'm also not hungry while I'm sleeping, so why would I eat before bed anyways? Still rarely hungry in the morning, so a coffee before starting the day is all that's needed.
That's not really how the body works. You don't stop healing when you're digesting food.
@@TheSkillotron no, but your body is in a less rested state while digesting. I see it in my sleeping heart rate the next morning. I feel it, too. Less rested if my body wasn't as deeply resting. Less deep sleep, perhaps. Deep sleep is when the brain often gets flooded with cerebral fluid to clear out buildup
I have been watching your channel since 2012, and I just have to say thank you so much for all of your content. It is some of the most relaxing, entertaining, educational media that I watch.
Is the picture at 1:32, of farmers leaning against a shock of sheafs, from Tess of the D'Urbervilles?
Im currently reading it and it reminds me of that scene in the book.
Love the videos, brilliant as always, Jon et al.
I love your channel so much bro thank you for what you do
Thanks for sharing with us Jon. This is valuable information that would help many folks today to live by those thoughts and eliminate many for our digestive and over weight problems along with diabetes and nightmares. Stay safe and everyone enjoy a great Thanksgiving Day with families and friends. Fred.
My great aunt, who was born in the late 1800s and died in the 1990s called the noontime meal 'dinner' her whole life. She was married to a New England farmer, and it very much showed.
My Granny did the same, though she was born in the early 30s and was the child of southern sharecroppers.
In the North East of England (UK), it is also very common to call lunchtime 'dinner' even today, funnily enough. Pease pudding is also a regional dish here, most of the UK hasn't heard of it but it's one of my favourite comfort foods.
I thoroughly enjoy your videos. It is so nice to think about a place in time that seems simpler and free. Hard work and hearty meals. I really appreciate the escape. 🙏🏼 thank you 🙏🏼
Lunch/dinner being the largest meal just makes sense from a practical standpoint. Food is for energy and you don't need much energy to sleep, but you sure need it to toil in the fields and factories.
Love this series of working man's meals, feasts, etc.
The link between the avoidance of heavy evening meals and overnight digestion is a brilliant, thank you for continuing to explore their relationship with food. Thrilled to see wiggs making an appearance too, along with varied levels of wiggs available to suit different circumstances. Looking forward to baking some some extra flavorful seed cakes in the approaching holiday season. Cheers!
another good one, John. I started watching you because I feel food is one of the best ways of knowing more about the lives of the average man in history. You don't disappoint. Thanks.
Carroway Seed apparently helps with digestion, i assume they understood this fact and if the premise is easily digestible like some of the writing you found suggests, it makes perfect sense why they show up so often.
I follow my Free Food Diet: what can I pick from my garden today? That translates to mostly soups and salads. I dehydrate same and it gives me winter soups. Sprouts and mini greens all winter. I bake bread, biscuits, crackers and make flatbreads. I started growing soft wheat a few years ago, better for flatbreads. I make vegetable relishes and slather relish on everything. Pickled peppers.
It's a simple process, mainly vegetables. A dab of meat in the pot.
My parents and grandparents ate from huge gardens, but the dab of meat was mostly wild game or backyard chickens. Mom traded eggs for raw milk. We made butter too.
ita always about fall/winter time where i find myself watching this channel, when the weather is colder and im always in search of anything cozy and comforting
Everytime I watch this channel I get hungry!!! Love this channel!
Thank you.
Just love learning about that time in history.
Great great channel!
👍🏻
I’m so glad I found your channel!! You put so much effort and love into what you make! You are a joy and I wish you the best!
My great grandma called lunch,supper and dinner (the late meal) supper. Her parents were born in Kentucky, so they used a lot of the old American terms for things. Supper is derived from the European root word for soup.
The luncheon-dinner-supper habit is an interesting one in both time and place. I was caught off-guard when I traveled to Europe many years ago and had opportunity to sup with a local family. I was used to the big American dinner as the last meal but they had their big meal earlier and ended with a light supper (generally breads, cheeses, and sausages). I went to bed hungry for a while before I could adjust 😂
What a Great UA-cam channel. Thank you for this rich historic informative channel.
Once I left school, I have eaten this type of meal plan. No we are both retired, we have our main meal at lunchtime, with sone fruit at tea time. Nb: my mutti (German mother) made caraway cake for my papa in the 1960s, no alcohol...
How wonderful!
Love this channel. ❤
2:30 there's actually some interesting analysis done on if you call the afternoon meal dinner or the evening meal dinner. I think it's that more rural areas still call the afternoon meal dinner and the evening meal supper. Because the big meal was the midday one for longer there. Where working during the hottest part of the day didn't make sense. Whereas in the city, where industrialization has been the norm since at least the mid 19th C, dinner got shifted to the evening meal, since it was now the biggest meal of the day. Because you only had a very short lunch break, if at all, so you simply didn't have the time for a big meal
You had breakfast, Dinner and Supper back then. 80%-90% of the food intake was Dinner (Lunch today). Supper was a bit of left over Dinner, or maybe a slice of pie. Breakfast was anything lying around, like biscuits, made once or twice a week for the week.
lol my UA-cam friend, you look great, glad to see you making videos and still alive! ❤ fan of yours for a long time
This is such an amazing view of history. Thank you.
What about sleep in this time period, what time did they do to bed? What types of pillows and mattresses did they have?
That's a really cool idea, Early Americans did make a video where they show a home made straw matress
People this passionate about history are a rare gem.
A couple things to add on, from experience living a rougher life in the bush, and having jobs where the lunch was supplied.
1. Outhouse visits at night are not exactly everyone's personal preference. So anything that reduces the need to unload is a good thing, both for safety and sleep.
2. If you know you have a guaranteed lunch each day that easily fills your belly; you won't be spending as much on the breakfast and supper you might have normally spent more on.
Rumor has it that anchovies were much larger in Franklin's time.
Thanks so much for another great video full of inspiration and something yummy for dinner, but always something we can afford
Ale and condensed calories in the form of bread makes an excellent digestif for a working man. It was likely enough to fight muscle soreness or enable them to work the next day. Good stuff.
Me, a German: "So nothing would've changed, okay". I maybe eat two slices of bread for breakfast with some tea. Lunch should be the main meal for me in an ideal world and supper (German: Abendbrot, literally "Evening bread") is usually just bread again or some other light meal. Although it really depends how it fits into my day. I often don't have the time during noon to actually have lunch, so I often postpone it to 5-7 pm and don't have supper at all. And it can also vary what and how much I eat for breakfast. Like on some days I will make some fried eggs on bread or muesli or something.
I enjoyed this video! Thank you.
The production on your channel is just insane.
I knew some old people who ate a hot meal at noon and bread in the evening. Their explanation was that this setup was easier on the wife (she could do the dishes in the afternoon instead of having to do it late in the evening)
That thumbnail legit made me salivate. Much love Townsends and Co
"Supper" as a simple, light meal is still common over in Germany where they might pick up some fresh baked bread from a nearby bakery, and have it with butter, freshly sliced tomato, and maybe some deli meat; but it's something with nearly no prep time.
In German it is called Abendbrot, literally "evening bread". I wouldn't go pick up fresh bread just for that, but you'd likely have bread for a few days at home.The toppings you give are oddly specific, usually it's butter plus whatever you like; sausage or meat cuts, cheese, jam, honey and so on. Personally I do like to add some fresh greens as well, like sliced cucumber, tomato or bell peppers, but that's not universal.
Incidentally, breakfast usually is exactly the same or some kind of cereal, granola, oats, not unlike the oatmeal in the video. A heavy breakfast with eggs, bacon and grilled sausages is not common at all, that would be considered something to have as main meal of the day at noon.
I think it's kinda wild how out of hand stories about people's diets in the past were. Like people forget herbs and salt were common in Europe, and most of the stories about the rarity of meat (as well as stories about not bathing) only apply to Victorians.
This is very true indeed different cultures where as u go south had different climates too.. History just shows how different mediterranean cousine is now too compared to the English
"and most of the stories about the rarity of meat (as well as stories about not bathing) only apply to Victorians."
I mean, bathing sure, but meat? You're telling me some serf that might own some chickens for eggs is gonna be eating meat on a regular basis somehow?
@@colbyboucher6391 They fished and hunted, some reared a pig. Meals considered “poor” back then were actually healthier for you than the ones eaten by the rich.
@@terminallumbago6465Moderm people forget about how common game and salted/cured meats were in the past, the meat we eat today was rare or ocasional (beef and chicken mostly) but game birds and such were plenty, for example.
Any chance of a video on knives used in the time period? Pocket knife, utility knife, things that various people would carry with them on a daily basis.
Your videos are always so pleasant and informative, thank you for another wonderful lesson and recipe!! Your voice is so relaxing, I could listen to you read the phonebook.
British here and our family has our 'dinner' (biggest meal) at lunch, and a light supper in the early evening.
I've been playing in church bands for about 17 years. Get to meet alot of musicians of different levels, interesting band leaders, new music weekly and practice musicianship that's sometimes missing in rock shows. And I'm not up until 3 in the morning
Bread in ale - or as we say in Denmark: *Ølle-brød.*
Stale, shredded rye bread of the dense, dark kind we like en Denmark, soaked in ale or small ale.
Ad a little sugar, and if you're lucky a little cream
Thank you! Happy Thanksgiving!
The huge lunch and tiny supper is still very much a thing in many European cultures with kids coming home from school and adults coming home from work to gather as a family for a big lunch.
How is it possible to have a big lunch if all of the adults are working during the morning? When is there time to prepare the big lunch? Maybe prepared the evening before?
@@andyl8025 Taking a shot in the dark, it's likely that there's a much larger lunch break and/or not as many people in a household having to a 9-to-5.
Well not really. Our main meal is around midday but it’s usually not hugely complex and easy to make in 30 minutes.
Depends on who you ask. In my country A: it is a cultural thing. It is common to have a 1 h lunchbreak during which workers go to a restaurant together (you get discounted prices in lunchtime). Some workplaces even have their own cook/restaurant/cantine. B: mothers get a 3 year "parenting" leave. I don't wanna get into the "women belong to kitchen" thing but yeah, if you have 2 children, that is 6 years of free lunches for you.😂
love this channel!
i am happily my husband turned me on to historical foods and life
Tell your husband
Then do him a favor
Stay with him - don’t leave
@@augustsmith9553 i would never leave my husband
Watching this as I take my frozen processed breakfast burrito out of the microwave.
Better than what most had back then.
Better than pea pudding lol
I love this series!
With the exception of Sat. & Sun. mornings, where he would have eggs, bacon, toast and coffee; my grandfather would have a bowl of hot or cold cereal for breakfast. At lunch he was served meat, potatoes, bread and vegetables. Supper was soup and sandwich, or left overs.
Always a refreshing channel
Can you do a series on taking a dump like was there a outhouse or hole in the ground??
Thank you for sharing this entertaining and informative video. Calling the recipe a word problem was quite funny indeed.
A very agrarian meal for the working laborers. Tied to the geographical climate and the availability of resources. Beer (of some form) is a very common source of easy liquid calories, and of course you have wheat bread too. It’s fascinating to see diets change and adapt as the working world does the same.
0:59 in germany until probably around mid 2000s lunch was still the biggest meal by far with dinner being not particularly big. and your points at 3:20 definetly applied to that too
What many lose is the concept of time of day. We in the modern world stay up very late because of our extra lighting. A working person of the 18th century was most likely asleep by 9pm at the latest. We in the modern world have shifted our waking hours much later based on our lighting and lifestyle.
It makes sense that it would change how the majority of people time their meals.
Seed cakes are what I remember from The Hobbit; the hobbit has them made ready for his own mealtime- the Dwarves show up for the Unexpected Party and they are all eaten.
Suppers of the 18th are closer to what we usually considered a supper here in Poland for years
The French words diner and souper, which both mean to eat gives us the clues to the older meaning of dinner and supper in English.
Diner is a big meal that typically consists of multiple courses. This was the meal that was served at midday when people came in from the fields after a few hours of work. This was designed to be eaten over a couple of hours and give everyone a huge boost in morale and energy for the rest of the day.
Souper is a light meal at the end of the day. Because we didn’t do much after sunset without modern artificial lighting, it was a simple meal that could be eaten fairly quickly before retiring for the night.
I'm glad this channel exist
Thanks Jon and Crew.👍🏼👍🏼🍁🍂🦃🍂🍁
The food back then was still awesome. I've been enjoying those cookbooks you offer (in your catalog) for quite some time.😊
Makes me wonder how much other old wisdom we have forgotten. They had it right even without the research we mostly ignore to back it. Cheers and thanks.