Why Medieval Banquets Were Surprisingly Disgusting

If you actually stepped into a medieval banquet hall, there’s a good chance the experience would feel far less glamorous than you might expect. Between questionable hygiene, unusual eating habits, strange food combinations, and dining customs that would seem bizarre today, medieval banquets could often be messy, chaotic, and, by modern standards, pretty unpleasant. Here are a few reasons why.

Hygiene Was… Not Great

One of the biggest differences between medieval dining and modern dining is hygiene. People in medieval Europe simply didn’t have the same understanding of germs or food safety that we do today. Washing hands before eating wasn’t always common practice, especially in more informal settings. Even at noble feasts where basins of water might be passed around, the cleaning was often fairly superficial.

Servants prepared food in kitchens that could be smoky, crowded, and not particularly sanitary. Meat was sometimes hung for long periods before cooking, and food preservation relied heavily on salt, drying, or smoking. On top of that, many dishes were eaten with the hands rather than utensils. Forks weren’t widely used in much of Europe until centuries later, so guests would often tear pieces of meat directly from shared platters.

Everyone Shared Everything

Modern diners are used to having their own plate, their own utensils, and their own portion of food. Medieval banquets worked very differently. Guests usually shared dishes with the people sitting beside them. A pair of diners might share something called a “trencher,” which was essentially a thick slice of stale bread used as a plate.

Food would be placed on the trencher, and both diners would eat from it. Once the meal was finished, the bread might be eaten, given to servants, or sometimes donated to the poor. Large platters of meat, pies, and roasted birds were also placed on the table for multiple guests to serve themselves from. That meant plenty of hands reaching across the table and plenty of opportunity for food to get messy.

The Food Could Be… Strange

Medieval cooks loved dramatic presentation and bold flavors, but their ideas of good food could feel unusual to modern tastes. Spices were extremely fashionable among wealthy households, especially expensive imports like cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, and pepper. These spices were often used in ways that might seem strange today, including heavily seasoning meats with sweet or aromatic flavors.

It wasn’t unusual to find dishes that combined meat with sugar, fruit, or strong spice blends. Sauces could be thickened with bread, nuts, or ground almonds rather than flour. There were also some very unusual ingredients. Medieval banquet menus sometimes included animals that most people today would never consider eating, such as swan, peacock, or crane.

Table Manners Were a Work in Progress

Medieval society definitely had rules about table etiquette, but they weren’t exactly the same as modern manners. Guests were expected not to wipe greasy hands on the tablecloth or blow their nose directly into it—rules that existed precisely because people apparently did those things often enough to require reminders.

Spitting bones onto the floor wasn’t unusual. Dogs frequently wandered through banquet halls, cleaning up scraps that fell from the tables. And since many foods were eaten with the hands, guests often ended meals with greasy fingers and sauce-covered sleeves. Compared to modern dining standards, it could be a fairly chaotic scene.

Food Safety Was Basically Guesswork

Another issue was that food safety standards simply didn’t exist in the way we think about them today. If meat wasn’t cooked properly or had started to spoil, there wasn’t always an easy way to tell. Heavy spices and sauces were sometimes used to improve flavor, which may also have helped mask food that was beginning to go bad.

Refrigeration didn’t exist, and storing large quantities of meat for feasts could be difficult. In warmer seasons, especially, food could deteriorate quickly.