The ‘kitchen’ of the Anglo-Saxons, for most people, differed little from that of the Celts. Cooking was carried out on the hearth placed at the centre of the home, the smoke escaping through a hole in the roof, usually made of thatch. However, in wealthy households, kitchens were separated from the main building and included a bakehouse. In humbler homes most cooking was centred on cooking meat and vegetables in water in a large cauldron suspended over the hearth (pottage), roasting meat on a spit in front of the fire, and griddling, particularly bread, on a bakestone placed on top of the fire. Bread was also occasionally ‘baked’ in lidded pots placed over the fire.
In wealthy kitchens a brick oven was available to bake foods, particularly bread and pies. A fire of wood would be lit in the oven to heat the surrounding bricks and then removed before the food was placed in the oven to bake in the residual heat contained in the bricks. Food was eaten from wooden bowls, plates or ‘trenchers’ of bread with the fingers, a knife and a spoon. Ale and mead were drunk from wooden cups by the lower orders or silver or glass goblets by the rich.
Much of what had been left by the Romans in terms of cultivation was included in the Anglo-Saxon diet and were added to pottages of meat and vegetables. For most of the population simple pottages, bread and cheese were the main staples of their diet. The rich were able to flavour their food with imported spices such as pepper, ginger and cinnamon. Honey remained the only means of sweetening food – sugar would not be introduced to Britain until the thirteenth century.
From the beginning of the seventh century, much of the country was beginning to convert to Christianity. Dietry constraints imposed by the Church such as fasting during Lent and before Christmas and avoiding the eating of meat on certain days of the week, began to be adopted.
