In Good Taste: Food and Class in Early Modern Europe

Food and Social Class

Food is so much more than sustenance. It can also say something about who we are. What we eat, how we eat it, and who we eat it with not only inform how we see ourselves, but are ways of affirming diverse aspects of our identity, both consciously and unconsciously. Whether we want to present ourselves as well-cultured sophisticates, hard-working hustlers on the go, or unpretentious blue-collar folk—or perhaps to connect with our cultural roots, adhere to the principles of a religious community, or align ourselves with our own political values—we can say it all with a meal.

This was also true in early modern Europe, and artworks from this period offer insight into the values, traditions, and social worlds of different class groups as they navigated the shifting social terrain of the time.

Displays of Prosperity

In early modern Europe, many aristocrats were not content to be merely rich. They needed to display their fortunes to both friends and enemies. Luxurious feasts were a popular way for members of the nobility to flaunt their wealth before their peers. Depictions of such feasts memorialized these grand displays for posterity, and in some cases the artist earned an official position in royal courts. Jean-Michel the Younger Moreau, whose work is shown below, was the official designer and engraver of the French royal cabinet, as well as the dessinateur des menus plaisirs du roi, or “designer of the king’s lesser pleasures,” in charge of designing, orchestrating, and depicting royal festivities.

This engraving captures a royal feast from 1782, during the reign of France’s King Louis XVI, who was noted for aristocratic extravagance. The feast depicted occurred just seven years before the start of the French Revolution, which saw the peasant class rise up against economic, social, and political inequality (and behead the monarch).

The aristocracy were not the only ones inclined to make a point of showcasing their access to luxury. Early modern Europe saw the rise of colonialism and early capitalism. This was accompanied by the emergence of a new class of wealthy mercantile elites who were not born to nobility but made their fortunes more or less directly through global extraction and exploitation. Sugar was among the first colonial cash crops, and was considered a luxury item in Europe throughout the early modern period, until the discovery of beet sugar in the 19th century provided a domestic source of sucrose. Those who could afford such extravagance often drew attention to their good fortune by storing cane sugar in vessels made from silver or other precious materials.

Europe saw a great influx of wealth as a result of its conquests, and those who benefitted often owned items that celebrated the source of their newfound riches. Aside from depicting a well-dressed European couple drinking from an ornate fountain, this porcelain sugar box prominently features a shirtless, dark-skinned figure with open arms. Although the work acknowledges the racialized labor that was used to cultivate this precious ingredient in places like the Caribbean, West Africa, and the Americas, it also buys into some form of romantic primitivism.

Celebrations of Working Class Pleasure

Most people living in early modern Europe were peasants who lacked access to the privileges enjoyed by the upper classes. This does not mean, however, that working class life was devoid of culinary indulgence. Rather than centering opulent feasts or rare ingredients, sympathetic depictions of working class food often focused on the joy of simple pleasures. Unpretentious meals of rustic fare were presented as welcome moments of leisure.

Artist Cornelis Dusart is known for his attentive renderings of peasant life. In the drawing, Kitchen Scene, a couple revel in a spread of bread, butter, and herring. While the setting is decidedly humble—a cluttered farmhouse furnished by an overturned bucket and a frayed straw chair draped with clothing—the work does not communicate lack. One peasant focuses with excited anticipation while carving a piece of fish. The other leans back with abandon and drinks deeply from a jug. Behind them, an open cabinet reveals a pantry that is stuffed with excess food, while a large cooking pot hangs over a fire just at the edge of the drawing. This depiction of unassuming abundance points to a peasantry who were not defined by their relative poverty, and calls viewers to question whether monetary accumulation is the only, or best, measure of a good life.

While feasts certainly signaled wealth and prestige in some contexts, they were not always about showcasing individual affluence. Nor were they exclusively the domain of the upper classes. Wedding feasts and village festivals often saw peasant communities coming together for shared revelry. Depictions of such gatherings frequently show much more relaxed decorum than seen in portrayals of noble fêtes and, in some cases, a more communal approach to managing the labor and expense of cooking.

Works like The Large Wedding Feast are an example of this. Instead of a clear split between servants and revelers, determined by class or gender, responsibilities at this festive event are fluidly dispersed. Guests enter the wedding carrying cooking pots and butter churns, men and women prepare food together in the background, and attendees banter while pouring drinks for one another. Partygoers are depicted in moments of joyful excess: playing music, drinking to the point of sickness, and even sneaking off for romantic interludes.

Dealing with Disparity

Critiques of excessive wealth came from both working and privileged classes during this period. Alongside the influx of money and luxury goods entering Europe, largely as a result of colonial extraction, came a heightened awareness of the disparities between the very rich and very poor. Peasant uprisings—like Wat Tyler’s Rebellion in 1381, which resulted from attempts to prevent serfs from seeking higher wages—were not uncommon during this period. People from upper classes also questioned the morality of hoarding wealth and contemplated the limitations of material possessions in improving one's life, and afterlife. Memento mori paintings depicting spoiled fruit, meat, and wine alongside silver, pearls, and other precious materials were popular among early modern European elites, and pointed to the fleeting nature of worldly goods. Other works from this period give insight into how artists were using food to approach the issue of unequal wealth.

Food as Charity

Sharing food and giving alms to feed the hungry was often seen as a virtuous act that helped to balance the disparity between the upper and lower classes. Works from this period often depict wealthy people offering bread to hungry peasants in a way that is almost beatific.

The saintly quality of these images may not have been incidental, or merely the result of self-aggrandizing elites. The church in Europe encouraged charity as a core Christian virtue, while greed, or avarice, was depicted in Christian-inflected art and narratives as a mortal sin. In this work by Raphael Sadeler, the virtue of charity is personified as a wealthy woman handing out loaves of bread to impoverished people at her doorstep.

While Christian charity may have provided much-needed aid to poorer members of society, it was only a superficial and temporary remedy to issues caused by extreme, systemic inequality. Those who took more than their fair share—whether of food or money—not only risked being depicted unfavorably in artworks but were also, in some views, deemed worthy of eternal punishment. In a work titled Drunkenness and Gluttony Lead to Hell, artist Jan Luyken presents three drunk men seated at a table. A pig roots for scraps, a devil hovers behind one man’s back, and the gates of hell burn brightly in the background.

Depictions of Greed

Hunger and excess were frequently used as metaphors for growing wealth disparities in early modern Europe. A pair of drawings called Thin Kitchen _and _Fat Kitchen by Pieter Bruegel the Elder, who liked to satirize society through food, offer a clear example of the class antagonism that some were feeling during this time. Thin Kitchen shows a group of emaciated peasants clamoring for mussels and root vegetables while a larger, presumably wealthier, individual hurries to escape. He cries out in the inscription below the image, “Where the thin man does the cooking it's a poor kitchen indeed / So I run to the fat kitchen with speed.” In contrast, Fat Kitchen portrays a scene of indulgent consumption and overabundance, showing its subjects gorging on heaping piles of rich meats, while a thin peasant is being kicked and shoved out of the door. Again, the wealthier group voices their distaste for the presence of the poor in an inscription saying, “Go away, you thin man, however hungry you are / For this is the fat kitchen and you do not belong here.” Both the denizens of Thin Kitchen and Fat Kitchen are depicted as members of the peasantry, wearing similarly common clothes and living in simple dwellings, but their respective diets point to growing tensions between an emerging middle class and marginalized lower classes.

Working Class Servitude

Class dynamics and antagonisms were also on display in the way food was enjoyed. While peasant feasts were often portrayed as communal events where the labor and its rewards were both shared, the feasts of the wealthy were tended to by servants. While some depictions of royal feasts either erase the presence of these servants or relegate them to background roles, other artworks from this period dealt with the implications of these inequalities in a direct, even confrontational manner.

Thomas Rowlandson’s work, Waiting for Dinner, satirizes the dissonance between wealthy individuals and the domestic servants who wait on them. The etching shows a well-dressed man sitting in front of an empty plate, impatiently showing a gold pocket watch to a harried servant who is urgently attempting to open a bottle of wine. This work communicates the entitlement of moneyed classes whose desire for rest and leisure was satisfied by imposing demands upon the time and energy of the less fortunate.

Works lampooning the excesses of the rich were not always so subtle. Venerable Idleness, Queen of Cockaigne by Nicolò Nelli offers a much more visceral depiction of indignities faced by servants in early modern Europe. In this work, a line of women rush to cook, serve, feed, and remove the excrement of a woman seated for dinner on a throne-like toilet. Distress, sadness, and disgust can be seen on the servant’s faces as they work to sate the hunger of their wealthy employer.

The “Cockaigne” in the title of this work refers to a fictional land in which peasants were freed from lives of menial labor, and could enjoy pleasures typically reserved for the wealthy. By inserting nobility and class hierarchy into the social fabric of this peasant utopia, the work becomes a reminder that some people already live in a Cockaigne built on the backs of their servants.

A Utopia of Plenty

Critique was not the only response to the social and economic inequalities of early modern Europe. Many took refuge in dreams of better, more plentiful worlds, where food and leisure were not exclusive privileges. The mythical land of Cockaigne offered a peasant imaginary wherein the luxuries of elite flowed plentifully into the domains of common people and where rest and enjoyment were all that was demanded of one’s time.

In Cockaigne, cooked fowl rained down from the sky onto the tables of waiting diners, oceans of fine wine awaited thirsty travelers, and ripe fruits and vegetables sprang from the ground throughout the year. These visions of untroubled leisure signal the working class’s wish to take part in a world of wealth and abundance that they were being excluded from. While Cockaigne may have only been a peasant fantasy, it speaks to the hope that a more just and equitable world is possible.