At Christmas, poor families ate rabbit or beef for their Christmas dinner. Some workhouses would provide a beef or mutton meal, with some alcohol, cheese or pudding. However, those living there would not usually receive the day off and had to get back to work after they had eaten.
Answer and Explanation: Poor people in Victorian England typically did not celebrate Christmas with much festivity. Often, it was considered another work day for the poor, but some workhouses provided a slightly more elaborate means to the workers that day.
For many poor people across Britain, white bread made from bolted wheat flour was the staple component of the diet. When they could afford it, people would supplement this with vegetables, fruit and animal-derived foods such as meat, fish, milk, cheese and eggs - a Mediterranean-style diet.
For the poorest a sandwich of bread and watercress was the most common. At the start of the week, porridge made with water might be possible. Lunch involved bread, combined with cheese if possible or more watercress. At the start of the week, soup could occasionally be bought as cheap street food.
Poorer families would eat rabbit. It was in the Victorian era that turkey became the most eaten meat at Christmas: Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol famously features Scrooge asking a poor homeless child to help him buy Bob Cratchit “the prize turkey” hanging in the window of the butcher's shop.
Like many of us, Victoria and Albert enjoyed turkey at Christmas time. They would sit together as a family for their main meal and enjoy turkey with all the trimmings. As you would expect, the royal family were fortunate to share in several courses.
At the beginning of the Victorian period, the children of the rich received handmade toys, which were quite labor intensive to make and expensive. The children of the poor received stockings filled with fruit and nuts, a tradition we still have today.
Victorians loved their puddings, and both rich and poor homes would finish off a meal with a steamed pudding. This glorious sponge pudding was easy to make with minimal ingredients. It's sweetened with golden syrup which was mass produced in the late 1800s, making it affordable to all.
The findings demonstrated that stews (or pottages) of meat (beef and mutton) and vegetables such as cabbage and leek, were the mainstay of the medieval peasant diet. The research also showed that dairy products, likely the 'green cheeses' known to be eaten by the peasantry, also played an important role in their diet.
The modern breakfast
In the early years of the Victorian era breakfast would have consisted, if you could afford it, of cold meats, cheese and beer. In time this was replaced by porridge, fish, eggs and bacon - the "full English".
3: The diet for those Victorians who were very poor was terrible. Potato pairings & rotten vegetables were sometimes the dish of the day and for children born into this background this was exceptionally difficult for growth. Common Victorian Food readily available.
Gift giving was traditionally part of New Year celebrations, but the Victorians used Christmas as an occasion for giving fruit, nuts, sweets and small handmade trinkets to their loved ones. Handmade games, dolls, books and clockwork toys were popular, as were apples, oranges and nuts.
Victorian children didn't have computers or television so they played lots of games. Board games such as Snakes and Ladders, Ludo and Draughts were popular indoor games. Outdoors, Victorian children played with toys like hoops, marbles and skipping ropes, with friends in the street, or in the school playground.
The Victorians also transformed the idea of Christmas so that it became centred around the family. The preparation and eating of the feast, decorations and gift giving, entertainments and parlour games - all were essential to the celebration of the festival and were to be shared by the whole family.
Middle Ages food for poor people revolved around barley
Barley bread, porridge, gruel and pasta, for breakfast, lunch and dinner.
The poorest people ate mostly potatoes, bread, and cheese. Working-class folks might have had meat a couple of times a week, while the middle class ate three good meals a day. Some common foods eaten were eggs, bacon and bread, mutton, pork, potatoes, and rice.
Peasants tended to keep cows, so their diets consisted largely of dairy produce such as buttermilk, cheese, or curds and whey. Rich and poor alike ate a dish called pottage, a thick soup containing meat, vegetables, or bran.
Many Victorian meals were served at home as a family, prepared by cooks and servants who had studied French and Italian cookbooks. Middle and upper class breakfasts typically consisted of porridge, eggs, fish and bacon. They were eaten together as a family. Sunday lunches included meat, potatoes, vegetables and gravy.
Popular foods included beef, mutton, port, bacon, cheese, eggs, bread, potatoes, rice, porridge oats, milk, vegetables, flour, sugar, treacle, jam and tea. Breakfast might consist of stoneground bread smeared with dripping or lard, with a large bunch of watercress.
More commonly, however, the servants ate simply, with roast mutton, veal or Irish stew as standard fare, sometimes alternating with fish. At Abbeyleix, for example, large quantities of herrings were bought regularly for the servants' hall.
If a deep-fried oreo were given to a Victorian child, that child would fall into a coma probably from the cholesterol alone. But they would be revived by the delicious flavor of the gooey insides of the Oreo.
Preserves, jams, jellies, candies, needlework, plants, and doilies were common gifts in the late 1800s, Winans-Bagnall said. Also new this year is a children's holiday game popular in 1874 that involves throwing a cloth snowball through a wreath.
As for Christmas presents, "We'd usually get something very practical, like long underwear or a pair of shoes for the year," Jamison added. "Toys were a special treat reserved for only the very youngest."