Due to its mass popularity, beef was one of the foods most closely associated with Englishness and “proper” English eating habits. During the Early Modern period, English dietaries constantly wrote about the benefits of beef for the English constitution, promoting it as the most important food for consumption. For instance, the dietary writer Thomas Moffet, in his work Health’s Improvement (1590-1604), states that beef is “most nourishing unto English bodies,” going so far as to claim “there is not a better meat under the Sun for an English man.”[1] Through such writings, authors of this period turned beef eating into a characteristic of an Englishness, thus, according to the historian David Genticlore, “the meat-eating, plain-speaking Englishman” stood in stark opposition to “the politic and wily Italian/ Frenchman/ Spaniard.”[2]
Given this historical importance, beef was closely watched during the formation of this project to see if actual consumption patterns matched the popularity described in contemporary dietary materials. Based on the data gathered for London House, this portrayal of the English as frequent beef eaters seems to be grounded in reality.
The immense popularity of beef in comparison to other foodstuffs is best portrayed when examining the weekly documentation of these items:
As shown in the data visualization, the money spent on beef consistently doubles or triples that spent on any other food. While this is partially due to the fact that beef was costly, it is also a result of the large amount they are purchasing on a weekly basis, indicating significant and frequent consumption. Therefore, this idea of the Englishmen as “beef eaters,” while certainly heightened to increase national unity, was backed up by actual dietary patterns.
[1] Thomas Moffettt, Healths Improvement, (London: Thomas Newcomb,1655), 59.
[2] David Gentilcore, Food and Health in Early Modern Europe Diet, Medicine and Society, 1450-1800 (Bloomsbury Academic, 2016), 87.