The spit roast was pretty much a daily affair for royalty, it showed how rich you were in a few ways: it meant you had fresh meat all year round, it took more fuel to cook than boiling and it necessitated the presence of an extra employee, the ‘spit boy’. Imagine that, daily spit roasts. Awesome. Here’s a pretty impressive spit roast for you:
Elizabeth I
The fact that the Tudors pretty much only ate meat is a bit gluttonous, but the real gluttony is found in the sheer quantity they would all eat. As our first example, here’s what was consumed by Elizabeth I’s court, which consisted of about 1000 people, over just three days:
- 67 sheep
- 34 pigs
- 4 stags
- 16 bucks
- 1200 chickens
- 363 capons (roosters)
- 33 geese
- 6 turkeys
- 2844 pigeons
- 2500 eggs
- 430 pounds of butter
- 1 cart load and 2 horse loads of oysters.
BOOM. That’s some heavy feasting there. And Henry VIII wasn’t much better….
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