14 Breakfast in the Middle Ages

The next morning.

The sun had just risen in the sky. The air was still cold and had not warmed up yet.

The streets of Blue Lion City were slowly filled with people—businessmen checking out prices in the market, craftsmen looking for temporary jobs, hunters selling animal skin, and stablemen looking for customers.

Everyone was hurriedly pacing on the green-stoned pavement.

On the second floor of a building along the street, one by one, the windows were gradually opened. Due to incomplete drainage systems, buckets of domestic sewage were splashed on the streets, drenching any passerbys if they were unlucky and careless.

There were scoldings, clamor and hubbub. The atmosphere eventually livened up as Blue Lion City stretched itself like a waking giant.

And the palace of Blue Lion City was the heart of the giant. In comparison to other places in Blue Lion City, it was quieter and more organized. The servants were conscientiously cleaning the floor, the gardener was carefully trimming the plants, and the guards were guarding various locations warily.

On the left side of this heart—the east wing of the palace—breakfast was taking place in the dining room.

Richard sat alone at the end of a dining table, which was four meters long and one meter wide. Around him were servants who were standing, prepared to serve him. He looked like a lonely seaman drifting on the ocean by himself.

Richard did not utter a word. After all, 15 years had passed, and he was already used to life in this world. He also could not waste time on such trivialities. Therefore, holding his fork and knife, he quietly carried on with the medieval breakfast with a calm expression.

The main course of the meal was white bread. As the name indicated, the bread was white and had been baked with rigorously sifted wheatmeal. However, it wasn't tasty because the bread had not been fermented thoroughly. It was rather common in this world to bake the dough merely after short fermentation.

As a result, the bread was not as soft and fluffy as those from modern Earth. It was quite hard and tasted like unleavened bread, which was also very bad for the teeth.

In fact, Richard was able to have this kind of bread because he was a prince. Commoners could only eat black bread, which tasted worse. That so-called black bread was baked with the same ingredient, wheatmeal, but unsifted because they wanted to save on it. Thus it was still full of wheat bran, which made it extremely coarse.

Some evil bakers even deliberately added sawdust and stones to the bread to increase its mass. Furthermore, they used less water in order to increase the bread's shelf life. As a result, the bread was extremely hard when freshly baked and would only become increasingly harder as time passed.

Black bread was usually still edible the first two days after baking, but more than that meant that the bread only be cut with a knife. A week later, it would become as hard as a stone and could already be used as a weapon.

There were countless records of such incidents in the Middle Ages—when foolish thieves stole in poor villages and were exposed, furious farmers and their wives took the black bread and beat the thieves to death.

Of course, there was high-end bread as well. For example, the famous queen's bread was baked with processed flour, egg, milk and wild honey. It was completely fermented with brewer's yeast instead of ordinary yeast, and then baked at carefully controlled temperatures. It was only produced in small loaves, but the taste was comparable to or even better than that high-quality butter bread from modern Earth.

However, these things were considered luxury goods more costly than gold. Even the most extravagant kings and aristocrats wouldn't dare eat then frequently. This bread was usually gifted as a special reward during banquets to people who had made significant contributions. It functioned like a medal, and the emotional satisfaction derived from it was greater than the physical one.

In normal circumstances, regardless of one's social standing, dry and hard white bread was the staple food during the Middle Ages.

Richard held his knife and fork as he sliced a piece of the white bread and put it into his mouth. He chewed hard and then swallowed it, looking nonchalant. He was long used to this.

Just as Richard swallowed the white bread, he heard footsteps approaching the dining table. A servant carefully placed a plate in front of Richard.

On the plate was a baked, well-done pork chop, which was one of the main courses for breakfast. However it did not look very appetizing, since the fire had not been well handled and some parts of the meat were already charred.

Richard waved his cutlery, gently cut a piece of meat from the pork chop, and put it into his mouth. He chewed for a long time as a strange taste appeared. Because biology hadn't yet been developed in the Middle Ages, most people did not know that male animals had to be castrated before consumption. Hence the meat quality was poor, and the taste was strange.

He had a hard time eating the pork chop. Following this, Richard quickly reached for the cup of water beside his right hand and drank from it.

The cup contained his breakfast beverage.

The most common breakfast beverage in this world was not water, but low-alcohol drinks. This was not because people were addicted to alcohol, but for hygiene purposes.

Yes, hygiene.

People in Western countries had never had the habit of boiling water for consumption. Yet unclean water had many germs, and they could contract gastrointestinal diseases if they were to consume it. In a world like this, that lacked antibiotics, there was a high chance that gastrointestinal infections led to death from dehydration.

In comparison, low-alcohol drinks were cleaner than water, and many people drank ale like water. Ale was different from beer because hop wasn't added, so it had no alcoholic taste and it could ferment very easily. To mask its strange and sour taste, the brewer would often add some weird ingredients, which caused similar effects to taking drugs.

Nevertheless, a lot of people didn't care about this. They drank ale of various flavors generously. But Richard could not tolerate it, hence his cup contained water—plain water—that had been boiled and was appropriate for consumption.

He reached out for his cup again and took a few sips to rinse away the strange taste in his mouth. He then continued to eat the bread slices.

Just as he tried his very best to swallow a piece of white bread, Edward suddenly rushed in. "Your Highness, Butler Deron is here."

"Didn't he come yesterday? Why is he here again?" Richard looked up and said.

"I don't know." Edward shook his head. "He didn't tell me anything. He just said he is looking for you."

Clang, clang. Richard gently put down the cutlery in his hands. He pondered for a moment and said, "Please bring him in."

"Yes," replied Edward, and he walked out quickly. Very soon, he led the skinny Butler Deron into the dining room.