The Mail Online has a more detailed account of the recent research into pre-Viking feasting and diet in Anglo-Saxon England, to which I linked to a BBC News article in my recent post Understanding Anglo Saxon royal feasts
The Daily Mail report goes into considerably more detail and sets out more about the menu choices. They suggest there was such a superabundance of meat that the residue may have been recycled on subsequent days, but I wonder if those attending - perhaps three hundred - would have taken portions home for their families to eat. That might well accord with social norms in a hierarchical society, where men were invited to a gathering and feasting but wives and junior members of families and children awaited their provender at home. The analogy of a modern barbecue is useful but I suspect the bread provided was larger than a modern burger-bun and one should perhaps think more in terms of an Indian meal today. I also wonder whether, although we know the quantities of meat specified for such communal meals, the meal and fish may have not only been roasted but also perhaps served in other, more complex ways. It is not until the fourteenth century that we have recipe books, and they suggest a sophisticated and complex cooking regime. That is of course several centuries later but that does not preclude the possibility of more haute cuisine in earlier times.
The article can be seen at Anglo-Saxon kings 'were mostly VEGETARIAN before the Vikings settled'
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