From Table to Throne

Social Stratification and Culinary Culture in the High Medieval German-Speaking Lands 1050–1350 CE

DOI

10.2991/978-2-38476-611-6_141How to use a DOI?

Keywords

High Middle Ages; Holy Roman Empire; German cuisine; Food history; Social stratification; Sumptuary law; Material culture; Feudalism

Abstract

This article examines the relationship between dietary practices and social hierarchy in the German-speaking territories of the Holy Roman Empire during the High Middle Ages (circa 1050–1350 CE). Drawing upon archaeological findings, manorial records, sumptuary legislation, and vernacular culinary manuscripts, the study argues that food consumption functioned as a performative lexicon of power that actively constituted social identity rather than merely reflecting it. Isotopic evidence from medieval Thuringia and Cambridge directly correlates dietary patterns with social status (Rafał A. Fetner 2025; Dittmar et al. 2024; Meyer and Prufer 2024). The analysis traces a dietary structure corresponding to the medieval ordines: the coarse rye and pottage of the peasantry, and the ostentatious consumption of game, white bread, and exotic spices among the nobility. The article concludes that the medieval table constituted a contested site where the journey from coarse sustenance to refined gastronomy mirrored the broader dynamics of social power and mobility.

Copyright

© 2026 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Yihang Zhong
PY  - 2026
DA  - 2026/09/07
TI  - From Table to Throne
BT  - Proceedings of the 2026 12th International Conference on Digital Humanities and Frontiers in Social Sciences (DHFSS 2026)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 1322
EP  - 1329
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-2-38476-611-6_141
DO  - 10.2991/978-2-38476-611-6_141
ID  - Zhong2026
ER  -