Meals...? What meals??

Meetings can be great learning opportunities! Well, this meeting had nothing to do with meals. The discussion was primarily on how to effectively plan a lesson for students that could maximise retention.

During the course of discussion, setting learning objectives was being outlined and as an example, a lesson-"Types of Meals" from the F&B Syllabus was quoted. The question which came to mind then was "what is a Meal?"

What is a meal?

Try explaining what is a meal? Everyone understands what a meal is. Defining and explaining, however, becomes a bit difficult. Here is a definiton of meal as per the American Heritage Dictionary:
1. The edible whole or coarsely ground grains of a cereal grass.
2. A granular substance produced by grinding

Surprised? Now that is what the word originally meant. Today, we know a meal to be a portion/serving of food eaten at specific times during the day. For example, Breakfast at morning, dinner during mid-day and supper before sunset. This is how traditionally meals were planned during the Middle Ages.

Dinner at Noon?

In the Middle Ages, great nobles ate the most formal dinner, around noon or one p.m. Their dinner was more than a meal; it was an ostentatious display, a statement of wealth and power, with dozens of servants attending in a ritualized performance. Elaborate prepartions were cooked for this grand, daily showsince early morning. The meal usually lasted hours, and was consumed in the most formal and elaborately decorated chambers. Lesser nobles, knights and manor holders ate a far less formal dinner, but at the same time of day.

Today many people find it strange that the biggest meal of the day once centered around noon, but it made great sense at the time. Artificial lighting such as wick lamps, lanterns and candles were expensive, and provided weak illumination at best. So people went to sleep early, right after sunset and their culinary rituals had to be done before sundown.

What about Lunch?

From the Middle Ages to the age of Shakespeare, there are scattered references to occasional extra meals, called luncheon and nuntion or nuncheon. Nuntion was eaten between dinner and supper, and peasants were sometimes guaranteed nuntions of ale and bread on those days they worked harvesting the fields in the lengthy days of late summer and autumn, when sunset and supper came many hours after noon and dinner.

Luncheon seems to have been eaten between breakfast and dinner, when dinner was delayed. Luncheon was taken mainly by ladies and was not a large meal. It was more of a snack on those days when they had to wait for a late dinner due to the political or sporting affairs of their husbands.These late dinners became more and more common in the 1700s, due to new developments in culture and technology.

By 1800 the dinner hour had been moved to six or seven. For early risers this meant a very long wait until dinner. Even those who arose at ten a.m. or noon had a wait of anywhere from six to nine hours. Ladies, tired of the wait, had established luncheon as a regular meal, not an occasional one, by about 1810. It was a light meal, of dainty sandwiches and cakes, held at noon or one or even later, but always between breakfast and dinner. And it was definitely a ladies' meal; when the Prince of Wales established a habit of lunching with ladies, he was ridiculed for his effeminate ways, as well as his large appetite. Real men didn't do lunch, at least not until the Victorian era.

In her first edition of Etiquette, in 1922, Emily Post had seen no need to explain that. But by the 1945 edition, she had to explain that luncheon was an informal midday meal and supper an informal evening meal, while dinner was always formal, but could occur at midday or evening.

In the 21st century, meals are classified as under:

Standard meals eaten on a daily basis have different names depending on the time of day or the importance of the meal:
Breakfast is usually eaten within an hour or two after a person wakes up in the morning.
Elevenses is a drink and light snack taken late morning after breakfast and before lunch.
Brunch is a late-morning meal, usually larger than a breakfast and usually replacing both breakfast and lunch.
Lunch is a midday meal. May also be classified as dinner outside the US.
Afternoon Tea is a midafternoon meal - typically taken at 4pm - consisting of light fare such as small sandwches, individual cakes and scones with tea.
High Tea, also simply called "Tea" is a late afternoon / early evening meal that replaces the evening meal referred to as dinner
Dinner can be at any time of the afternoon or evening and usually denotes the main meal of the day; sometimes it is at lunchtime and sometimes at suppertime.
Supper is usually an evening meal.

Change in customs and traditions due to change in technology and socio-economic pressures are well documented. A good teacher should plan his/her lesson without ignoring the background of the input that has to be delivered to the students.

Ashim R Parida

Reference: Sherrie McMillan in History Magazine