Sixteenth-Century Take-Out

Believe it or not, prepared food was readily available in the sixteenth-century towns. Vendors called rôtisseurs sold all kinds of prepared meals and even arranged dinner parties for wealthy patrons. Partridges, capons and hares, already larded and roasted, cost less than fresh ones from the market. People in general ate little bread and fruit but large quantities of meat. A well-off bourgeois might sit down to a meal featuring five or six different kinds served with a variety of sauces and stuffings. Pastries (meat cooked in dough) were a favorite dish. With such demand, the rôtisseurs' enormous ovens never cooled.

Anyone for a pork chop to go?