Some remarks on the everyday and festive meals in nineteenth-century Elbląg based on Tagebuch einer Elbingerin (1825–1830)

Abstract

The aim of the text is to present selected aspects of the diet of Elbląg citizens in the first half of the nineteenth century, based on the anonymous Elbląg woman’s diary titled Tagebuch einer Elbingerin (1825–1830). It was possible to extract and collate almost 150 mentions of various meals. Dinners were the most often recorded meals, while breakfasts were almost never mentioned. The diet was richest during spring and summer months, and the twelve days of Christmas. Sunday repasts were the commonest
to be described. The composition of the meals indicate that the diarist belonged to well-situated bourgeois family.