White meat

[W]hite meates, as milk, butter ⁊ chéeſe, which were woont to be accoũted of as one of the chiefe ſtayes thorowout the Iſland, are now reputed as foode appertinent only to the inferiour ſoꝛt, […]

[I]n the very houſe or grange that I was borne in, my Mother and her maides made all the Whitmeate of ſeuenſcore kine and odde.

For the southern labourer the traditional ‘white meats’ were now dearer and scarcer, and although the total number of cows increased in the seventeenth century more were now kept on large farms, where the milk was turned into butter and cheese for sale in the markets.

The white meats—milk, curds, cheese, butter, whey, and buttermilk, from either sheep or cows, were important in their diet.

Together with their dependence on brown bread and ‘white meats’, it was their consumption of roots and leaves that distinguished the diet of the lower orders in the countryside and helped in some way to define their inferiority.