Practically, eating resolved itself into two meals a day, just what they were used to at home, and very fortunate it was they were used to it; to us it seems like alternately starving and over-eating. In Germany the latter extreme was the more common; in fact, it is not easy to see how the second meal was fitted in, considering the time one took, three to four hours. At Berne there was a law against sitting at table more than five hours; at Bâle 10 A. M. to 6 P. M. was the maximum, but the town council were unable to practise their own counsels of perfection and on great occasions finished in private. In Saxony the innkeeper was forbidden to serve more than four dishes at a meal; and there public opinion was perhaps some check, inasmuch as the common saying was to compare the Saxon dishes, served as they were, one by one, to the tyrants of Sicily, each one of whom was a more fearful monster than his predecessor.
Their neighbours, on the contrary, set all on the table at once in a two-decker on three iron feet; in the top story was the inevitable sauerkraut and beneath, roast meat, poultry, puddings, and whatever else was to be had; so that an Englishman likened this two-decker to Noah's ark, as containing all kinds of creatures. As to these German "puddings" there is no hard-and-fast rule to be drawn between them and sausages; and accordingly one cannot say for sure whether it was pudding or sausage which was the food Moryson had for supper one night near Erfurt; but the description is of no importance compared with the size, for it was as big as a man's leg, conforming to the phrase in which the German expressed his idea of happiness, "Lange Würsten, Kurz Predigen" (long sausages, short sermons). One who journeyed through Hessen describes his diet as "mostly coleworts," but a Saxony dinner ordinarily began with stewed cherries or prunes, continued with poultry or meat, the pot for which was set on the fire but once a week; and concluded with bacon to fill up the corners, as important a consideration for the host as any one, for there was no greater reproach to hurl at the host than "Ich hab' mich da nicht satt gefressen" ("I didn't eat my belly-full there").
Bacon was of great account in Germany, so great that the owners were wont to bless their pigs when the latter trotted out of a morning, to ensure their safe return; and told off a servant to wash them as they passed the fountain on their way back, which they took of their own accord. But while a well-fattened sow commanded a fancy price—as much as the equivalent of fifty pounds was paid at Heidelberg in 1593 for one who had become unable to eat a whole raw egg at a meal—sucking pigs were unknown as eatables; an Englishman who bought one for food was forced to kill and prepare it himself on account of the unwillingness of the servants to touch it. What Saxony did lack was everything that was dependent on the yield of a cow; throughout Germany there was little cheese except that made from goat's milk.