I like to write short historic fiction and I try to do so with great detail and accuracy. So I'm curious, with trade, market availabilities and home grown crops or livestock products, what kind of foods would be on the dinner plate of an average person in say, Britain, c. 1805? Would an average market have tomatoes, or bananas, etc.?
Today we can go to the store and get bananas, avocados, or other more exotic fruits and vegetables at a very affordable price. This makes me curious as to whether 200 years ago or not this was the same. I'm certain that it wasn't, but I wonder which foods would be easily purchased. At a historic site one time, I was able to try a recipe of original hot chocolate, which was a beverage consumed strictly by the upper classes, as its ingredients were super exotic and expensive (if I remember correctly amongst those ingredients, obviously imported cocoa from South America as well as hot peppers were amongst them). For those curious, it tasted nothing like our modern hot chocolate of course. It was very thick, and the flavour is hard to describe. It was interesting and kind of good though. If I remember correctly the recipe was from the 1780s, and was the type that British gentlemen and ladies would enjoy.
In short, what would the diets of the lower, middle, and upper classes consist of at the mentioned time period? What would be on the dinner table of these peoples, both imported and domestic?
Early 18th century, or early 19th century? If it's 1805 you want, would you settle for 1780-1795? In 1797, Sir Frederick Eden published the results of his exhaustive survey of dealing with poor people across Britain--including the meal schedules of the townships' workhouses, notes about local industries, alcohol consumption in taverns, the church situation (denominations and sometimes congregation size), taxes, wealth distribution in a town...yeah. This should offer a pretty good look at the basic workmans' diet of the time both in workhouses and outside. I don't recall it having much to say about the upper classes, though. (Being called The State of the Poor, and all.)