They Weren't Meatatarians

I was thumbing through a 2006 biography that I purchased on the French writer Flaubert when I stumbled on this -- an account of the typical diet of a French male in the early Victorian era:

"A working man might begin the day with bread dipped in chicory brew sweetened by molasses. He commonly lunched at his workplace on potatoes, cabbage, turnips, or carrots, ate bread in midafternoon, and had more bread with café au lait for dinner.

"The lard that moistened his potato mash was the closest he usually came to tasting meat. Bread kept him alive."