At last, it’s time to bust out the backstory of the delicious food we see artfully served in Bridgerton. As all the mamas in the early 1800s know, our beloved Bridgertons aren’t just titled; they’re rich and their table proves it. The foods we see in Seasons 1 and 2 represent some of the Regency era’s luxury eats, including venison, ice cream, sugary pastries and tea. Most people didn’t eat like that. The working-class diet consisted of bread and porridge, maybe supplemented with meat, not the lavish foods and drinks we see in Bridgerton. 

After all, the show is a historical romance-fantasy where people seem to more or less live in harmony. In the early 1800s, though, British Empire merchants acquired luxury goods like tea and sugar to the detriment of a good portion of the known world. Historian Troy Bickham writes that the English demand for sweetened tea and coffee “helped to fuel the empire’s expansion into Asia, transformed the ecosystems of large swathes of the Americas and doomed millions of Africans and their descendants to slavery.” Within England itself, prized food could be the cause of death and dismemberment.

Let’s start with venison, aka deer meat, one of the most luxurious foods in early modern England. During a dinner in Season 2, Lord Cowper declares, “I say, Featherington, I bet you could never find a venison like this in the Americas.” That’s absolutely true: Even if the same types of deer existed on both continents, venison had a different meaning in England. It was considered the king’s meat. Well, not like that, but you know what we mean. You might have encountered the English restrictions on hunting deer before. 

In many tellings, Robin Hood is on the run due to illegally hunting on the king’s land. That’s an actual thing. In the early medieval period, before the Norman Conquest, common-born people could hunt game, gather wood and let their livestock forage on the king’s land. But when King William arrived from Normandy, France, in 1066, he instituted a vastly different set of laws wherein royal land — approximately one-third of southern England — was for the king’s use only. Poaching became a crime punishable by execution or amputation. As a result of venison being reserved for all the king’s men, it became the status protein for all of early modern England. 

Venison was so important that Sir Ralph Verney divided up the venison he received among his friends and family in order to fuel the social bonds between them. The Epicure’s Almanack of 1815, a guide to the eating establishments of London, noted the places that “expose to sale” fine venison. When we see Kate Sharma (Simone Ashley) hunt with the Bridgertons in Season 2, it’s the Regency equivalent of vacationing on a members-only private island. And when landed nobles like the Bridgertons, Featheringtons and Cowpers serve venison at their tables, they’re setting themselves apart from the growing merchant elite that might have more money but lack access to the crown. 

At the same time that venison remained a rare, aristocratic delicacy, Sidney W. Mintz writes in his book, Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History, that sugar “transformed from a luxury of kings into the kingly luxury of commoners.” The average person in Britain went from consuming 4 pounds of sugar per year in 1704 to eating 18 pounds annually by 1800 (these days, there’s some 70 pounds of sugar available per person yearly in the United States). The price of cheap, plentiful sugar, however, was the freedom of the enslaved people who grew it.

Already in the 15th century, Portuguese merchants attempted to grow sugar on the Canary Islands and Madeira in the Atlantic Ocean, but the small islands were quickly stripped of resources and supply fell. English merchants seized Barbados and other Caribbean islands in hopes of creating sugar empires. There, enslaved people were forced to burn fields to drive away or kill rodents and snakes before using long, sharp knives to harvest the cane, which was then pressed, boiled and refined. Despite its gruesome origins, the final product was sweet and delicate, leading to it being associated with women in English culture since the 17th century. Britain abolished the slave trade in 1807, but slavery remained legal in most of the empire until 1833. By the turn of the 19th century, sugar was so associated with slavery that some people boycotted slave-produced sugar — while most continued to consume it.

The beneficiaries of increased sugar supply included confectioners, such as the owners of Gunter’s (depicted in Bridgerton as a popular first-date spot). Making ice cream without modern mixers or refrigeration was a difficult task in the early 19th century. It was also an expensive one, as the sugar, cream and flavorings — and even the salt that had to be added to the ice surrounding the ice cream maker — were all very costly. As a result, ice cream in the early 19th century was a treat usually eaten at special occasions (such as a feast given by the Lord Mayor of London) or savored by a sexy duke who just really loves spoons.

Society was changing, and being high-born was not the only marker of status. Personal behavior, where and with whom a person was seen, and what they owned or consumed were all clues that conveyed whether a person was respectable or not. Indeed, despite lacking in aristocratic pedigree, merchants and people of almost all classes could use their palate to accrue respectability. That’s the quest that keeps mama Violet Bridgerton (Ruth Gemmell) holding her head high when she’s inevitably cut by her peers because of her kids’ misbehavior each season. Anthony Bridgerton (Jonathan Bailey) is a wealthy, handsome viscount, but he’s held back from his goals by his reputation as a rake. Consuming the right foods in the right settings could help him correct his image.

Drinking tea was also essential to demonstrating respectability during this time. According to tea-loving 18th-century physician Dr. Thomas Short, tea encouraged “Business, Conversation, and Intelligence” while preventing “Expense and Debauchery” as it assembled “many sober Companies” in public and private settings. Adding just enough sugar without going overboard demonstrated moderation. Excessive love of sugar was noted, as it is in Bridgerton when Violet warns her staff that houseguest Miss Patridge “requires large amounts of sugar for her morning tea.”

The same “stop buying $5 lattes” personal finance rhetoric was used to shame the working class for their expensive tea-drinking habits. Meanwhile, tea was considered necessary since it acted as a stimulant and confirmed that a person was respectable. Rather than addressing the root of the problem — economic inequality — British merchants offered cheaper stuff to buy. In the late 1830s, they established colonial tea plantations in India in order to avoid buying tea from China. The food we see in Bridgerton is, of course, set dressing to create an eye-popping fantasy version of the Regency period. In early 1800s England, food came to the table loaded with cultural meaning and traces of the British Empire. The meals were soon devoured, but the impact of hunger for prized food and ingredients has lasted for centuries.