Margaret Hickey, whose recent book examined the eating and drinking habits of the pre-Famine period

Any idea what your Elizabethan ancestors had for breakfast? A research team led by the Tipperary-born Susan Flavin is about to find out what was on the menu.

Flavin, a historian at Anglia Ruskin University in the UK, will lead a team of academics to undertake the most detailed look yet at the Irish diet before the Famine, specifically between 1550 and 1650.

The aim of the five-year study is to better understand Ireland’s food culture in the 16th and 17th centuries at a level of detail never previously attempted in Europe. Researchers hope to build a database of who ate what, where and when, at a time the country was going through huge change because of colonisation.

The project, which has received €1.5m funding