In the early modern period, there were serious food shortages across England and Europe, especially in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Recent studies of the surviving evidence of these shortages invite us to consider local experiences of famine and dearth and raise questions about famine foods and diets, and the principles governing the discovery and consumption of famine foods, which are notoriously difficult to determine in this period. This chapter recovers sources of information about famine foods and shows how we might reconstruct famine diets in early modern Europe. With particular attention to the food experiments of the English author Sir Hugh Platt (1552–1608), it examines how trans-European exchanges of dietetic knowledge during early modern famines addressed concerns about environment and waste, consumption and recycling, and trade and sustainability. The chapter demonstrates, with examples of material practice, how pragmatic, everyday efforts from below harnessed the hope of survival in food insecure, pre-industrial societies.