SC - fried fish and other foods

[Terry Nutter]

Hi, Katerine here, continuing a conversation with Adamantius.

>> >Are you suggesting that meals were either all meat or all fish? I don't
>> >think the extant menus support that.
>> 
>> Every extant English menu I've seen does; I haven't studied menus from
>> elsewhere nearly so closely, but I don't recall any French menus that
>> included fish on meat days either.  However, this is certainly something
>> that is likely to have varied by place and by time -- the latter
>> especially, as the number of days of abstinence in the calendar
>> declined.  I would't want to make any claim about 16th century menus,
>> without careful study.
>
>I suppose it just depends on where you looked; I'm sure neither of us is
>familiar with every menu there is, so it's quite possible that two
>different random samples have left us with different impressions. There
>are two menus quoted from MS. Cosin V.III.II (C) on page 39 of "Curye on
>Inglysch": one for a feast for the King at home with the Lord Spenser,
>and another for the King at home for his own table. Both contain
>mixtures of meat, fish, and fowl.

The first of the Cosin menus contains no fish.  The second mentions pike,
bream, and perch -- buried among 37 dishes.  Neither of these is a menu of a
specific meal served; both are typical of "suggested menus" that show 
up in cookery collections.  It is noteworthy that the king's table supports
rather more clerics than usual: the people most likely to observe days
of abstinence even when the rest of the population isn't.  With no fish
on the menu, they can eat none of the main dishes.  I wouldn't take
the presence of a couple of isolated fish dishes as evidence that anyone
except abstaining clerics are eating it.

>                                  I have seen menus which, taken by
>themselves, would certainly seem to support the idea that fish would not
>be eaten on meat days. Still, there are others.
>
>I vaguely recollect seeing just the other day a menu for the coronation
>feast of Henry the Fifth of England: It seems to have just a bit of
>quadruped meat in it, plenty of fish, and a subtlety of roasted swans
>swimming on a lake of silver-plated jelly. I think it may have been
>somewhere in one of the books in the Cariadoc collection, but offhand I
>don't remember. 

I believe you must be referring to the coronation feast of Henry IV; my
best understanding is that the menu of the coronation feast of Henry V does 
not survive.  The menu from Henry IV's coronation is given on page 57
of Austin (and in a number of other places), and contains one fish
dish (sturgeon with luce), among 43 dishes, placed in the first course.
This hardly constitutes "plenty of fish" -- and may simply have been a
way to see that abstinent clerics had something other than greens to
eat.

In other words, the three menus you cite contain 0%, 8%, and 2.3% fish
in the order you cite them -- and the 8% menu is not a specific account
of a specific meal.  Looking at the other nine surviving menus reported
in Austin (counting two cases of complete menus "for inferiors" as 
separate from the primary feast menus), three are for fish days, and
contain no meat or fowl.  Of the other six, only one contains any
fish at all.  That is one dish out of 33.  Taking the six menus together,
the total items come to 169, with only one fish item in the lot.

Of course fowl and four-legged meat occur together at the table.  For
that matter, they occur mixed in individual dishes.  But I don't see
a single menu here that supports the notion that fish was generally
eaten on meat days; and of nine meat day menus representing jointly
289 dishes reveal a total, among them, of 5 fish dishess -- 3 of
them not actually attested as served together in any one meal -- I think 
it's fair to say that the evidence tells strongly against general 
consumption of fish on meat days.

There are other surviving menus I could dig up, but they support your
claim even worse, to the best of my knowledge.  If I'm wrong, I'd be
interested to know where to look.

>Gettin' too old for this kind of thing, I suppose...

Oh, I doubt you're much older than I am.  And Connie Hieatt is nearing
70, and going strong.

Cheers,

- -- Katerine/Terry