NON-DELIVERY of: Re: SC - semolina and mixed herbs
Lotus Mail Exchange
lotus_mail_exchange_at_bala__cynwyd at smtp.primavera.com
Mon Jul 7 20:59:00 PDT 1997
Hi all from Anne-Marie (who knows how to butcher and used to invite her
high school boyfriends home on Chicken killing day :D)
In the 12th century, common peasants knew how to butcher. Alexander
Neckham (_Daily LIving in the 12th Century_ by Urban Tigner Holmes Jr)
carefully lists all the things that a peasant should have. This list
includes many kinds of livestock, many of which (except the mules) we
have recipes for their use as food. I find it very unlikely that the
peasant would have livestock and then call in a butcher from the city to
kill and dismember said beasties. The same treaatise discusses the
butchers in Paris, though, so one thinks that perhaps city dwellers
didn't raise their own livestock and so bought already dead meat bits.
Livestock, according ot Holmes, were driven into town and then butchered
as needed by professional guilded butchers. I guess this means that some
city slicker could go through life without ever killing a chicken of
their own, but most people in the middle ages were not city slickers, and
so most would have been responsible for the butchering of their own
livestock.
In the 14th century, a middle class merchant knew
how to butcher. _le Menagier a Paris_ gives great detail on this matter.
In the 15-16th centuries, peasants butchered their own meat as is
evidienced by the Books of Hours illuminations on this subject.
Killing animals is easy. I did it when I was a kid. We didn't have any
fancy anatomy lessons first...we just had someone show us once how to do
it.
- --AM
- --
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Anne-Marie Rousseau
rousseau at scn.org
Seattle, Washington
More information about the Sca-cooks
mailing list