SC - Butchering

[Gretchen M Beck]

Excerpts from internet.listserv.sca-cooks: 30-Jun-97 SC - Butchering
Uduido at aol.com (1121)
Excerpts from internet.listserv.sca-cooks: 30-Jun-97 SC - Butchering
Uduido at aol.com (1121)

> There is really no need to look up the "evidence". We tend to forget that
> until the advent of electricity  in this century and the advent  of canning
> in the 19th century people preserved foods in a more traditional manner for
10's of thousands of years.
> Such is also the case for butchering. The advent of the suppermaket ( less
> than 75 years) makes some of us think that meat comes all neatly packaged and
> never do we give a tho't to the source. In extrapolating period culture
>  every effort must be made to step away from the modern. There are no
> similarities whatsoever between pre-20th century lifestyles and any
> lifestyles occuring before then, in any way shape or form. To try and figure
> out the cultures and lifestyles of past generations who did not have the
> "wizardry" and "magic" that now have by comparing them to our culture is
> ludicrous and irrelevant, IMHO.

Actually, the question about butchering is quite apt--we know there were
butchers in period, and that there were even regulations governing
butchers and where they set up their shops in period.  This suggests
that, at least in urban settings, many (perhaps even most) people did
not do their own butchering.   It's also possible that butchers were
like bakers -- some people bought the bread from the baker, others took
their dough to the baker to be baked.  So, did butchers do the
preserving, did they sell exclusively fresh meat, or did they do both?

20th C or no, our ancestors didn't ALL do it all themselves, and you
probably have to go back quite a ways to find more than a single
generation (say the first generation of American frontier folk) who did
it all themselves.

toodles, margaret