SC - Re: OOh-OOh Birds! -Longish

[Sue Wensel]

Lord Ras,

> My original intention was to suggest that just maybe the ostentatious use of
> chicken could POSSIBLY have been a sign of wealth since their value on a
> daily basis would have been directly linked to egg production. This was a
> HYPOTHESIS and is not born out in research. I only know that from personal
> experience down on the farm that we ONLY slaughtered the oldest chickens and
> extra roosters unless we had an over abundance of birds, which situation was
> rare indeed.

I understand now.  In your first post, the comment about ostentatious use of
chicken was missing; it seemed, to me at least, as though you were stating
that most, if not all, use of chicken was for the upper classes.

> Also a comment was made on pork and beef recipes being common. This is
> correct but NOBILITY could afford herds of these animals. However, the
> average Joe would have had a "family cow" which would not have been
> slaughtered for meat. And he perhaps would have owned 2 or three pigs which
> would have been fattened and put up for winter usage.

 Farmers in rural U.S. with limited amounts of land have a practice of buying
a pregnant cow, milking her after she's dropped her young, then butchering her
when her female offspring is impregnated (or butchering the male offspring). 
They would pay stud fees, or gain stud fees from males.  I have no idea if
this style of animal husbandry was practiced in period, but this strategy
would enable even relatively limited farmers to have beef.

> So the question becomes one of whether the lifestyle of the rich and famous
> really had anything in common with the average Medieval peasant type person.
> In view of the above, IMO, the abundance of recipes calling for beef, pork,
> and chicken may very well show that the NOBILITY, for which the extant
> cookery manuscripts were written, were very well flaunting there wealth by
> using these meats which the peasant population could not afford to slaughter
> or consume with impunity.

On this, we are agreed. 

I do have one question:  Were the extant cookery manuscripts written for the
nobility, the mercantile upper classes, or the middle classes who were trying
to add a veneer of sophistication to their lives?  Markham wrote for the last
two, Le Menagier was written for an upper class (I believe) new wife , but I
don't know who the intended audience was for many of the other manuscripts. 
It may be that there is no one answer -- different manuscripts may have had
different purposes.

Derdriu
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swensel at brandegee.lm.com