SC - recipes (vegetarian)

[Charles McCathieNevile]

At 2:09 PM +1100 2/9/98, Charles McCathieNevile wrote:
>Lots of days were declared by the church to be fast days - no meat dairy
>or eggs, although fish was usualy allowed. (_Apparently_ (which means I
>was told by an unreliable or forgotten source) the Pope declared that
>fowl were actually a type of fish. Mmmm, anybody want to come down the
>beach with me? I'm going to catch some goose ;)
>
>There were also ascetics, who lived on vege's on purpose. But I think the
>idea was that it was not meant to be fun - so you make porridge, and eat
>it, and make more - the theory is that suffering on earth gets you into
>heaven faster.
>
>Charles

There were ordinary fast days (Fridays and certain other days), for which
the rule was no meat (meaning quadrupeds or birds), but eggs, dairy, and
fish were legal; and fast days in Lent, when dairy and eggs were not legal
either but fish was still allowed.  The Barnacle Goose was (and is) one
particular species of goose, looking a little like a Canada Goose but
smaller; in period it was "known" that it started as a sort of barnacle
which consists of a shell attached to driftwood or something with what
looks, given a little imagination, like an embryonic bird hanging from the
shell by its beak; this was believed to grow and eventually drop off to
become an independant bird.  (See Giraldus Cambrensis for a period account
of this.) Everyone, of course, knew how ordinary geese and other fowl
reproduced.  At one point it was argued that since the Barnacle Goose
started life as a fish it should be legal on fast days.  Eventually (1215)
the controversy was settled by the Pope who decided that however it had
started life, by the time it was a goose it was flesh and therefore
prohibited on fast days.  It wasn't until around 1700 or so that it became
clear to scientific opinion that the goose in question reproduced like
ordinary geese and the barnacle had nothing to do with it.

Elizabeth/Betty Cook


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