SC - fetal???

[Anne-Marie Rousseau]

Hi all from Anne-Marie...
>  Now, under this system of harvesting the bunnies, there must have been
>  quite a few pregnant does caught.  He makes no mention of the fetuses,
so
>  I'm assuming they were either put in the stew pot or given to the
spaniels
>  & ferrets. >>
> 

Hmmm. I wonder if medieval people were under the impression that the uterus
(and its contents), along with the rest of the bunny innards, was garbage
and so falls under that category? I know that there are indeed recipes that
call for offal (my favorite is Maestro Eduardos rendition of the pasties
with chicken livers, gizzards, etc and cherries. The tart/sweet cherry cuts
the "dusty" taste of liver. yum!). 

Also, if my undergrad vertibrate comparitive anatomy serves me, a preggie
bunny just looks like a fat bunny from the outside. Inside, you have a
uterus that looks lumpy from the outside. Unless you actually dissect that
uterus, you dont know its baby bunnies inside. If you assume the uterus is
garbage (either in the medieval or in the modern sense), you probably
wouldnt open it up, and even if you did, it would be to "clean it", ie
scrape out the lumpy bits. Plus, rabbits have notirously short gestation.
When they're born, they're small, hairless and dont wiggle much. Which
means when babies are in the uterus, they're even smaller and  look even
more like miscellaneous lumpy bits, not like food.

Hmmm.
Oh, and there's no refernces to fetal/unborn rabbits in Chiquart. Not in
the recipes not in the menus and not in the shopping lists.

- --AM
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