SC - period kitchen info

[Stefan li Rous]

Helen wrote:
> 
> I thought that fowl was eaten alot in period.  Maybe any meat dish was
> special "sunday dinner". (i.e. not soup or gruel)

Certainly fowl (primarily chicken and capons) turns up a lot in period
recipes, so does pork, I'd say. The point, I think, that Lord Ras is trying to
make is that chicken occupies a different niche to a medieval person than to a
modern one. Yes, chicken appears often in the cookery of the wealthy, but
whatever else it may have been or done, it was not available for 49 cents a
pound and packed pre-sectioned in plastic trays, nor was it what the poor ate
when they couldn't afford something like beef, which is, to some extent, the
niche it occupies to many modern Americans. The bottom line, I think, is that
people, both rich and poor, appreciated a chicken more, because it was harder,
in the days before scientific (read hormone-filled) feeding practices, to turn
a three-ounce chick into a five-pound roaster, both in terms of money and
time. This is why the change in attitude, generally less respectful (I know it
sounds silly but I know of no other way to describe it), has occurred within
the last 50 years, and why chicken for Sunday dinner was, until recently,
regarded as A Big Deal, and why someone could actually hope to win the U.S.
presidency by promising "a chicken in every pot" (I believe this was Herbert
Hoover, but it was Henri IV of France long previous).

By extension, let's look at the much-examined lines from Piers the Plowman
that we've been kicking around for the past couple of days. "I have no penny,"
Piers tells us, "young pullets to buy," etc., etc. A penny was a silver coin
and often represented, roughly, a day's labor to many peasants, depending on
their level of skill in a craft, the time, and the place. With that penny you
could buy a chicken. Something really special like a capon stuffed and already
cooked might run sixpence. Again, the math here is really rough, but I'm just
trying to make a point.

Nowadays, on the other hand, a laborer makes, at worst, minimum wage in the US
of something like (assuming we're talking legal employment) what, something
like $5 per hour before taxes? Many laborers, who both work very hard indeed,
and in ways that you or I don't have the skills to even think about, like,
say, operating a jack-hammer, make far, far more than that. They can then
break for lunch, and, if they wish, go down the street and get a half a
chicken, fried, for lunch, and this may cost them somewhere between $2 and $5,
depending on what else is purchased with it, like fries or some such. (I live
in a part of the country that's considered to be a very expensive place to
live, among its other disadvantages.) So, a chicken, even cooked, represents
in price somewhere between less than one hour of work and salary, and a
maximum of maybe two hours, even for someone at the lower end of the salary
scale. 

This is why, I'd say, the comment that chicken was less common in period than
today, was made.

Adamantius
Østgardr, East   
- -- 
Phil & Susan Troy

troy at asan.com
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