SC - Breakfast OOP North vrs South
geneviamoas@juno.com
geneviamoas at juno.com
Tue Feb 2 09:21:49 PST 1999
> > But isn't it true My Lord that in "the olden days" it was either feast
> or
> > famine?' Meat was not eaten every day as in the recent past. So that
> when
> > there WAS meat, it was "feast & enjoy yourself" And eating was a way to
> keep
> > healthy! (back then.)
> >
> > Phillipa
>
> I think that this is another "medieval myth". Certainly there were famine
> years. And meat was limited by the church for certain days of the week
> and seasons of the year. That very fact brings us back to the old truism
> of historiography - you don't make a law against something unless people
> are doing it. That the church limited consumption of meat was a clear
> indicator that on non-fast days people were regularly eating meat.
>
<snipped> This leads me to
> believe that the reason we see non-meat dishes in the other cookbooks is
> so that cooks could accomodate the fast days of the church, not because
> people chose to eat meals without meat.
>
> Elaina
>
I think you are right Elaina. Here's another quote form a footnote in
Scully to help the discussion along:
"Yet in the diet of the bourgeois population of a town such as Chambery in
Savoy meat did enjoy a relatively important place. Rejane Brondy has
estimated that over one year (1375-1376) between 160,000 and 165,000
kilograms of red meat was consumed, which amount she calculates to mean the
eqivalent average of 45-50 kilograms per inhabitant per year. Chambery.
Historie d'une capitale vers 1350-1560, Lyon (Presses Universitaires de
Lyon), 1988, pp. 108-109."
Or 94-110 lbs of meat per capita that year. Since meat days are only about
1/2 of the year, we're talking over 1/2 pound of meat per person per day.
Bear
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