SC - trencher history guesses

[Philip & Susan Troy]

LrdRas at aol.com wrote:
> 
> In a message dated 2/1/99 10:57:08 PM Eastern Standard Time, troy at asan.com
> writes:
> 
> <<  I'm not
>  sure I buy the idea that there was all that much unrecorded bread eating
>  by the less-than-well-to-do,  >>
> 
> Granted. But there certainly is no recorded recipes for peasant bread or
> peasant porridge for that matter. Any discussions of peasant food preparation,
> in and of itself, is an excercise in futility because we simply don't have a
> record to support any theories we may put forth. IIt is my position that is
> impossible to recreate a period 'peasant' dinner with any certain degree of
> accuracy. The best we could do is produce a meal based on conjecture. Why
> bother?

Probably the best reason for speculation is if someone raises the
subject of whether the average jack ate his trenchers or not.

Two of the very few things we can tell, with fair certainty, about the
eating habits of the poorer classes in medieval Europe (I'm not
comfortable using term "average" in this discussion as it's basically
meaningless) is that the urban poor didn't generally have regular easy
access to milled grain and ovens, and the rural poor, while they could
have built mills and ovens, don't appear to have been in too many
situations calling for trenchers, largely because it probably would
indicate proximity to a manor or castle, which more or less makes them
urban, not rural.

As for a period peasant dinner, while we probably don't have enough
information to speculate on the full spectrum of the diet of a medieval
serf, there are occasonal references to foods they ate. As we've
discussed before, "Piers Ploughman" has some references to winter foods
which suggest dishes like bacon and greens (frequently without the
bacon, though ;  )  ), pease pottage, and oatmeal porridge were fairly
common fare. Taillevent omits recipes for such dishes because "any
housewife knows how to make them", but Le Menagier does include several
such recipes (albeit it's not too clear what the lower classes might
have done about Lent and such; almonds were probably more expensive than
meat, so almond milk pottages probably weren't common for them).

Now I agree with the idea that it's pretty much human nature to dunk
your bread (if you have any) in your soup (if you have any) and eat it,
but using that as the main basis for an argument that trenchers were not
given to those seeking alms, but eaten by the rich instead, sounds a
little extreme. That's just a general comment, not aimed at Ras... .

Adamantius
Østgardr, East
- -- 
Phil & Susan Troy

troy at asan.com
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