SC - trencher history guesses

[Decker, Terry D.]

> >>In the towns, the average bread use was about 2 pound per person a
> day.<<
> 
> Bear, is this a scribal error?  I am one of the biggest bread eaters I
> know and I don't come close to that amount.  Maybe 2 pounds per week.  I
> love bread with gravy, or honey, or jam, or soup, or....
> 
> Allison
> 
No it's taken from Scully's comments about several studies of medieval town
life.  Apparently, cereals in the form of bread, beer and porridge were the
staples of the European diet.

IIRC, there was a footnote else where in The Art of Cookery In the Middle
Ages which placed per capita meat consumption in one of the towns at about
46 kilos per year.  

Of course both Braudel and Scully are looking at the Late Medieval Period,
when the standard of living in Europe was the highest it would be before
modern times.

If I weren't eating much of anything else, I can put away two pounds of
bread a day easily.  It's the gallon of beer that would do me in.

Bear
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