SC - Shakespeare

[Mary Morman]

Franz wrote:


>Combine that with the basic necessity that marks a limit on the number of
>animals an individuals acreage could support, if the milk was what was
>desired, why keep the infant? It would only endanger the future life of the
>mother by consuming the food supply of the parent after it is done
>suckling. Note that most veal and kid is defined by an age at which sucking
>has ended.


So is lamb in many countries. And they were - still are, in many cases -
either slaughtered or weaned as soon as possible, so their mothers can be
milked. Here in Iceland, they were usually weaned at 4-5 weeks, and had to
fend for themselves in the mountain pastures until they were slaughtered at
4-6 months. Anything older than that wasn´t - and isn´t - isn´t considered
lamb around here.

The taste of a male lamb will change markedly somewhere between 6-8 months,
unless it is gelded. This is called "taste of ram" here and most people find
it unpleasant. So a male lamb was either killed or gelded before it reached
that age, unless it was to be kept for breeding. Besides, lamb was usually
considered inferior to mutton (unless perhaps very young spring lamb).

In France, according to the Larousse Gastronomique, the oldest lambs that
you can buy are grazing lambs, 6-9 months of age, 30-40 kilos. I´m not sure
but I think lamb in Britain is usually not more than 9 months old.

>We do NOT seek the milk from sheep, but rather the wool. I do not
>know of any instance where a single sheep was kept for its wool production.

Maybe not, but around here many poor people had only two or three ewes and
kept them both for milk and wool production, and also for the meat - mostly
as mutton.

>In sheep farming, the herd is culled at least once possibly several times a
>year, depending on breed and wool harvest, with up to half the flock being
>sold. Prices for wool and for mutton will also work towards deciding which
>gets sold, the inside or the outside. This culling usually takes place
>after the spring clipping, significantly after the lambing season.

That is true when the sheep are kept for their wool only but when the ewes
are milked, it would make no sense to cull the flock shortly after the
lambing season. Here, sheep were hardly ever killed outside the
"slaughtering season" (October-November). Most of the male lambs that had
survived the summer were gelded; some of the female lambs were used to
replace old or unproductive ewes; the rest were killed.


>IOW, calves and kids are killed because they have already done their task
>and most people had a parent. Lambsgot slaughtered only because there is a
>small market for lamb, and were kept by a relative few. Finding period lamb
>recipes would therefore, IMO, be proportionally harder to find.


Well, there may be another reason. The following is a quote from A Gourmet´s
Guide by John Ayto:
"In Anglo-Saxon times one ate simply sheep ... In the late thirteenth
century, however, in what might be interpreted as the first instance of
French oneupmanship over the gastronomically illiterate British, the Old
French word moton was drafted into the language, introducing for the first
time the possibility of a distinction between the live animal and its flesh
used for food. (In fact mutton was from early on used for live sheep as
well, and this continued until comparatively recently; and the distinction
from lamb as the flesh of young sheep does not appear to have developed
until the seventeenth century.)"

Nanna

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