Sour Cabbage Soup (was Re: SC - pierogys)

[Jenne Heise]

> > >Anyone have any stat on how much lard you get off of one pig if it hasn't
> > >been raised in the modern fashion, on kitchen scraps?
> Please clarify this statement. Do you mean that modern pigs are raised on 
> table scraps unlike period pigs or do you mean that period pigs were raised 
> on table scraps unlike modern pigs? I am confused.

I was thinking of the way we raised pigs -- keeping them in a pen and
feeding them kitchen scraps, etc. -- as modern.
My reading led me to believe that many pigs in period would have been
free-range scavengers, not generally tended by people who fed them but
allowed to range around the woods and eat what they could find. Obviously
those pigs who were kept outside of towns wouldn't have much chance for
kitchen scraps!
 
> In the town s pigs roamed freely eating all kinds of table scraps and other 
> detris. On estates they were pastured in oak groves and were considerably 
> fattened on acorns. Either way the pigs were fattened. Modern pigs have been 
> bread for the past 30 years to be increasingly lean so comparing them to 
> period pigs is questionable so far as their fat producing capabilities. 

Perhaps my information was a) wrong or b) related to a particular
culture/social class when it led me to believe that the average pig wasn't
fattened.

> One o the major agricultural products until well into the beginning of this 
> century was the production of lard. I am puzzled as to why you feel it was 
> 'expensive' during the middle ages.

Expensive compared to, say, flour, Ras. Meat in general is spoken of in
the middle ages as being rather expensive for the common man, though
accounts show that it was _very_ available to the nobility.

Depending on how many pigs you slaughtered in a year, you would have more
or less lard available to you. 

- -- 
Jadwiga Zajaczkowa, mka Jennifer Heise	      jenne at tulgey.browser.net
disclaimer: i speak for no-one and no-one speaks for me.
"I do my job. I refuse to be responsible for other people's managerial 
hallucinations." -- Lady Jemina Starker