SC - fat consumption in period

[Vincent Cuenca]

To add on to Adamantius' comments on fats (I deleted the digest so I can't 
quote directly):

Maguelonne Toussaint-Samat's "History of Food" cites regional preferences 
for cooking fats.  Lard was popular pretty much everywhere it was available, 
but southern Europe preferred olive oil over butter.  She cites several 
accounts of Provencal and Catalan travelers bringing large supplies of oil 
with them when they were forced to travel northward; there was an apparent 
belief that eating butter caused leprosy.  Of course, northern travelers in 
Italy experienced the opposite reaction; they were sickened by the smell of 
hot olive oil and pined for good northern butter.

Now, Mme. Toussaint-Samat has some pretty heavy Francophilic tendencies, and 
she buys into the idea of half-rotten meat being popular in the Middle Ages, 
so I'm not taking her quite at face value.  Her scholarship does seem to be 
pretty solid, though.


Vicente
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