SC - Friday Feasts

[Philip & Susan Troy]

Jill James wrote:
> 
> If you all would be so kind as to consider this question: In England of
> the thirteenth/fourteenth century, a meatless Friday fast was followed,
> right?  If this is true, then when a major feast day (say Michelmas)
> fell on a Friday, would meat be cooked as in a feast on any other day,
> or would the cook have to prepare food of fish or the "white meats"?

Ooooh, I'm not sure if you want to include the phrase "white meats" in
there: nowadays they refer to meats that would have been prohibited on
meatless days, veal, pork, maybe chicken. Whitemeats in period are dairy products...

However, to get to your question: the answer is, "I dunno!"

However, here's what I _do_ know. In the early 15th century, Maitre
Chiquart d'Amiczo, master cook of two Counts, and one Duke, of Savoy,
wrote a book which appears to be both an instruction manual and a
proposal (in a business sense) for a planned feast for the Count of
Savoy to marry the daughter of, IIRC, the Duke of Burgundy. The proposed
wedding festival is to take place over two or three days in succession,
at least one of which being a Friday or Saturday fish-day, and the
proposed menu features largely the same dishes in meat and fish-day
forms, with recipes for both.

Now, whether this applies to England of the thirteenth/fourteenth
centuries is a little unclear. Recipe sources available from the period
don't make it hugely clear whether all the dishes they refer to are for
feast days or for everyday eating by people who are presumably wealthy
(they own books, don't they?). Certainly some dishes are represented in
both Lenten or fish-day forms, in conjunction with meat-day versions.
Whether that means the meat versions are feast dishes isn't completely
clear, but the complexity and references to garnishes, some pretty
outlandish, including dishes made to look like the heads of Turks, for
example, might suggest they are. I doubt these are casual supper dishes.
("Quick, Guilliaume, Prior Herebert from the Abbey of Saint Anselm's has
been sent for to sit vigil at the deathbed of Lady Agatha. Whip up a
nice pheasant-and-pistacchio-filled Teste de Turt for him, will ya?
He'll be hungry.")

If you look at menus of the period, you'll find what occasionally seems
like disregard of the rules, with early courses of a feast being made
from fresh and salt fish (there's some mixed evidence to suggest this
would not normally have been done outside of Lent or fish days), to be
followed by the more standard meat-day venison and frumenty, etc.   

I would say, intuitively and without total certainty, that fish and
other meatless alternatives would be employed on appropriate days if the
host or guest(s) of honor deemed it the correct plan of action, and if
not, not.

And it'll be plenty hot enough for these wicked people to bake all the
venison pasties they can eat where _they're_ going, heh heh heh...

Adamantius (sorry, couldn't help myself; artificial piety seems to be in
the air pretty often in early November)
- -- 
Phil & Susan Troy

troy at asan.com