SC - Re: Meats/spices in MA

[Jenne Heise]

>"Coarse meat can or cannot be beef each 
> time. 

Since the author specifically defines 'coarse meat' as mutton or beef, so
I ineterpreted each reference to 'coarse meat' to be the recommendation to
use _either/or_ mutton or beef.

> Veal is a different beast than Beef.  It has diofferent characters and
taste than
>  their older relatives (same as lamb vs. Mutton). 

I included the veal references to make it clear that veal and beef were
treated separately.

>  food references, including menues and recipes, I find that beef is greatly outnumbed 
> by fish, pork, lamb, mutton, game meats and the other proteins.

However, I would say, based on Le Menagier, that he did prefer beef to
chicken unless all those roasts were chicken, since there are relatively
few references to capon or hen. But of course, we can only generalize from
Menagier what he liked and considered good taste to serve.

>could have been eaten or discarded or fed 
> to animals or fed to servants or given to the church or burned as sacred offering to 
> some deity.  Again, I may be myopic, so someone stop me before I misinterpret again.

Well, in the time periods we're talking about, it would be very unlikely
to be burned as an offering.;)
 
> Calling pepper common and available to the 11th century manorial landlord suggests
>  to me that it was aavailale to nobility and land-owning class.  There is a bit of an 
> economic gulf between manorial landlords and their tennant chattle.  I accept the 
> assertion that pepper of some sort became MORE common in the 11th c. (end of war, 
> opening the spice road, etc.), but am 
> hesitant to generalize that reference very far down the economic scale of people. 

Once again, you are placing the big gulf there by perceptions. I don't
think the poor had access to spices or much of anythign else unless it was
part of a dole. But tenant farmers were not necessarily extremely poor.

> Dame Alice de Bryene is also not common or peasant, having a title and all.

I quoted these to give you some idea of prices, not what Dame Alice
bought.

> If you have 
> positive reference of general peasants of substance purchasing spice such as pepper
>  and cinnamon or mastic, then I welcome those from anyone with them.  My 
> references are limited in discussion of the classes of people 'below' merchant, save clerical.

The previous contentions in this discussion seem to rest on the suposition
that these spices were more expensive
than peasants could afford. My recollection, based on the prices given by
C. Ann Wilson and materials in (blast it, what's that medieval technology
book) anyway, given the possible assets of peasants as related in economic
histories, that your argument doesn't hold water. 

Now, if you do have records of what peasants bought (I have not seen
these), below the purchase price of a cow or a piece of land, in terms of
food purchases, and the records don't show spices, I would concede that
your supposition is logical. 
 
>Suppositions can 
> always be made, but they have a lower degree of confidence than a hard reference.

Yes. In this case, I don't see that any hard references are being
presented for the purchase or non-purchase of pepper specifically by
tenant farmers. Thus, I don't think we can draw a useful conclusion about
whether or not tenant farmers (i.e. peasants) had access to spices or not.
Each side is merely supposing.

If you do have some sort of records of incidental purchases by peasants, I
would like to see a citation, because that sort of agricultural economic
history I enjoy.

(For information about Tenant farm economy in Central Europe, try, Land,
Liberties and Lordship in a Late Medieval Countryside: Agrarian Structures
and Change in the Duchy of Wroclaw. Richard C. Hoffman.
(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 1989) .)
 -- 
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