SC - Re: Meats/spices in MA

[Jenne Heise]

> >Peasant, despite our modern conditioning, doesn't mean 'starving poor
> >person' or even 'starving serf'. It means, according to the OED, " One who
> >lives in the country and works on the land, either as a small farmer or as
> >a labourer; spec. one who relies for his subsistence mainly on the produce
> >of his own labour and that of his household, and forms part of a larger
> >culture and society in which he is subject to the political control of
> >outside groups; also, loosely, a rural labourer."
> 
> Was this always the definition? I see nothing in it that allows us to say 
> medieval peasants enjoyed the use of spices without a qualifier as to amount 
> and frequency.

As far as I can tell, yes, peasants as a class were pretty much defined
according to the OED.

As far as I recall, the  original disagreement came from someone saying
that peasants would not have had access to spices at all, except possibly
in cooked dishes distributed as largesse (my paraphrase).
 
> I think we have a time as well as money division between our opinions.  My 
> basic viewpoint is very early period, when there was much less of the 
> in-between class. I agree that the later we go, the more people had spice, 
> that is common knowlege. But we can't say that that medieval peasants had 
> spices without making clearer WHEN and WHICH of them had spices.

C. Ann Wilson points out that in Britain between the 5th and 11th
centuries, spices in general were a rare commodity. (I'm summing up the
entirety of pg 279 and 280 which I'm too lazy to copy here.)

Now, about the state of spice selling in Late medieval England, without
reference to peasants...
"Outside London spices could be obtained periodically at the great
regional fairs; and the commoner and cheaper ones, such as pepper and
ginger, were sold by itinerant chapmen. Prices at the fairs were sometimes
keener than those of London. Dame Alice de Bryene in 1419 paid two
shillings an a penny per pound for pepper in London, but only one and
eleven a pound when it was bought at Stourbridge Fair.
But London could supply the rarer, more exotic varieties, and moreover
they were available there throughout the year. So when a member of a
household had to go to London on business, he was often commissioned to
send or bring back several different spices.
The Grocer's Company encouraged this state of affairs, , and for a time in
the fifteenth century even tried to ban its members from selling spices at
the fairs, lest trade should thus be diverted from London. In country
towns the shopkeepers, who acted as agents for members of the Company,
charged prices even higher than the London ones.
A few Landowners had another source of spices in rents, which were
occasionally paid in agreed weights of pepper. A peppercorn rent was, of
course, insignificant in this context, but a fixed rent of a larger
quantity could supply a household for most of the year. The two priests
living at Munden's Changry in Bridport in the mid-fifteenth century
recieved half a pound of pepper among their rents." p 283.
 -- 
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