SC - In need of a documented Rant on "highly spided spoiled food "

[Kirrily Robert]

In lists.sca.sca-cooks, you wrote:
>
>I have one question based on the article:
>
>In his chart of the cost of units of commonly used items, he gives 
>the price of cloth by the yard - that's certainly how i buy cloth - i 
>need multiple yards to make a single garment.
>
>But his unit for spices is a pound. I've only bought that amount of 
>cinnamon and ginger for a feast. I know we're different here on this 
>list, but most people in modern times buy spices by the ounce (or 
>less - ever notice how much is in one of those containers at the 
>supermarket?). Did most people actually buy spices primarily by the 
>pound (or regional-temporal equivalent) in the Medieval and 
>Renaissance periods, or did they buy ounces (or regional-temporal 
>equivalent)?

OK, time for some fairly bogus number-crunching:

Let's say you buy a pound of spice for a feast for 200 people.  
Now imagine you have a household of 10 people who are eating with you 
every day -- the same pound of spice would last 20 days.  Assume that
you'd only use half the spice in casual dining at home as we do at a
feast, and that's 40 days.

Or look at it another way: it doesn't seem unreasonable to have a
teaspoon or so of spice in a dish to serve 10 people.  Assume 2 spiced 
dishes a day at 5g of spice each (or more dishes less heavily spiced), 
making 10g spice per day.  That means it'd take about 40-something days 
to use a pound of spice.

Given a shelf life of 3-6 months and the irregularity of visits to major
trading towns (if you were in a remote part of the country), you might 
easily buy 3-5 pounds of spice at a time.  Now imagine what you might do
in a *really* big household!

Seems reasonable to me.

K.

- -- 
Kirrily 'Skud' Robert - skud at infotrope.net - http://infotrope.net/
There's nothing wrong with me; therefore, there must be something wrong 
with the universe.