SC - In need of a documented Rant on "highly spided spoiled food "
Kirrily Robert
skud at infotrope.net
Fri Apr 27 10:14:11 PDT 2001
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.
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