[Sca-cooks] Butter

[Elizabeth A Heckert]

On Wed, 29 Aug 2001 14:41:40 -0500 "Decker, Terry D."
<TerryD at Health.State.OK.US> writes:
>About a year ago, we were discussing whether butter should be served
>at feasts and Gunthar chided me about serving butter at the Protectorate

>feast without documentation.

    From *Women In Old Norse Society* by Jenny Jochens (Cornell U. Press,
Ithaca, 1995.  ISBN 0-8014-3165-4)

     (P.127) "Scarcity of grain meant that in Iceland, unlike in
continental Europe, bread never became a staple.  It was in fact so rare
that people dreamt about it and one man received the nickname
'Butter-Ring' from his favorite food of bread and butter."

    (P.128) "Hard as a board, dried fish was softened by being beaten and
was served with butter.  ... Heavily salted, butter could be kept for
decades; large stores were accumulated, like gold, by wealthy landowners.
 By the time of the Reformation, the bishopric in Holar possesed a
mountain of butter calculated to weigh twenty-five tons."

     Dr. Jochens has based her study mostly on literary sources.

     Elizabeth

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