SC - Re: coronation menu (long)
lilinah at earthlink.net
lilinah at earthlink.net
Tue Jan 30 19:39:23 PST 2001
Olwen wrote:
>By the looks of the menu reciepts, how in the heck did anyone stay
>thin? One bite of each?
Walking, walking, walking, and more walking. Want to go somewhere?
Most likely you walked. Even nobility did a lot of walking. Few
people could sit around on their duff (well, maybe if they were
Scottish :-)
And at a huge feast, most people didn't eat all the dishes, just the
ones that were near them. And often only small amounts. If you look
at late Renaissance portraits - when painters are actually painting
from life - you'll see that most of the notables are not fat - a few
here and there, and England's Henry VIII is famous for, uh, living
large, but most people didn't do a lot of sitting.
Also meals - from what i can tell, they tended to eat two per day,
and perhaps a snack or two. And those feasts whose recipes we so
often use, were not necessarily daily fare. So probably they ate less
and moved more than we do. Additionally, i'm guessing that meat
animals were not as fatty as those we have now that have been bred to
be big and put on weight fast.
Anahita
who still needs to read those books on Medieval eating and feasting
and fasting such as:
"Holy Feast & Holy Fast: The Religious Significance of Food to Medieval Women"
"Feast & Fast: Food in Medieval Europe"
"Food & Feast in Tudor England"
any other good ones?
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