[Sca-cooks] Meat was Question from a newbie

[Decker, Terry D.]

I see some other kind folk have pointed you to the Florilegium and Greg
Lindahl's webpage, and I don't think just naming sources available to me
will do you a lot of good unless Jaelle is in town with a research library.
As I recall, she's acting as a consultant for Old Hansa in Taillinn.

Meat is a pretty broad topic, so I'll touch on a few things and you ask
questions or pursue your own inquiries.

The Medieval diet appears to have been based mainly on cereals with meat in
various quantities being a supplement.  In general, the higher the rank, the
more meat in the diet.

The primary source of meat during the Early Medieval period was probably
pig.  It is the animal whose primary use was as a source of meat and fat.
Other animals provided milk, eggs, fiber and muscle power.  Pigs provided
bacon and lard.  This doesn't mean that other animals weren't eaten, but
that they had addition uses other than as food.

Depending upon the game laws, small game like rabbits, small birds, and
waterfowl might be found in the diet.

By the Late Middle Ages, a wide variety of game, wildfowl, domestic poultry
and domestic animals could be purchased live or slaughtered in the various
European markets.  The selection was larger than can usually be found today.

Now we get a little complex.  The amount of meat in the diet increased
between the Early and Late Middle Ages because of two occurrences.  First,
the Cistercians, who were founded at the end of the 11th Century, developed
self sufficient monasteries during the 12th and 13 Centuries.  They
introduced innovations in land reclaimation, mining, engineering,
agriculture and animal husbandry, which were practical and were adopted by
the general population.  Second, in the mid-14th Century, the Black Death
significantly reduced the population of Europe which in turn increased the
value of labor and the general wealth of individuals.  This translated into
an increased demand for meat and an increase in stock raising.

Ferdinand Braudel in his Civilization and Capitalism trilogy comments that
the European diet of the 15th and 16th Centuries was the best it had been or
would be until the 20th Century.  Braudel also pointed out that during this
period, tens of thousands of cattle, sheep and pigs were driven to market
every year, sometimes over considerable distance.

"...of the animals processed in Carpentras, a regional town in the south of
France, shows generally for the year 1492-1420 that mutton practically drove
all other meats from the market in June and July, that beef (oxen and cows)
accounted for an amount of between 40 and 50% of sales between September and
January, and then up to 64% in February, whereas virtually the entire output
of the slaughterhouse in March (94%), and most in April (51%)  was lamb.
Over the years of the first half of the fifteenth century tha same market
handled a changing balance of animals, in some years mutton being the
predominent meat, in other years beef.  In terms of actual quantities, there
are monthe, such as September, November and December, in which the
slaughterhouse was particularly busy, and others, April to July, in which
the average production was half of that amount.  Given the presence of the
Lenten season in March, this must have been a holiday time for most
butchers.

"A most interesting revelation in such historic studies is the way in which
the processing of meats, and so eventually their consumption, varied in
quantity quite significantly from year to year.  For the town of Carpentras
the numbers for the year 1419 appear to be average; yet 1420 is perhaps 20%
lower; 1422 is slightly higher, and 1437 is something like 20% higher.  In
actual quantities, the more active years turned out an average of 15 tons of
meat per month at peak production, and the more slack years saw a maximum of
only 10 tons per month.  A number of factors can account for variations in
the amount of meat eaten by the general population.  Clearly these
variations must have depended upon the current price for the various meats,
which itself, in the simplest of economic systems, would depend upon supply,
that is, the availability of the animal for slaughter.  Again, relative
abundance could effectively be determined by the weather of the current and
previous years, the state of the grazing lands, any prevailing diseases, the
number of young animals born, the number of young allowed to grow to
maturity, and the number of animals their owners wished to retain or to
dispose of because of personal circumstances or because of some crudely
perceived economic outlook."  Terrence Scully, The Art of Cookery in the
Middle Ages, pg. 18.

I suppose that last phrase includes government controls placed on
importation of stock, such as the Poles placed on imported Russian beef in
the 15th Century.

Despite a great many modern comments hiding the flavor of rotting meat with
spices and the quality of meat during the Middle Ages, most of the meat
available then was probably fresher than we have today.  Because they did
not have refrigeration, animals and fish were often kept alive until sold,
then butchered.

Most towns had regulations concerning the quality of the meat being sold.
Unpreserved meat had a definite period in which it could be sold and
prescribed methods as to its disposal.  Selling rotten meat was a serious
offence.

As a humorous aside, Ipswich in England banned the sale of rotten meat with
one exception.  One could sell rotten meat if one was willing to place a
table before the pillory and sold it as rotten meat.  I assume this was more
as ammunition rather than dinner.

In the late 13th Century, the Parisian cook's guild had the following
regulations as outlined in in the Livres des metiers of Etienne Boileau, a
Provost of Paris:

"No one may boil or roast geese, veal, lamb or piglets . . . or beef mutton
or pork unless the meat is good and proper for selling and eating, and
unless its marrow is good.

"Cooked meat may be kept only three days for buying or selling, unless it is
adequately salted.

"...no one in the craft may sell blood sausage, for it is a dangerous meat.

"All meat sold by cooks must be well and properly cooked, salted and
prepared; otherwise this meat may be condemned to being burnt."

So there are a few items to help you along.  If you have any questions, ask
away.

Bonne Chance

Bear

> My name is Yrmegard and I'm from Tallinn, Estonia. We are
> establshing a
> group here and just starting with our topics.
>
> I have a concrete question. I need to speak for circa 10
> minutes about meat
> in Middle Ages at the event where people will bake meat and
> would seek for
> an interesting information about meat in history. Could
> anybody help me
> with finding the information?
>
> Julia Amor