RE [Sca-cooks] Butter

[Decker, Terry D.]

Pliny comments on the use of butter by the Germanic tribes.  Five to six
hundred years later, Anthimus (IIRC) comments on butter as a medicine.  The
Irish used butter mixed with meal as a spread for bread.

The "Latin poem" quoted is an excerpt (lines 2524-2832) from Daniel of
Beccles' "Urbanus Magnus," a medical treatise (IIRC).

Butter appears in later works as noted.

The evidence supports the idea that northern Europe used butter before the
Middle Ages and continued using it through the Middle Ages and beyond.  The
evidence supports its use on bread.  No direct evidence seems to cover
butter's general use during meals (the few references are culture specific).
However, butter is a condiment which does not require preparation after
manufacture.  The only reason we know other condiments were used is largely
due to the recipes for their preparation in the kitchen.  Given that butter
is documented in generally available texts across a large temporal and
spatial area, it is probable that butter was often eaten at meat day meals
including feasts.

In other words, butter is a reasonable compromise as a table condiment in a
northern European feast, even though we can not absolutely prove it was
eaten.  I would avoid it for southern European and Arabic feasts.

BTW, butter was a multi-purpose fat.  One Roman writer commented upon the
odor of the barbarians, because they used butter to grease their hair.

Bear

> Hi all,
>
> I must admit I find it difficult to make up my mind here.
>
> Should I now serve bread and butter at my feasts on the
> strength of the one
> definite reference (Way of Dining) and the debatable reference (cited
> below). And is the latter documentation for in-feast bread
> and butter or
> not?
>
> What do other people think?
>
> Lucrezia