[Sca-cooks] SCA Slaughtering

[jenne at fiedlerfamily.net]

> I'm basing my belief on cultures today, who commonly slaughter their own
> foodstuffs. There's good reason for it- if you see the living animal, you
> can tell if it's active, its coat is healthy, and its eyes are bright- much
> as we pick outlobsters today.

Well, yes, but the cultures you are talking about are primarily small
operations. What we are recreating are big operations, with _lots_ of
staff. It's hard for many of us-- including me-- to imagine how many staff
were involved in the maintenance of even a small manor. Imagining that a
staff for a country house could be over a hundred different people, all
with defined duties, boggles the mind!

If you have specific staff for handling _only bread_, _only baked goods_,
_only_ dairy, etc. and you have other staff for handling the animals
(remember, modern and even 19th century small operations don't have the
same kind of division of labor that 16th century staff had).

> Well, again, I'm basing my comments on modern practices, but in areas where
> we're less affected by supermarket culture, everyone participates in a major
> slaughter- a pig sticking, for example, or a cattle slaughter, but an
> individual animal, for your dinner, might be done by just one or two people.

However, that's a modern, eglatarian, American model. When you realize
that even in the early 20th century, the operation of 'choosing fresh
fruit for the kitchen' in an English country house involved no less that
5 separate staff, each with clearly defined and socially segregated
duties, it's certainly possible that the elaborate job distinctions that
we see in period records and manners books might divide up the jobs of
getting from dead animal to cut of meat.

> I can't see that this sort of thing would have changed much over the years-
> it's simply too practical a method for using your manpower.

Depends. For instance, in such operations, the operation of the kitchen
and other tasks virtually shuts down for the duration of slaughtering
because kitchen and other staff are being pulled into the work of
slaughtering. With larger staffs and the need to do slaughtering on a more
regular basis, specialization that limits the effect of such large tasks
on other duties might be a lot more practical, simply because both
slaughtering/butchering and cooking large meals is time-consuming.

Remember, we're not talking about a staff of one dairymaid, one cook, a
maid and a cowhand; you're talking about a major house or manor with a
huge staff.

We know for a fact that game and small birds were delivered to the kitchen
already dead.

> Skinning is not a big deal, either- for smaller animals, it's rather like
> rolling a child out of a sleeping bag, once the initial cuts are made- for
> larger animals, other than around certain areas where care needs to be
> taken, it's simply pull and cut (if necessary) the connective tissue,
> between the hide and the carcass.

I wasn't thinking of it as difficult, but as a job that might have been
specialized to a different staff member as part of the tanning/curing
process.

> Today's supermarket mentality has made of slaughtering and butchering, a
> mystery.

Yes, but that wasn't what I was talking about. I was talking about
division of labor, and whether it might have been different from our
modern, small-operation model.

-- Jadwiga Zajaczkowa   jenne at fiedlerfamily.net
"The world breaks every one and afterward many are strong at the broken
places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and
the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these
you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry."
-- E. Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms