[Sca-cooks] SCA Slaughtering

[jenne at fiedlerfamily.net]

> While I am enjoying this thread immensely, it seems the bulk of the
> discussion so far is what a learned man once described as "pooling our
> ignorance".  There has been lots of good discussion of modern techniques
> in various types of communities, and some speculation about what may or
> may not have happened "somewhere, sometime, at least once."

I'm hunting for my [library's] copy of Thomas Tusser's 500 points of good
husbandry [duh, just remembered that it's here in the office!]

Tusser makes a big fuss about how many people you will need for
harvest/reaping (August's Husbandry) but only tangential references to
slaughtering in November(though he confirms that winter seems to have been
the  slaughtering time:

"At Hallontide, slaughter-time entereth in,
and then doth the husbandmean's feasting begin:
Frtom thence unto Shrovetide, kill now and then some,
their offall for household the better will come"

and
"(For Easter) at Martilmas [Martinmas?] hang up a beef,
for stall-fed and pease-fed, play pickpurse the theief:
With that and the like, ere an gress beef come in,
thy folk shall look cheerly, when others look thin."

I haven't counted how many staff he mentions in his treatise but it's a
lot. The same thing is true of Crescenzi and his mentions of outdoor staff
needed for things.

However, though the illustration of a ox butchering shows only men, somen
and one man are shown cutting the throat of a pig. Of course, the rank of
the women is not known, and at one point Tusser assigns the Dairy-maid to
keep the pig-pen clean (when you stall up the pig at Michelmas so you can
find him when the time comes to kill him.)

>I'm not
> throwing my impression in yet for fear of the appreciated disembodied
> voice of Ras screaming respectfully at me . . . 'documentation please"
> (that keeps me honest <g>).

*snort* Ras would have been throwing around gross generalizations.

One source on the staffing issue is
Charleston Kedding : a history of kitchen gardening by Susan Campbell.
(London : Ebury Press, c1996.)

> I am curious to hear any sort of reference to give foundation the
> speculation that is quite possibly reasonable.  I believe it quite
> possible that a Manor Lord of some stature would go to hunt, and watch
> or participate in slaughter (ergo the hunt part).

Ok, some secondary sources (which of course would have Ras foaming at the
mouth *smile*):

English picnics. by Battiscombe, Georgina. (London, Harvill Press,
[1949]) (shows illustrations of the  hunt)

Food and drink in Britain : from the Stone Age to the 19th century / C.
Anne Wilson. (Chicago : Academy Chicago Publishers, c1991.)

Fast and feast : food in medieval society / Bridget Ann Henisch.
(University Park : Pennsylvania State University Press,
c1976.)

Primary Sources:

The babees book, Aristotle's A B C, Urbanitatis, Stans puer ad mensam, The
lytille childrenes lytil boke, the bokes of nurture of Hugh Rhodes and
John Russell, Wynkyn de Worde's Boke of keruynge, The booke of demeanor,
The boke of curtasye, Seager's Schoole of vertue, &c. &c. with some French
and Latin poems on like subjects, and some forewords on education in early
England. Edited by Frederick J. Furnivall (London, Pub. for the Early
English Text Society, by N. Trübner & Co., 1868.)

Nola, Roberto de. Libro de cozina .

Note that I haven't searched all these yet.

Also, if I can find it (and I'd better, it's an ILL book!):

Feeding a city : York : the provision of food from Roman times to the
beginning of the twentieth century .  White, Eileen.   Conference:
Leeds Symposium on Food History ; (12th :; 1997); Series:  Food and
society ;; 10; (Totnes : Prospect Books,  2000)

> How often, who would
> have done it, where was it done, what time periods was this popular or
> practiced?  I will be checking my copy of LeMenagier for a good middle
> of the road nobility reference to what was and was not to be purchased
> form a meat purveyor in 1393 France (Paris).  That should give us at
> least a baseline reference for speculation about then and there.
>
> pacem et bonum,
> niccolo difrancesco
> (some people think the rotten meat thing is reasonable and logical)
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-- 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