[Sca-cooks] Lamb (was Re: lent, wine, indulgences, de Nola)

[Phil Troy/ G. Tacitus Adamantius]

Also sprach Pixel, Goddess and Queen:
>
>  > Which shows that the Normans doing the hunting too.
>>
>>  Ranvaig
>
>Or merely that the Normans were doing the writing. History is written by
>the victors, after all. I would argue that, rather than the theory of word
>usage showing that the Normans were doing the eating, the word usage shows
>that the Normans were writing the cookbooks. The first cookery manuscripts
>are, after all, written in Norman French or are posited translations from
>a French manuscript.
>
>I refuse to believe that only the Normans did any hunting, and that only
>the Normans ate meat during the MA. If that were true, then there wouldn't
>be people with English surnames mentioned in the court records for
>poaching. For instance.
>
>Has anybody considered that the word usage might have something to do with
>French being the language of the upper classes for so long?

I think records of sales, and assize laws, were kept for markets run 
by Normans, too, which might be why the English names for many of the 
animals have survived, while the French names for the animals have 
largely become the names of the meat from those English-named 
animals. This could explain why what has come down to us are English 
names for meat animals (with the occasional exception) and French 
names for meat, and the misimpression that only the Normans ate meat 
(which I'm sure the Saxon aristocrats who kept their lands in England 
after the conquest would have found rather funny).

Adamantius