[Sca-cooks] Rotten meat and spices...

[Laura C. Minnick]

At 04:47 PM 4/12/2005, you wrote:
>Laura C. Minnick wrote:
>
>>Personally, I think our preoccupation with meat is in part due to our own 
>>habits of meat consumption (in general- quite a bit) and for us in 
>>particular, the fact that the extant menus and recipes are basically 
>>those of the upper classes, which ate more meat. If Matilda, John the 
>>Farmer's wife had written down her recipes and menus, we might see a very 
>>different picture.
>
>FWIW, here's Chaucer's description of the diet of a poor widow:

Except it is not a description of her diet, but of her possessions.

First, the starting with lines immediately above (in the Middle English, 
but I'll gloss it where needed):

A povre wydwe, somdeel stape in age,
Was whilom dwellyng in a nawre cotage,
Biside a grove, stondynge in a dale.
This wydwe, of which I telle yow my tale,
Syn thilke day that she was last a wyf
In pacience ladde a ful symple lyf,
For litel was hir catel and hir rente

[So we have a poor widow, advanced in age, who is living in a small 
cottage, beside a grove, in a dale. This widow, since she was widowed, has 
patiently led a simple life, for she has few possessions (chattel) and 
little income (rente).]

By housbondrie pf swich as God hir sente
She foond hirself and eek hir doughtren two.

[Through careful management (husbandry) she provided for (foond hirself) 
herself and her two daughters.]

Thre large sowes hadde she, and namo,
Three keen, and eek a sheep  that highte Malle.

[She has three sows, no more, three cows, and also a sheep named Molly.]

Ful sooty was hir bour and eek hir halle,
In which she eet ful many a sklendre meel.
Of poynaunt sauce hir neded never a deel.
No deyntee morsel passed thrugh hir throte;
Hir diete was accordant to hir cote.

[Her chamber and her hall are sooty- (except this is being used in an 
ironic sense rather than literal- she has no such rooms in her cottage, 
they are found in a manor house), wherein she has eaten many slender 
(scant) meals. She has not needed a bit of spicy sauce. She's eaten no 
dainty morsels. Her diet is in agreement with the modestness of her small 
farmyard.]

[From there are a few lines about her health, then:]

No wyn drank she, neither whit ne reed;
Hir bord was served moost with whit and blak-
Milk and broun breed, in which she foond no lak,
Seynd bacon, and sometyme an ey or tweye,
For she was, as it were, a maner deye.

[She drank no wine, neither white nor red; her table was set white and 
black- milk and brown bread, which she was not short of. Smoked bacon, and 
sometimes an egg or two, for she was something of a dairywoman.]

Of course later we get to hear of her rooster, Chaunticleer.

So she has three sows, three cows, and a sheep. And a few chickens. It is 
clear that these animals are where she gets her meager income- she milks 
the cows (and possibly Molly) and sells the milk. Possibly sells eggs. She 
likely has the sows bread and sells the resulting piglets. She may butcher 
a pig now and then, but not often, as the only mention of meat is a bit of 
smoked bacon. What she eats apparently is the products of her animals, and 
bread. (God help her in Lent!) She doesn't eat the animals themselves (at 
least until they are old and no longer producing) any more than a wheat 
farmer eats his seed.

'Lainie


___________________________________________________________________________
O it is excellent to have a giant's strength; but it is tyrannous To use it 
like a giant--Shakespeare, Measure for Measure, Act II