[Sca-cooks] Re: Nibbles

[Heather Musinski]

It strikes me that all of the responses below contain a part of the answer.
 
Fennel seeds as well. I have a reference but don't know where it came from,
about keeping fennel seeds in one's pockets to nibble on during long church
services. It sweetens the breath and is an appetite suppressant.
Christianna
 
Hm.. I think raw celery and raw or pickled fennel bulbs were mentioned
in Platina; the Rus seem to have liked raw radishes; I have somewhere a
reference to raw turnips, I believe...

--
-- Jadwiga Zajaczkowa, Knowledge Pika jenne at fiedlerfamily.net
 
This got me to wondering if medieval folk "nibbled" the way we do. While we may eat "meals", many folk are never far away from some snack food - in a work drawer, in a school backpack, in one's kitchen. The medieval setup was a bit different, was it not? Workers worked, then stopped for a meal. Then they worked. They weren't carrying small bags of "whatever" to stop and snack on between their chores, were they? I don't get a mental image of scribes laboriously copying texts and reaching over for a snack between pages. Or, ladies in the solar doing embroidery and snacking while changing colored threads. Might not this insistent snacking that we take for granted be a much more modern phenomenon? 

Alys Katharine

 
Nibbling "in period" would fundamentally be very different than today. From a cultural and social standpoint, nibbling would depend very much on what you could afford. As always, a wealthy household or nobility would be more likely to have to resources to have snacks. Another part of modern snacking is the easy availability of ready made noshes. Even someone with wealth would be at the mercy of seasonal availability, and what the kitchen was able to put out. And the middling classes probably would see those same snacks as occasional treats. The poor would probably see something we call a nibble as a welcome addition to daily survival.
   Aromatic herbs and spices certainly end up being in the realm of the wealthy. Depending on what grows in the area, they may have had wider availability. Certainly, fresh vegetables and fruits would be the most common nibbles. In season, and with a good harvest, those things would have been at hand for many people. Castelvetro mentions several fruits and vegetables as being enjoyed by women and children (don't have a copy, so specifics are beyond me). I suppose I interpret that as being somewhat frivolous, and not sustaining in the way "real food" would be.
   So nibbles at that time would be pretty alien to people in a culture who can bop into the Quickie Mart and get a Moon-Pie, R-C and a bag o peanuts. Though I suppose it is the same in that their snacks would also be simple and easily available.
 
Rachaol
   


__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around 
http://mail.yahoo.com