[Sca-cooks] Med/Ren Kitchen Job Titles?

[Elaine Koogler]

margaret wrote:

> A baker is not usually part of the kitchen staff. Where an 
> establishment had a baker, they normally had a bakery separate from 
> the kitchen. If the manor didn't have a bakery, it commonly purchased 
> from the nearest baker. Because of the guild structure and the legal 
> restrictions on bakers, when they worked for private employers, bakers 
> were contract professionals not subject to the control of the cook.
>
> The various specialties you note here are a very late development 
> beginning in the late 16th or early 17th Centuries. Codification of 
> these specialties in France is, I believe, post-period and Napoleonic 
> in origin. In fact, I think you will find most kitchen specialties are 
> derived from the division of labor in a modern commercial kitchen.
>
> Bear
>
I dug this up some time back when working on an article about Medieval 
kitchens. IIRC, the description is based on 14th - 15th century sources. 
The source for the quotation is: Hammond, P.W. /Food and Feast in 
Medieval //England//./ Phoenix Mill, Thrupp, Stroud, Gloucestershire, 
UK: Alan Sutton Publishing Limited, 1993.

*_ _*pp. 122-123: Organization of kitchen: King’s household consisted of 
between 400 & 700 people. Household divided into “offices”. Pantry—bread 
(purchase, serving, etc.—later responsible for table linens and some 
utensils and serving equipment). Pantry also included waferer and 
laundreses. Butlery or buttery supplied ale and delivered wine to the 
table. Kitchen bought, prepared and delivered the food. 
Larder—responsible for meat and fish. Poultry provided poultry, while 
the scullery provided pots, pans and other cooking vessles, along with 
the coal and wood needed for cooking. The ‘saucery’ made sauces and 
worked closely with the ‘pastry’. The ‘spicery’ received spices from the 
“great wardrobe’ and distributed them. These departments also had 
sub-departments, such as the scaldinghouse, under control of the poultry.

As I understand it, there was a person in charge of each of these 
functions, taking on the name of their area...so the Pantler was in 
charge of the pantry, etc. This was also verified by Terence and Eleanor 
Scully's "Early French Cookery". I don't have the exact quotation in 
front of me, but remember it verifying what I found in the Hammond book.

So while some of these other terms may not have been used in period, 
others were.

Kiri