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

[Terry Decker]

The Royal Household represents a very special case in size and organization. 
Most households ran between 40 and 200 people and included only those people 
who travelled with the lord or lady (couples often maintained two households 
which joined to be a single household when they were together.  Permanent 
staff at a manor were not part of the household unless the lord or lady was 
in residence.

Cooks and bakers and their apprentices were contracted retainers, but much 
of their help would be manor staff or hired labor.  Pantlers and butlers 
were more likely to be lesser nobles in the service of the lord or lady. 
All of these offices were responsible to a clerk (the Wardrobe) who 
accounted for their expenditures.  Specialties such as sauces, pastries and 
wafers were more likely to be handled by the cooks and bakers or a local 
specialist might be hired on a job rate (as Menagier's carver).

A good source is Woolgar, The Great Households in England in the High Middle 
Ages (IIRC).  I'm may be remembering the title incorrectly.

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