[Sca-cooks] trenchers and the "mini Ice Age"

[Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius]

On Sep 27, 2005, at 2:25 AM, Stefan li Rous wrote:

>> > written about later.  Their use began declining after the 13th
>> > Century and disappeared in the 17th Century.
>>
>> Replaced to a great extent by sippets and toasts...
>>
>
> And what makes you think the sippets and toasts replaced trenchers?  
> Just because something goes out of fashion or taste while another  
> comes in, doesn't mean one replaced the other.

No, but when the second item is similar, or arguably similar, in both  
form, function, and substance, _and_ when there is neither a really  
significant overlap when both items were in widespread use nor a  
really significant gap wherein neither was used, I'd say it could  
easily be argued to be a case of replacement.

> Trenchers and sippets/toasts seem to serve two different purposes.

To some extent, that is true. And to some extent, their purpose  
overlaps. Intersecting sets and all.

> Sippets and toasts were used to absorb liquids intentionally poured  
> over them. They are already on a plate, right? Whereas the  
> trenchers were used to catch drippings, but the drippings weren't  
> intentionally poured over the trenchers. We have plenty of evidence  
> that trenchers were not really meant to be eaten by the guests,

We have even more evidence, I suspect, that they were still eaten.

> while snippets and toasts are meant to be eaten by the guests.

Yup.
>
>> > Given the cost, bread trenchers fall under the heading of
>> > conspicuious consumption.  Their use appears to tie to wealthy
>> > feudal household ritual, so a small loaf, daintily carved would
>> > probably add to the display of wealth and position.  They were a
>> > Rolls Royce kind of status symbol.
>>
>> Some day I'd like to do a multilateral presentation on the effects of
>> the "Mini Ice Age" of approximately the 12th through the 18th
>> centuries. It would involve tying together a number of strings,
>> including clothing styles of the period, the weather (obviously),
>> plagues, harvests and famine, and from a foodie perspective, the role
>> of the trencher and the emergence of edible pie crust.
>
> Again, would you be using the "mini Ice Age" to simply frame a  
> convenient block of time? Or are you saying that the coming and  
> going of the "nini Ice Age" helped cause the rise and fall of the  
> trencher and then the rise of the edible pie crust?

Since I'm not a fan of backward-documentation, I'd be asking a  
question, and seeing where the amassed evidence took me. But what I'd  
be asking (and this is a question others have asked of me) whether  
piecrusts and trenchers, both examples of foods-not-necessarily- 
intended-to-be-eaten, or food-based-structures not necessarily  
intended to be eaten, subsequently morphed into being eaten on a more  
regular basis, how they changed (i.e. white flour, changes in the  
height of a pie and form of the pastry, etc.), and the question of  
whether all this has anything to do, one way or another, with famines  
that went arm-in-arm with bad harvests and bad weather.

> I would think the development of sippets and toast or of edible pie  
> crust had more to do with the development of edible breads and pie  
> crusts than with climate change. Although, perhaps the climatic  
> change caused a change in the type of wheat which would grow?

I'm thinking more along the lines of, climactic changes may have made  
some people need more calories, and more concentrated carb sources,  
than before, combined with a scarcity of grain which might make it  
less advisable to create food-based items that aren't going to be  
eaten. This phenomenon, if it _is_ a phenomenon, isn't something I  
made up; you see evidence of climactic change (as well as reading  
specifically about it in things like the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles) in  
records of plague years (the plague doesn't go away, it just reaches  
epidemic proportions when you have an entire population hammered by  
cold and poor diet for years at a time), in clothing styles, and in  
architecture (look at castle window sizes of the period in question,  
for example, and fireplace sizes).

I'm not prepared to defend this as a thesis, at this point, but I  
think it's an interesting idea. YMMV.

Adamantius


"S'ils n'ont pas de pain, vous fait-on dire, qu'ils  mangent de la  
brioche!" / "If there's no bread to be had, one has to say, let them  
eat cake!"
     -- attributed to an unnamed noblewoman by Jean-Jacques Rousseau,  
"Confessions", 1782

"Why don't they get new jobs if they're unhappy -- or go on Prozac?"
     -- Susan Sheybani, assistant to Bush campaign spokesman Terry  
Holt, 07/29/04