[Sca-cooks] Period German menus

[Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius]

On Feb 8, 2007, at 10:14 AM, Jadwiga Zajaczkowa / Jenne Heise wrote:

>> It's that Indo-European Bo-thingy. Bo-vine, Tain Bo Cualgne, Boeuf,
>> Bo-yar, Bauer, etc. It's all about the cows...
>
> I really hope you're kidding. In cultures where the term boyar is  
> used,
> it means generic nobility. A bunch of the Slavic countries didn't even
> have formal ranks.

I'm not kidding. In this case I'm less concerned with current  
definitions than with etymology. Boyars may not own cows, but at some  
point in the past, the word was allegedly applied to people who did,  
and that's, according to some sources, why that word, and not some  
other, was used.

>> Putting it another way: in a herding economy, cows are wealth and
>> power, and when Rumpolt speaks of a feast for a farmer, he's
>> presumably not talking about serfs or even tenants.
>
> Our modern word interpretation of the word farmer covers a whole bunch
> of different ranks in period.

Sure it does. But do you think Rumpolt is talking about Piers the  
Plowman when he speaks of a feast menu for a farmer?

A.



"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