[Sca-cooks] fwd: [MR] BBC: Richard III's Diet and Drinking

[Terry Decker]

IIRC, the estimated daily beverage intake (derived from a number of 
contemporary and later records from various locales in France and England) 
was a gallon of ale (or beer) or two quarts of wine.  It is worth noting 
that the alcohol content of the daily tipple was generally lower than today 
due to the wider use of small beer and the watering of wine.

Hopping, which may be dated to 822 (and possibly earlier) in Carolingian 
France (there is some disagreement between sources as to the first reference 
to hops in brewing), doesn't appear to be common practice until the 13th or 
14th Century in Central Europe.  Hopped beer was imported into England in 
the early 15th Century and was likely being brewed there before mid-century. 
For Medieval English usage, beer and ale are synonyms.  The differentiation 
between ale and beer as unhopped and hopped respectively occurs as a legal 
definition in a petition to the Lord Mayor of London in 1483 (date caveat, I 
haven't found a copy of the petition yet) by the Worshipful Company of 
Brewers (founded in the 13th Century and chartered in 1438).   I suspect 
that in common use, beer and ale remained synonyms.

The differentiation of ale and beer as top fermenting and bottom fermenting 
derives from the development of bottom fermented, hopped lagers at the end 
of the 16th Century.

Bear

-----Original Message----- 

What was he supposed to drink?  Water?  would you drink untreated water from 
those wells?  Cholera anyone?  Milk, before pasteurization ?  Ale?  Beer not 
coming to England til hops.

A bottle equivalent in a Day?
How much liquid do you drink in a day?  Count Coffee, Soda and tea.  Bet you 
drink more than a wine bottle's worth (as you noted wine came in barrels and 
was decanted into pitchers).

Add that the wine was possibly watered at various times of the day.  This 
doesn't come close to the Frat party boy chugging Chianti at a party, or Joe 
Sixpack.

Ate Swan and Goose!  Not really extravagant at a time when they were raised 
in numbers great enough to drive in large flocks across country (stores of 
the Little Goose Girl).

He didn't eat a peasant diet, but de doesn't seem to have gorged himself 
like a Georgian sybarite either.

Regina


Sent from my iPad

> On Aug 18, 2014, at 1:54 PM, Stefan li Rous <StefanliRous at gmail.com> 
> wrote:
>
> I thought some here might find this interesting.
>
> Date: Mon, 18 Aug 2014 04:50:23 -0400
> From: Garth Groff via Atlantia <atlantia at seahorse.atlantia.sca.org>
> To: Merry Rose <atlantia at seahorse.atlantia.sca.org>
> Subject: [MR] BBC: Richard III's Diet and Drinking
>
> Noble Friends,
>
> Today the BBC is reporting that analysis of his bones and teeth reveal
> that he ate a very rich diet, even for nobility (Duh! He was king,
> wasn't he?), and drank up to a bottle of wine a day:
> http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-leicestershire-28825653 . Actually,
> this is a bit misleading, as wine came in "pipes", not bottles, and was
> probably drawn off and served from a pitcher of some sort. In any case,
> the very late king partied heavily.
>
> More Richard III news is sure to come, so stay tuned for another chapter
> in history's the longest running soap opera.
>
> Yours Aye,
>
> Lord Mungo Napier, That Crazy Scot
> --------
> THLord Stefan li Rous    Barony of Bryn Gwlad    Kingdom of Ansteorra
>   Mark S. Harris           Austin, Texas          StefanliRous at gmail.com
> http://www.linkedin.com/in/marksharris
> **** See Stefan's Florilegium files at:  http://www.florilegium.org ****