[Sca-cooks] ROFL - medieval employee fraud

[aruvqan]

http://www.medievalists.net/2014/02/26/defraud-lord-medieval-manor/

In it there is described 1 way to ingeniously defraud your lord of the 
meat of a sheep by making the hide look like the poor thing died of murrain:
> The third fraud is "to make a sheepskin appear to be that of a ewe 
> that died of murrain. As soon as it it flayed, let the skin be placed 
> in hot water and then immediately dried, and it will become as if the 
> ewe were dead of murrain." In this way, you would convince everyone 
> that the animal was diseased and that's it flesh could not be eaten -- 
> meanwhile the flesh, which is really fine could be yours to eat or sell.
and one way to get a cheese out of the deal:
>
> The final fraud involved cheese-making, which was done during the 
> spring and summer. Carpenter writes:
>
> /First, on the day when they begin to make cheeses, let the milk be 
> divided equally into eight parts, and let the eighth part be kept 
> until the following day, and from the other parts let one cheese be 
> made immediately. And the next day, let the milk be divided in the 
> same manner, and one that day let two parts be taken from the milk, 
> and let the first part, which was taken first, be poured into the 
> other milk, from which the cheese is made immediately. And thus every 
> day let the milk be renewed. And on the seventh day you will have 
> eight portions of new milk and six portions from the previous day, and 
> thus one the seventh day you will make two cheese of the same size as 
> the others./
>
> This last fraud is particularly ingenious, as the amount of milk you 
> take each day will only make the size of cheese 1/8 smaller, which 
> won't likely be noticed by your lord, and you do not risk your milk 
> spoiling. At the end of each week you have enough milk to make an 
> extra cheese, which you can eat or sell yourself.
>
Nice to know we haven't changed much in a while. Cheaters gonna cheat.

But then again, eaking a bit of food in a time when food could be 
difficult to come by could keep your family alive. That extra cheese a 
week in dairy season, or that whole sheep carcass when processed into 
dried meat and smoked sausage would translate to much better nutrition 
in the lean times of a hard winter.