[Sca-cooks] upper crust

[Cindy Renfrow]

As part of the service at table, this wouldn’t be in a cookbook.  Look in Furnivall's Babees Boke & similar texts for the duties of a Panter (panther/paynter) 

As to the original question of burnt loaves and the quote "Kutt the upper crust [of a loaf of bread] for your soverayne” —  have you noticed these websites are all copying from each other without citing the actual source?  It’s John Russell’s Boke of Nurture, by the way. Harl. MS 4011, fol. 171. line 342. It is incomplete & taken out of context. The particular instruction begins on line 339 & goes to line 346:  

Than take youre loof of light payne / as y haue said 3ett, and with the egge of the knyfe nyghe your hand ye kept. Furst pare the quarter of the looff round all a-bowt, than kutt the upper crust / for youre souerayne, to hym alowt. Suffered your parelle [fellow] to stond stille to the bottom / & so ny3e y-spend owt, so ley hym of the cromes [? coomes] a quarter of the looff Saunc3 dowt; Touche neuer the loof after he is so tamed, put it [on] a platere or the almes disch ther-fore named. 

(I hope this comes through alright. Spellcheck is being difficult.)

This service instruction was later repeated — but not verbatim —  in Wynkyn de Worde’s Boke of Keruynge, omitting the assertion “ to him alowt”, which may have been added to the former work for the rhyme alone, since the Boke of Nurture is told in verse.  The upper crust for the sovereign is only one small portion of a long series of elaborate instructions for laying an elegant table & the service of bread. It's taken out of context. 

I agree that any baker worthy of his profession wouldn’t have regularly burnt his loaves.  Food was expensive.  However, that doesn’t mean that his oven was properly swept clean and that his crusts were pretty & free of ashes. Hence the need to trim the crusts to set an elegant table.  

From Ricket & Naylor’s translation of Babees Boke (http://www.yorku.ca/inpar/babees_rickert.pdf ):  “The first year, my son, you shall be panter or butler. In the pantry you must always keep three sharp knives, one to chop the loaves, another to pare them, and a third, sharp and keen, to smooth and square the trenchers with. Always cut your lord’s bread, and see that it be new; and all other bread at table one day old ere you cut it, all household bread three days old, and trencher bread four days old."  

 From Le Menagier de Paris (1393), Hinson translation of Pichon edition (http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Medieval/Cookbooks/Menagier/Menagier.html ), speaking of arrangements for a feast:  "Item, two bread-slicers, of whom one will crumb the bread and make trenchers and salt-cellars out of bread, and will carry the salt and the bread and the trenchers to the tables…”   

http://www.pbm.com/~lindahl/food-art/grand_feast.gif  — the panter is the servant on the left foreground, the one offering a slice of bread on his knife.

Gotta run. Hope this helps.
Cindy Renfrow


<snip>
> The semi-random selection of mediaeval and renaissance cookbooks that I 
> happen to be familiar with don't make any reference to partitioning the 
> bread in any way.  So either everyone already knew to do it, and so it 
> didn't need to be mentioned, or it wasn't normally done.
> 
> 
> Thorvald
> 
>