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Session 271 Food and the Economy

From Sheep to Fish: Economic and Social Change in Fourteenth-Century Iceland (Jeff Hartman)

General economic shift from egalitarian farmer-settlers to rise of rich landowners. Rise of (dried) fish trade made landowning less critical for financial independence. The paper is full of details and literary anecdotes but doesn't seem to have an obvious overall coherent theme.

Feeding Coventry in the Fifteenth Century (Donald Leech)

Urban centers needed a consistent, cheap supply of food, deriving in part from a zone of intensely farmed land surrounding the city. There was a general tension between the small group of food providers and the larger mass of consumers. Service and distribution of food took up 10-15% of population. Women food suppliers are not always easily visible in the records. Food and housing suppliers were underrepresented in city government, indicating a general difference in status and wealth.

Feeding Neptune: Food Supply and Nutrition in the Catalan-Aragoneses Fleet (Lawrence V. Mott)

Daily ration consisted of biscuit, wine, salt port, cheese, legumes, and olive oil, total average calories of 4,333, primarily from the biscuit. Ships were supplied when the put into port and might have fresh bread at that point. There is no information on possible fresh fish supplies. (I started nodding off around this piont -- no comment on the paper, just on my physical state.)

Did Too Many Cooks Spoil the Broth? A Behind-the-Scenes Look at Late Medieval Aristocratic Culinary Labor (Ryan Whibbs)

His focus is specifically on the organization of the kitchen and kitchen labor. (Sources are Le Menagier and the memoir of LeMarche(sp?) who ran a duke's kitchen and ended up working for Louis I. So a relatively small household vs. a large noble one. Both writers have an outsider's point of view on the kitchen. The kitchen was not a monolithic place but comprised a variety of rooms. Workers performed within a strict hierarchy of assigned duties. [At this point we have some vain attempts to get the computer slide show working, but it fails to find the signal properly when switched from the previous presenter's equipment.] For a smaller household, items such as trenchers, wafers, and sauces would be outsourced, and when a large banquet was planned, other dishes might be outsourced. Basic-level preparation chores were done by ordinary workers while the more experienced ones performed the mixing and combining. LeMarche supervised similar work on a much larger scale. The master cook was the dictator over the kitchen, performing the roles of quality control and supervisor. Sub-supervisors oversaw functions such as meat roasting, preparation of vegetables, boiling of food, sauce preparation, fruit preparation (who also served as chandler), baking. LeMarche describes how a new master cook was elected by the other kitchen workers. [Analysis: this is an interesting beginner's paper -- the author is a first year grad student -- but pretty much just synopsizes his sources rather than synthesizing.]