Pot archeologysaffronjanDecember 21 2005, 13:52:21 UTC
I know it is a cliche about archeology that folks spend all their time looking at pots, but it seems that in archeo digs in various parts o' Europe it was common for houses to have bronze pots for boiling in, but rare for individual houses to have ovens in which bread could be baked, suggesting that porridges and soups were Medieval staples for the commoners (there are books of recipes that describe the dishes cooked for this or that high-falutin' person, but, obviously, no normal-person cookbooks).
Psychoanalyzing challahsaffronjanDecember 21 2005, 17:35:45 UTC
Erm, it means you know how to plait baked goods?
It looks like a lot of towns had communal ovens for bread baking: One rumor surrounding the 'pat-a-cake' rhyme that we all learned as children is that 'mark it with a t' referred to people marking their loaves in some fashion when leaving them with the baker, to facilitate spotting them when the baking was done.
That's only one rumor. There's also the idea that the cake was a communion wafer, and 'mark it with a t' referred to making the sign of the cross in blessing over the Eucharist. I think that this is speculation hanging on the fact that 'beker' was an early AS word for priest, so it would be the beker-mann who crossed the cake with a t.
Dunno, cuz the rhyme wasn't set down until 1698 or thereabouts.
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And now, back to my Latin.
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It looks like a lot of towns had communal ovens for bread baking: One rumor surrounding the 'pat-a-cake' rhyme that we all learned as children is that 'mark it with a t' referred to people marking their loaves in some fashion when leaving them with the baker, to facilitate spotting them when the baking was done.
That's only one rumor. There's also the idea that the cake was a communion wafer, and 'mark it with a t' referred to making the sign of the cross in blessing over the Eucharist. I think that this is speculation hanging on the fact that 'beker' was an early AS word for priest, so it would be the beker-mann who crossed the cake with a t.
Dunno, cuz the rhyme wasn't set down until 1698 or thereabouts.
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