tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post1871831694020074205..comments2024-03-10T20:46:19.274-04:00Comments on In the Middle: How quickly does a deer go off?Cord J. Whitakerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06224143153295429986noreply@blogger.comBlogger7125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-2922730959394598112012-10-01T08:10:30.001-04:002012-10-01T08:10:30.001-04:00Anon -- great points (hadn't thought of point ...Anon -- great points (hadn't thought of point that recipes a response to a practical problem not inherent to the meat but rather to how it's used). And I'd be VERY grateful if you could direct me to some likely sources for this 17th c. cookbook. I checked one (which, I can't remember) and found nothing like that in it.medievalkarlhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12440542200843836794noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-72195959788047363092012-10-01T02:26:50.029-04:002012-10-01T02:26:50.029-04:00I think the problem of rotten venison was particul...I think the problem of rotten venison was particularly pressing because venison was often a prestigious gift from a lord to his non-hunting peers or retainers. Sending gift chunks of deer by messenger several days' travel must have made freshness a special issue for both sender and recipient. 17th cent. Samuel Pepys is very pleased and proud to be given a haunch of venison by his patron, Lord Sandwich. Pepys in turn impresses his friends by giving them a dinner party featuring venison pasty, a prestige dish. Along these lines, I recall a 17th cent. cookbook's advice on how to disguise rotten venison in pie-making (salt and spices).Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-85496391279867688102012-09-09T11:49:16.701-04:002012-09-09T11:49:16.701-04:00In this context of deer frustrating human control,...In this context of deer frustrating human control, I wonder if it would be interesting to talk about people who heal sick deer (i.e. people attempting to control illness or the effects of predation, especially, for your purposes, if they fail at it)? It might fit into the broader context of deer parks, where the parker tries to ward off predators and provides food for semi-tame deer. There's the romance trope (as in Marie de France) of a knight wounding a deer and then being compelled to go on a quest to heal it. There are also a few accounts of deer being kept more or less as pets (I gave a paper on two accounts of pet deer at Kalamazoo a couple of years ago), so people might have tried to patch them up. <br /><br />For forest pleas, Turner would have been my go-to volume. Maybe these other two Selden Society volumes will be useful (it looks like they've been removed from the Internet Archive, though they're still listed):<br /><br />William Craddock Bolland, ed., <a href="http://www.archive.org/details/publicationsofse29selduoft" rel="nofollow">Year Books of Edward II. Volume 8. The Eyre of Kent, 6 and 7 Edward II. A.D. 1313-1314. Volume 3.</a> (1913) (Internet Archive - Text Archive)<br /><br />William Craddock Bolland, ed., <a href="http://www.archive.org/details/publicationsofse30selduoft" rel="nofollow">Select Bills in Eyre. A.D. 1292-1333</a> (1914) (Internet Archive - Text Archive)<br /><br />Ryan<br />Ryan Judkinshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05158174415649117899noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-64396996669975115372012-09-09T09:40:34.736-04:002012-09-09T09:40:34.736-04:00correction: Alison denies saying anything about ha...correction: Alison denies saying anything about hams, Kentucky or otherwise.medievalkarlhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12440542200843836794noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-767398357041510622012-09-09T09:30:36.080-04:002012-09-09T09:30:36.080-04:00Thanks very much Ryan! Since yesterday, I am incre...Thanks very much Ryan! Since yesterday, I am increasingly thinking that venison could mean boars and cervids in this context, since my wife looked at the first recipe and said, "oh, that's how you make salt pork. Remember that Kentucky Ham?"<br /><br />However, all the records of the particular law I'm interested in (the bit about distributing "fera" to lepers) concern deer, not boar, so all I'll have to claim is that these two reciples <i>could</i> concern the carcasses of cervids. And that's certainly correct.<br /><br />I'll look at the Shirley, which is available online <a href="http://archive.org/stream/someaccountengl00shirgoog#page/n11/mode/2up" rel="nofollow">here</a>. This will be useful, as was <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=tjZJAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA1&lpg=PA1&dq=%22some+stories+of+deer+stealers%22&source=bl&ots=dTbRzNC-Xh&sig=mewvUKeLkzJrzlQXkCT-QjF6Z0w&hl=en#v=twopage&q&f=false" rel="nofollow">this famous account of the deer-stealers of Inglewood</a> and also this set of Staffordshire <a href="http://archive.org/stream/collectionsfora03socigoog#page/n147/mode/2up" rel="nofollow">pleas of the forest</a>. In a larger sense, I'm interested in the way that deers' independence as living, desiring things frustrates human mastery of the forest: what's a king to do when the deer are dying of disease or fighting each other (and Albert, Thomas, and Vincent all remark on the terrible violence of rutting deer). It's one thing to fight human or lupine poachers, but how does a king fight, well, the energies of life itself? This is where biopolitics comes into the picture (and here's the kernel of an argument I'll be making for an article due at the end of October).<br /><br />I did a lot on hunting in the dissertation (almost none of which made its way into my book), so I've read the Rivard and Hanawalt a lot of Birrell, but it'll be good to return to this material with my current interests driving me. I'm pretty sure I have pdfs of this stuff handy. <br /><br />I'd be happy to dig through the eyres, at least the edited ones!, since I imagine the latin's so formulaic that it'll just be a matter of looking for a few key words. Apart from the excerpts I have listed above (and the Turner's gargantuan <a href="http://archive.org/details/selectpleasoffor00grearich" rel="nofollow"><i>Select Pleas of the Forest</i></a>), what else do you recommend?<br /><br />In re: feeding the dogs, I have a little bit on that in my book, and also a little blog post in mind on the topic, if I can squeeze in time today when I'm not grading Marie de France papers...medievalkarlhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12440542200843836794noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-55956545210854536382012-09-08T23:06:54.990-04:002012-09-08T23:06:54.990-04:00By the by, re: Thomas of Cantimpre and Vincent of ...By the by, re: Thomas of Cantimpre and Vincent of Beauvais, Edward of Norwich relates that during the curee, the dogs were usually fed on the innards of the deer, including the stomach, lungs (if they be hot) and the intestines, after they'd been washed, usually chopped up and all mixed together with blood and bread (p. 177 in the 2005 Univ. of Pennsylvania ed. of Master of Game and p.271 in McNelis's 1996 diss. edition). <br /><br />Ryan JudkinsRyan Judkinshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05158174415649117899noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-27712072522481560292012-09-08T20:57:09.367-04:002012-09-08T20:57:09.367-04:00On "venison," I think it's unfortuna...On "venison," I think it's unfortunately uncertain. Twiti calls the beasts of venery the hart and hind, boar, and wolf, and the MED gives ("venesoun," c): "c1300 SLeg.Magd.(2) (LdMisc 108) 342: Huy nomen with heom into heore schip ... Venesun of heort and hynd and of wilde swyn." Still, I'd bet that it does primarily refer to deer, especially in quantity of meat eaten.<br /><br />Since you've gone the cookbook route, which seems like it'd be the most useful, you might try game rolls. Cummins, The Hound and the Hawk, includes in Appendix II (pp. 260-65) an abbreviated version of the Framlingham Park Game Roll of 1515-16, which he takes from E.P. Shirley, Some Account [sic] of English Game Parks (London 1867). Though I don't see anything about rotting venison in the appendix, it does list large numbers of deer that have died from sickness, weather, dog attacks and such, and the full version might have something useful. <br /><br />Another tactic might be to look at poaching. Poaching was frequent and there was even a booming black market in venison as a prestige dish, and while poachers would kill live deer, perhaps they also would take carcasses they found? Some accounts of such activities might include how the venison was preserved, though it's probably mostly legal records. Derek Rivard and Jean Birrell have good articles on poaching, as does Barbara Hanawalt. I skimmed a couple trying to answer your question, but saw nothing that immediately jumped out at me in them. You'd probably have to follow up their sources. I can send you pdfs of these ones mentioned with no trouble, if you don't have them and if you'd like.<br /><br />One other avenue might be the forest eyres, but I believe they're mostly in untranslated Latin and I'm not sure how much slogging you want to do for what would likely be glancing references.<br /><br />Good luck!<br /><br />Ryan Judkins<br />Ryan Judkinshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05158174415649117899noreply@blogger.com