We came to St Mary’s church in the Suffolk village of Wood Ditton, searching for a particular gravestone and its epitaph to a local man described as a gourmand.
Thanks for such a good read! My father used to accuse my mother of spoiling us as she gave us butter instead of dripping ( Her Irish roots v his Portsmouth working class upbringing, I guess). I'm reading about the feeding of the Georgian Navy and the victualling for the Greenwich Pensioners at the Seamen's Hospital where meat was boiled in great cauldrons and the resulting fat skimmed off and kept at the perquisite of the cooks - their "slush fund." They were required to offer it first to the boatswain for lubricating the running rigging etc, but the rest was theirs to sell to tallow merchants on shore or to shipmates for waterproofing boots, frying fish or onions or making puddings. Apparently forbidden in regulations as feared eating it would cause scurvy !
Janet Macdonald says, in her book Feeding Nelson's Navy, that although causes of scurvy were not wholly understood that here they had some point in forbidding the men to eat slush (blind eyes were turned) as eating rancid fat can lead to malabsorption of other foods by the gut ...
Thanks for such a good read! My father used to accuse my mother of spoiling us as she gave us butter instead of dripping ( Her Irish roots v his Portsmouth working class upbringing, I guess). I'm reading about the feeding of the Georgian Navy and the victualling for the Greenwich Pensioners at the Seamen's Hospital where meat was boiled in great cauldrons and the resulting fat skimmed off and kept at the perquisite of the cooks - their "slush fund." They were required to offer it first to the boatswain for lubricating the running rigging etc, but the rest was theirs to sell to tallow merchants on shore or to shipmates for waterproofing boots, frying fish or onions or making puddings. Apparently forbidden in regulations as feared eating it would cause scurvy !
This is wonderful- thank you! I'll have to tell my son; he is a Navy medic.
Janet Macdonald says, in her book Feeding Nelson's Navy, that although causes of scurvy were not wholly understood that here they had some point in forbidding the men to eat slush (blind eyes were turned) as eating rancid fat can lead to malabsorption of other foods by the gut ...
I will order that book as I am working on a piece about feeding troops. Thank you x