References
Chart showing the number of references in each month of the diary’s entries.
1660
1661
1662
1663
1664
- Aug
Bread
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Daily entries from the 17th century London diary
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Chart showing the number of references in each month of the diary’s entries.
4 Annotations
Second Reading
Chris Squire UK • Link
Some = ship's biscuit:
‘bread, n. < Old English bréad . .
. . 6. Extended to various preparations of the composition or nature of bread.
. . †b. Sea-biscuit. Obs.
1651 Severall Proc. Parl. No. 84. 1289 We have taken..2 casks of Bread, and one barrel of Pease in one Vessel.
1746 in W. Thompson Royal Navy-men's Advocate (1757) 18 The Bread..is all good, but..it has been..long aboard . . ’
[OED]
San Diego Sarah • Link
The Dutch navy, which in the 16th century was becoming a formidable force, issued to each sailor a weekly ration of half a pound of cheese, half a pound of butter, and a five-pound loaf of bread.
Historian Simon Schama calculated that a Dutch ship with a crew of 100 in 1636 would need among their provisions 450 pounds of cheese and one and a quarter tons of butter.
For more information about the economics of cows and dairy in general, I recommend: https://www.atlasobscura.com/arti…...
San Diego Sarah • Link
It's no surprise that people ate bread -- a lot of white bread -- but did you know that horses also ate bread -- a lot of high nutrition brown bread? Much easier to deliver to your working nag than a field of grass:
https://www.atlasobscura.com/arti…
Third Reading
San Diego Sarah • Link
"Sowing maslins fell out of fashion with the advent of the Industrial Revolution, as mechanized equipment and standardized farming methods transformed global agriculture to produce more uniform commodities."
The grains that made Pepys' bread and beer was different to what we know today.
"Maslins are both a method of planting and a cereal species mixture that can include the seeds of wheat, barley, rye, and other grains. In this seemingly unconventional ancient practice, a mixture of those seeds are hand-broadcast throughout a field.
"The grains have some complementary characteristics, like different depths of roots due to differences in drought and waterlogging tolerance. And different crops have varying needs for soil depths or nutrients, which allows them to coexist."
Highlights from https://ambrook.com/research/crop…
Unfortunately the research only mentions Greece, Ethiopia, and other Middle Eastern places, not Britain. I can't imagine English farmers had picked out the seeds of different crops yet, or were planting any differently here.
If you have more info. please share.