From the Hoax:
- Bread was divided according to status. Workers got the
burnt bottom of the loaf, the family got the middle, and guests
got the top, or "upper crust."
The Facts:
This singularly ridiculous assertion appears to refer to households such as castles or manor houses where workers, families and guests must all be provided for, as opposed to single-family peasant dwellings or poor townfolk households. I wonder, but cannot discover, how large a loaf would have to be to feed dozens or even hundreds of people. And how much time would the serving staff waste cutting it up "according to status"?
The fact is that in castles and manor houses, bread was baked in manageable loaves and the individual loaves were distributed among the tables. Generally, two kinds of bread were baked in the castle ovens: white bread used with meals, and coarser bread used for trenchers. Workers ate in a separate area of the dining hall from the lord and his family, and they may have received coarser bread than the finer variety provided to the nobles, or they too may have had white bread with their meals.
Peasants, who didn't have ovens in their homes, didn't always have bread with meals, but they could bring the loaves they had prepared to the village's communal oven.1 There the baker would bake it for a fee, part of which would go to the lord. Peasant bread was usually coarse and brown. In towns, baking was an industry with guildmembers, shops, and varieties of breads at various prices.
According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, the phrase "upper crust" dates to the year 1836. If you have any information about the origin of the phrase, please feel free to post it on our bulletin board.
Next: Lead Cups
Return to Introduction.
Note
1. Gies, Frances & Gies, Joseph, Life in a Medieval Village (HarperPerennial, 1991), p. 39.
