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Archiver > ESSEX-UK > 2003-03 > 1048860069


From: "Sarah Fegredo" <>
Subject: Re: what was a 'mess'?
Date: Fri, 28 Mar 2003 14:01:18 -0000
References: <0a8301c2f4b4$6007a6c0$cb54893e@MIKESMACHINE> <001b01c2f51c$2e071260$dae4fc3e@jacqueline>


Your idea about a mess being a stew of whatever you could get is probably
right. But an "Eton Mess" is a scrummy mixture of strawberries, grand
marnier. crushed meringue and whipped cream. Obviously the upper classes
had a better class of "mess" than workin' folk!!!
Sarah Fegredo
Nottingham UK
----- Original Message -----
From: "jacqueline.cooper" <>
To: <>
Sent: Friday, March 28, 2003 11:20 AM
Subject: Re: what was a 'mess'?


> Although I joined in this discussion, it does seem to have become an
> indulgence. Our obsession with food is really weird if you think about
it -
> it's hard to get someone
> to spend a tenner on a decent history book that will give them years of
> usefulness, but they will fork out twice as much for the passing pleasure
of
> a meal out that is soon forgotten. I bet a lot of these people going on
> about
> food are paper thin too. I find history very fattening - too much sitting
> down, poring over dusty documents and hot computers!
>
> Perhaps to turn it back to history, the life of the countryside until
recent
> times has been very much the history of food production - the whole
village
> revolved around this once, and the quality of the harvest was all
> important - whereas now we just look on the fields as pretty bits of
> landscape. Getting enough food must have been a constant worry - labouring
> families in the workhouse were probably often better fed than outside, and
> there was a contemporary complaint that prisoners were better fed than
> workhouse inmates.
>
> I often wonder what poor mothers actually fed to their large tribes of
> children as hot meals - I came across reference in the mid-19th century to
> something they called 'mess', presumably (?) a mixture of bones and
> vegetables and bits of anything they could find, boiled up in a pot. This
is
> reminiscent of an elderly lady from Clavering who told me how her mother
fed
> her family before the war, growing vegetables and just buying one joint of
> brisket for Sunday, eating it cold on Monday, minced up for Tuesday, and
> soup from the bones Wednesday.
>
> I'd be interested, though, if anyone knows exactly what was a 'mess' - is
> this the mess of potage perhaps?
>
> Jacky
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