From: Charles Hixson (charleshixsn@earthlink.net)
Date: Tue Sep 10 2002 - 12:32:57 MDT
Harvey Newstrom wrote:
> ....
> I had heard that the bakers in France were using the scarce wheat to
> make rich cakes at high prices and that there was no cheap bread being
> made that poorer people could afford. To counter this the decree was
> made that when the bakery ran out of cheap bread they would have to
> let people eat cake in place of bread (at the same price) rather than
> go hungry while the baker was full of over-priced food.
>
> --
> Harvey Newstrom, CISSP <www.HarveyNewstrom.com>
> Principal Security Consultant <www.Newstaff.com>
This was at a time of famine, so I'm sure that the bakers chose to
maximize their profits, and sell to the rich whatever they could. But
that's not what I heard the cake was. It was stuff that was caked on
the ovens. And nobody wanted to eat it even for free. And these were
people who were starving. But to a rich princess/queen this was merely
disagreeable food that the peasants could surely eat if they were hungry
enough. There were all kinds of silly laws at that point, so I can't
totally discount that the law that you referred to was passed. But the
cake refered to wasn't anything that anyone not totally desperate would
consider food... and some who *were* desperate didn't consider it to be
food. In my small Merriam-Webster this seems to be a combination of
meanings 1 and 4 of cake, but as it was originally said in french (and
not modern french) ... Anyone know what the real phrase was? And how it
translates?
-- -- Charles Hixson Gnu software that is free, The best is yet to be.
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