XIV International Economic History Congress, Helsinki 2006, Session 9

Sydney Watts

Helsinki Conference, August 2006

“Bad Meat? Demarcating the healthful from the corrupt in the eighteenth

century French butcher trade.”

Throughout the early modern period, the city of Paris confronted the problem of

meat provisioning, particularly securing a healthy, abundant supply of butcher’s meat

(beef, mutton and veal) for the public good. Conventional interpretations contend that the

quantitative and qualitative notions of food security were inseparable. To be sure, when

food security meant assuring a level of subsistence, standards of quality fell behind

immediate the demands of supply. After 1750, however, Paris had become the center of

consumption and Parisians had come to regard meat as less of a luxury and more of a

necessity. 1 This change arose, in part, with the expansion of the meat trade, a growth that

accelerated the meat provisioning system, bringing a greater supply of freshly slaughtered

meat to a broad population of meat eaters. 2 Accompanying this growth in scope and

scale of meat production was a new understanding of quality, based upon scientific and

medical knowledge, which influenced dietary regimes and propelled the city to

recalibrate its policies governing the production and sale of healthy meat. This paper

examines how the velocity of the supply chain affected demand not merely

quantitatively, but qualitatively. Increased livestock provisions may have made meat

more affordable for the working poor, but how did it provide “better” meat for more

health-conscious Parisians? Were these improvements uniform or did they result in a

more differentiated meat market? These questions go beyond the evolving definitions of

the healthful and the putrid to suggest another avenue in the rise of meat, namely, that

knowledge about how meat was good or bad inflected the demand for this foodstuff.

2

Such a critical attitude suggests ways in which a discerning consumer society

transformed their wants to needs, and the state responded to changing expectations of

how best to govern.

As meat provisioning increased in the eighteenth century, city authorities shifted

their attention from food security to food safety in two ways: one aimed to abate the

polluting effects of meat production through commercial regulation; another turned to the

codification of meat selection that further stratified the food’s distribution and sale.

Having demonstrated this first point elsewhere, namely how the public health initiative

propelled the day-to-day policing and controlled growth of butcheries and

slaughterhouses,3 I now turn to the second point, more specifically, how greater attention

to the quality of meat engendered better standards of meat selection, at one level, by

codifying better cuts and varieties from worse, and at another level, by policing those

who engaged in the sale of bad meat. Such measures delineated the hierarchical aspects

of economic action and urban food policy along a qualitative spectrum, which further

segmented the market for meat.

How the growing attention to standards of quality reflected the various ways in

which eighteenth century Parisians defined “bad meat” centers on the historical problem

of dietary choices that are as much grounded in material conditions as cultural meaning.

To be sure, elites with more purchasing power had greater choices; their quest for quality

relied on at least three modes of discernment. One explained bad meat in scientific terms

through the process of putrefaction. A second relied on dietary prescriptions that gave

consumers a related set of criteria to identify meat’s relative healthfulness. A third relied

on more practical considerations, whereby a knowledgeable consumer distinguished poor

meat quality through those who produced it and under what market conditions.4 This final

criteria, more explicit in the historical record, manifested in the formal and informal

regulation of meat trade, contributing to an increasingly segmented, and quality-

conscious meat market.

The Science of putrefaction

In the early modern period, it is difficult to speak of scientific knowledge as a

distinct, coherent entity or “scientists” as a clearly identifiable socio-professional group.

3

Rather, science and its most common application, medicine, expressed “a diverse array of

cultural practices aimed at understanding, explaining, and controlling the natural world,

each with different characteristics and each experiencing different modes of change.”5

Those who investigated the natural world relied on philosophical approaches as much as

experiential ones. Nowhere was this natural philosophy more apparent than in the

Hippocratic/Galenic tradition which considered the human physical condition as a careful

balancing act between health and illness.6 Good health meant practicing moderation in

the use of the non-naturals: air temperature and quality, sleep habits, the passions and

emotions, and most especially, a dietary regime.

The Galenic system held great currency well into the eighteenth century across all

levels of society. Mary Lindemann argues that this scientific knowledge drew on “a broad

substratum of common beliefs about health, illness, and therapeutics that most members

of society shared.”7 It was commonly understood that, even as the sustainer of life, all

organic matter was subject to decay. In The Incorruptible Flesh, Piero Camporesi

juxtaposes the miracles and mysteries of the early modern world against a common belief

that all things grew and then inevitably decomposed, in which the threat of putrefaction

seemed omnipresent and all-dangerous.8 From the perspective of natural philosophy, all

living matter followed a cyclical process of transformation, all was interconnected in a

cosmic alchemy with sympathies that showed a relational world of balance. Putrefaction

was a form of corruption that followed this continuum and, in this pre-modern mindset,

its causes were largely environmental. A humid summer, for example, could influence

the process of putrefaction both externally (the skin and other organic matter) and

internally. An unfavorable alignment of the planets could also aggravate putrefaction.

Before the late nineteenth century industrialization of meat processing mandated

levels of hygiene and food safety, a shopper could only be assured of fresh, edible meat

by sight and smell. Seeing the butcher in his urban stall slaughtering and butchering

animals offered the greatest reassurance that meat was from healthy livestock and freshly

slaughtered, clearly identifiable by its blood-red properties. Despite a lack of knowledge

about bacteria and cross-contamination in meat processing, urban policing (codified in

the guild statutes) held butchers to rules about the timeliness of meat sales and the

manner in which meat had to be made visible to consumers by the light of day.

4

According to guild regulations dating from the Middle Ages, red meat had to be

consumed immediately after slaughter, noting the healthfulness of freshly killed flesh

(viande chaude) by its sanguine color as well as its palatable odor. By the early

eighteenth century, police sentences forbade selling meat slaughtered the same day as “in

this condition the meat is tough, poor tasting, and difficult to digest, that it could cause

“dangerous fermentation” that any cooking could not correct.9

While Parisians may have gained a basic understanding of spoilage and illness

from consuming bad meat, the scientific explanations for the process of putrefaction were

limited by the Galenic physiology. It was not until a new vision of physiological

processes discovered through microscopes that exposed organic minutia. The Jesuit

priest, Athanasius Kircher (1602-1680) examined all sorts of putrefying matter, as well as

the blood of plague patients in which he identified “little worms.” In addition, the

iatrochemists and iatromechanists offered medical explanations and practices in the 17th

century that contested and later modified Galenic physiology.10 The iatrochemists, in

particular, stressed the chemical processes of effervescence, fermentation and

putrefaction as the bases of all physiology. Franciscus Sylvius de La Boë (1614-1672)

explained digestion as a result of acid-alkali fermentation taking place in the stomach. He

also recognized the importance of saliva and pancreatic secretions. Iatromechanics

explained bodily processes that followed the laws of physics and precise mathematical

rules; it viewed digestion as the result of churning and grinding action of the stomach.

While the Galenic tradition emphasized a holistic purpose to all physiologic functions

that often overlooked chemical and mechanical processes, it was never completely

undermined by these new theories. Rather, these new systems of medical explanation

contributed to more accurate descriptions of biological functions, such as putrefaction, by

turning to decaying flesh as an object of experimentation.

By the end of the century, the medical definition of safe meat had seen the

influence of this “new science,” yet still hung on to certain aspects of the Galenic system.

In Elémens d’hygiène (1796), for example, doctor Etienne Tourtelle stressed the

nutritional qualities of beef that correspond to the animal’s diet, age, sex, whether it has

been castrated or not, and the meat’s level of putrefaction. According to Tourtelle, the

physical conditions of cattle before slaughter had a physio-mechanical effect on its

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degree of healthfulness. Likewise, putrefaction changed the chemical nature of beef

(aging beef makes it more soluble, and hence, more palatable) and, therefore, its medical

properties. Tourtelle described how butchers dry-aged beef, hanging it in cool cellars to

tenderize it by elongating the muscle fibers. The development of this technique, where

fresh carcasses are hung in a cool, dark place away from flies and stale air, continues to

be practiced today. Not only does the meat remain edible, even more, its taste improves

over several days. In keeping with the Galenic tradition, Tourtelle warned certain

individuals with more delicate constitutions against eating aged beef. Yet, he modified

the definition of bad meat, claiming that most digestive systems can sustain (and even

benefit from) eating “rotten” beef11. To be sure, a high degree of decomposition may

threaten the health of certain individuals, and as Tourtelle explained, putrid smell and

taste should signal unhealthiness of foods. But here, the definition of healthy meat clearly

differed from earlier prescriptions. As this example shows, the degree of meat safety

could be open to interpretation; its variability as an object of consumption corresponded

to a wide array of expectations as to its healthful standards that continued to be

reevaluated and modified with scientific knowledge and medical practice.

Popular Health Regimes: Knowing what’s good to eat

The dietary “effect” of food held great currency in the popular mind well into the

eighteenth century. Most people, lay and learned alike, regarded disease as the

putrefaction of one or another of the four humors. Standard therapies and preventatives

depended on readjusting perceived imbalances or by siphoning of a humor that had

grown too strong or had become corrupt. Aside for purgatives and blood-letting, doctors

prescribed specific regimens that followed the Galenic system of balances and

sympathies. Someone suffering from dropsy (a humid and cold disease) had to be given

warm, dry food and placed in a warm, dry atmosphere, while the patient was to be

encouraged to drink as little as possible. Certain foods (such as beef) increased body heat

and incited the senses while others (such as fish) seemed to make the body colder and

quelled appetites, both sexual and gastronomic. Someone suffering from dropsy (a humid

and cold disease) had to be given warm, dry food and placed in a warm, dry atmosphere,

while the patient was to be encouraged to drink as little as possible.12 Thus, medical

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advice to restore a lost humoral balance followed a metaphoric logic that sought the

transference of certain properties in the quality of food. Within this common medical

belief lay the contention that food enacted a kind of “sympathetic magic” in which the

natural fundaments of sanguine, phlegmatic, melancholy, or choleric temperaments

necessitated certain foods whose properties would offset an imbalance.13

Popular medical literature followed these basic Galenic principles. The diagnostic

skill that these treatises offered rested in a Galenic understanding of nutrition and

digestion that aimed “to generate good humor and praiseworthy blood” in order to restore

health and prolong life. What you ate was the foundation of good health as the body drew

its nutrients from food, which in turn, enriched the blood.14 As the sixteenth-century

author, Lampridio Anguillara, explained:

So those who wish to maintain their health and retard old age must

use those things which generate good and thick blood, and so also with the

other humors. As Avicenna said when speaking of old age, saying that old

age is retarded when the blood is thick, rich, warm and viscous: then the

hair is black. Whereas, when the blood is watery or tends to the watery,

then the hair begins to turn white. But the things which generate good

blood are fragrant and subtle wines, the meat of young goats, lamb,

partridge, pheasant, cockerel and peacock.15

Eating fresh red meat was commonly considered the best way to nourish the body,

the nutritive fuel par excellence. But too much meat was potentially dangerous because

of its highly perishable quality; in Galenic terms, it was considered “a corrupting flesh.”

If it remained too long in the stomach, it could itself engender corruption of the liver, the

organ thought responsible for making good blood which nourishes all parts of the body.

Too much vegetable was likewise seen as a potential health threat, for its putrefaction

generated acids, leading to flatulence, colic, fluxes and dysentery. These foods literally

rotted in the stomach, Galenists thought, as digestion followed a process of cooking

rather than the breaking down of food by various gastric juices.

7

Méthode aisée pour conserver la santé (1752), a popular medical treatise

originally written in English, explored the “laws of animal economy” for prophylactic

purposes, recommending what diets were necessary for a long, healthy life. The author

classified all foods according to their predominant nature in order to design a regimen

that fit within the particular needs of readers. The text found veal to be a gelatinous and

viscous food that, like peas, wheat, rice, and sheep’s feet, “thickened the humors”

through continual consumption in a way that “blocked the capillaries and absorbed

natural secretions.”16 The text advised patients to make a broth (bouillon) from veal to

draw out its nutrients (le suc). Regular consumption of this regimen would “calm the loss

of blood, to stop women’s menstrual cycles, hemorrhoids, and the spitting up of blood.”17

Bouillon, by far, was the most valuable prescription for good health. Meat’s restorative

powers, extracted in a slow cooking process, made it the most popular treatment for a

number of conditions. Because one could digest it easily, it became the most common

“food therapy” of seventeenth and eighteenth-century hospitals that served the sick and

needy,18 and especially in the late-eighteenth century, a modish preparation for virtuous

creatures with sensitive constitutions.19 Understanding the powers within food allowed

readers to construct their own regimes based upon particular qualities of food (veal being

more healthful than beef) as a method “to live until an extreme old age.”

Popular medical treatises also pointed out the dangers of beef, as the vulgar

quality of this particular meat made it unworthy for the social elite According to one of

the early treatises on dietetics, Le Thresor de santé (1607), beef was high in caustic

properties, it “engendered a very crude blood, from which those who are of natural

melancholy derive different maladies,” and “the frequent usage of this meat engenders

cankers, tumors, itching, leprosy, quartan fever, or turgidity of the spleen accompanied

by dropsy.”20 In the same way it gives energy to an active person, explained the

eighteenth-century Méthode, for a sedentary person meat contracts (resserre) the body,21

leading to “harmful blockages” whose cure required diuretics and other forms of

purgation. For similar reasons, the Swiss doctor, Samuel Auguste Tissot (1728-1797), in

his dietary guide published in 1770, recommended a non-meat diet for “les gens du

monde,” seen as delicate, valetudinary creatures whose languishing lifestyle differed from

those of hard-working peasants and farmers. Men of leisure should eat fruits, vegetables,

8

and dairy products but rarely beef.22 Tissot’s concern over the potential health dangers of

inactivity and overeating also bespoke the social contradictions of meat consumption,

whereby sedentary elites who needed it least overindulged, while the working poor who

needed it most often went without fresh red, meat. In this way, dietary regimes

differentiated foods not only by their nutritional effects, but also by social prejudices.

Clearly, the problem of maintaining good health rested on people’s knowledge of

what was good to eat for them, an idea that was wholly contingent upon individual

constitution and humoral balance as much as economic standing and living conditions.

Yet the problem grew from the contradictory notions of eating well, which also meant

feasting and achieving a kind of corpulent wealth. The fat man was the visible

embodiment of the successful man; conspicuous food consumption stood as the very

proof of privilege, riches, and high status. What more visible way to make this distinction

clear than by sporting “bellies of gold”?23 Yet, by the eighteenth century, gluttony and

obesity carried less cultural capital and sinful denotations for elites, than the refinement

demonstrated by eighteenth-century men of taste (hommes de goût) who emphasized

more natural, simply sautéed preparations of individual portions, thereby demanding

better meat selection.

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Changing tastes in meat quality

The eighteenth century’s rise in beef consumption accompanied changes in

cookery at court which were becoming the culinary fashion of urban elites. Formerly,

medieval cuisine consisted primarily of ragouts and stews prepared with heavily-spiced,

overcooked meat. French cookbooks since the fifteenth-century espoused la bonne chère

with recipes that were rich in braised and boiled meat. By contrast, the “nouvelle cuisine”

of court cooks sought out the “proper taste of foods” by developing shorter cooking times

for smaller cuts of meat prepared with aromatic herbs in buttery sauces and favoring

roasted joints of beef over game as the primary focus of the meal.24

In well-staffed households, domestic servants skilled in carving and light

butchering prepared pieces of meat for each meal. The best-laid tables stopped serving

large joints that sat prodigiously as the meal’s centerpiece. Instead, cooks prepared meats

in smaller servings cooked rare, aiming for a kind of delicacy and restraint. As Louis-

Sebastien Mercier remarked in 1783:

In the last century, they used to serve huge pieces of meat, and pile them up in

pyramids. These little dishes, costing ten times as much as one of those big ones,

were not yet known. Delicate eating has been known for only a half a century. The

delicious cuisine of the reign of Louis XV was unknown even to Louis XIV.25

Voltaire echoed this changing perception of good taste that tended naturally

toward things of better quality.

As bad taste in its natural composition consists in being pleased

only with high seasoning and curious dishes, so a bad taste in the arts is

pleased only with studied ornament, and feels not the pure beauty of

nature.

A depraved taste in food is gratified with that which disgusts other

people: it is a species of disease. A depraved taste in the arts is to be

pleased with subjects which disgust accomplished minds, and to prefer the

burlesque to the noble, and the finical and the affected to the simple and

natural: it is a mental disease.26

10

Voltaire, who embodied this man of taste, considered good taste as “simple and

natural” not full of affect. To see things otherwise is a form of disease, which would

imply that a cure is possible, or at least some form of correction to improve the

philosophe’s critical faculties, that “like the mere sense, it is sensitive and luxuriant in

respect to the good, and rejects the bad spontaneously.”27

For Voltaire, the operation of taste was less a marker than a capability of both the

intellectual and physical modes of discernment. Here, the mind-body connection resides

in the physiology of taste. More than seeing how food affects the body, Voltaire regards

heavily prepared dishes a violation of aesthetic principles. Following this train of thought,

it is a higher sensibility that distinguishes basse from haute cuisine. Similar to “the moral

hygiene of sensibility” that Anne Villa explains, those superior in taste not only

characterize the sensible body, but also those who are better attune to good health.28 For

both doctors of medicine and philosophers of good taste prescribed specific dietary

regimes.

Refinements in the culinary arts shaped the nature of demand among the most

important butcher clientele; these changes eventually improved meat selection and led the

way for modern meat cutting offering individually sized steaks and ready-to-eat

portions.29 One should not be too quick to assume the butcher trade’s response to these

demands, as the trade operated under a different set of standards that did little to

distinguish quality, variety and cuts of meat. While it would be easy to assume an

expanding market for meat allowed for a greater distribution and re-distribution of meat

products for a wider populace. The differentiation of butcher’s meat, more specifically

between the haute and basse boucherie, did not occur without state intervention in the

marketplace.

Imposing standards of quality and price

City authorities, in the name of the public good, took measures to ensure that

certain cuts of meat were made affordable to the working poor. Since the king first

imposed his will on the Parisian butcher guild in the thirteenth century to provide for the

city’s lepers,30 the importance of meat coincided with the paternalistic obligations of

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government to feed not just the privileged, but “the people” (le peuple). Magistrates and

royal officers, following the king’s lead, expressed their moral responsibility in

overseeing the food supply for the common good. Royal food policy aimed to provide

fresh butcher’s meat at a just price that rarely exceeded 8 sous a pound, a price which for

a day-laborer making a 20-sous wage might deem barely within his means. Yet the fixed

price of organ meats as low as 2 sous a pound and lesser cuts at 6 sous a pound provided

for “most particularly the citizens of all orders and especially the poor.”31 The lieutenant

general of police set these prices under the belief that “the offal of steer and sheep having

always been regarded by the magistrates as the food for the poorest sector of the

populace, we have carefully worked without fail to fully retain this food for them.”32

Urban officials legally differentiated these lesser cuts of butcher’s meat, called basse

boucherie, in keeping with this policy of provisions for the poor at a just and reasonable

cost.

While writers of the eighteenth-century Encyclopédie méthodique (a later edition

of Diderot and D’Alembert’s Encyclopedia) speak of meat regulation that entailed a

complete and utter control over the quality of meat, in practice, the police were limited in

the ways in which they could legally differentiate meat products. The meat trade operated

under a broad definition of select meats that lacked any official standard of grading and

processing. Given this, butchers often tried to pass off these lesser cuts as high-end meat,

prompting a police ordinance that attempted to set a standard for basse boucherie.33 City

officials who forwarded these regulations aimed to protect the consumer as well as the

honest merchant. Though the definitions of basse viande differed greatly,34 these official

attempts at “clear-cut” regulation began a process of rationalization that placed universal

standards upon what had been a negotiated exchange between butcher and client.

The regulation of cheaper cuts created a categorical division in meat consumption

that went against butchers’ traditional practice of selling meat simply as butcher’s meat.

Butchers who reserved the best cuts of meat for the houses of urban elites were left with

lesser cuts to sell retail in their shops and stalls. In many ways, by virtue of the animal’s

various parts and their rapid deterioration once broken down, practical considerations

would have presumably forced butchers to sell off lower-end portions quickly at prices

that drew shoppers. But this was not the case. Traditionally, Parisian butchers sold

12

generic cuts by the piece, a practice that continued into the eighteenth century. More

often their books would include itemized records of variety meats such as the feet, ears,

head, liver, tripe, heart, sweetbreads, and brains. Beyond clearly identifiable organ meats,

all other meat was sold collectively as butcher’s meat. No regulation required butchers to

itemize their one-price-fits-all butcher’s meat, a category that could include cow, steer,

veal, mutton, and even goat.

Foreign travelers to Paris, such as the Italian Francesco d’Ierni, noted the local

custom as it differed from many other cities in Europe. On a visit in 1596, he remarked

with surprise how butchers cut meat, “not by weight but by piece.”35 Beginning in the

mid-seventeenth century, city administrators enacted legislation to change this practice

and required butchers to sell meat by the pound. By the mid-eighteenth century, the vast

majority of account books and records of accounts receivable grossed their sales of meat

in pounds. These totals did not specify the type of meat sold nor its cut as butchers

offered all red meat, regardless of its quality, by the pound. Without the commercial

controls that held butcher’s meat to standards of identification such as today’s cuts and

grades, butchers could sell any fleshy part of a variety of hoofed quadrupeds by weight or

piece.

Some butchers, such as widow Lemoine, followed the practice of multiple pricing

for meat. Her three-tiered selection demonstrates how price corresponded to the social

segmentation of the market, giving one price for the royal household, another for noble

clientele, a third for bourgeois. Unfortunately, most Parisian butcher accounts do not

specify the nature of the meat they sold at different prices. Whether these differences

corresponded to meat varieties (i.e. mutton, lamb, cow, steer, or veal) or differences in

cuts of meat (the top loin versus the shank and brisket) appeared never to be wholly

consistent with a trade standard. Rather, we can assume that butchers controlled this

aspect of the trade, giving them greater flexibility to woo important clients or discourage

others.36

The lack of item pricing frustrated contemporary consumers and contributed to

the reputation of butchers as frauds. Parisians, who complained to the commissaire about

butchers’ practices, articulated their taste for certain meats deemed edible and others not

fit for human consumption. Mercier observed the problems Parisians faced when

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purchasing meat without knowing from which animal it came. He accused butchers of

passing cow’s meat for steer, which is all that is left to the “petit bourgeois” who buy by

the piece. Mercier understood how pricing discriminated against the poorest consumers.

Everywhere else there is a difference in the price of meats; here the

cow sells at the same price as steer at market: excessive surcharge for the

poor, genuine offense to the public food supply. A new price would be

completely equitable; for why is it that I pay the same price for cow’s

meat as for steer’s? And why does one give me cow when I ask for steer?

It is only in Paris that such an evil usage is, as it were, consecrated, despite

the daily complaints of the people.37

While the police may have contributed to better itemization of meat in their

attempt to impose greater transparency in meat selection, it was the consumers’ own

practical knowledge of meat quality that ultimately decided what purchases to make, and

their ability to haggle with butchers. Most often, clients developed personal relationships

of trust with their butcher. Master butchers extended credit and staked their reputation as

a sworn trade (un métier juré) of food providers to garner a loyal and prosperous

clientele. Handbooks for the maitre d’hôtel of noble households provided some guidance

as how to negotiate with butchers and develop good relations with them.38 Shoppers who

entered the butcher stall had to rely upon their own skills to acquire the best quality meat

for their own households. Certain pieces of beef or mutton were often indistinguishable

from that which consumers considered inedible such as goat or horse meat. Lesser cuts

full of bone or gristle, some tough, others tender could be added on to other purchases.

Butchers could take advantage of their poorer customers by giving them the poorer

quality meats as a surpoid or supplement, 39 secure in the knowledge that should they

complain, they were unlikely to get a sympathetic hearing from police officials. Other

butchers could rely upon the intimidation factor of their physical presence. Those savvy

customers who filed a complaint to the local police commissaire did so with the backing

of their social standing. For example, when master butcher Drieux tried to sell basse

14

boucherie to Monsieur Non’s cook, the housemaid returned saying the meat was bad and

“did not at all agree with the house of Monsieur Non.”40 Drieux answered the woman’s

insult (aimed at his own expertise as a master butcher) with a series of rude epithets. The

housemaid’s rejection of the meat, saying it was not in keeping with the dignity of her

master, threatened Drieux’s honor and reputation as a guild master. Likewise Drieux’s

invectives struck at the notion of civility that a domestic of elevated stature would expect.

In an escalation of egos, their heated exchange ended with a failed transaction and a

report to the police commissaire. In this case, the police provided some kind of consumer

protection in the meat markets. Yet, their ability to intervene in individual transactions

was limited by the corporate standing of the guild butcher. Their greatest influence

resided in the wider world of work that extended beyond the master butcher’s shop to

encompass the entire provisioning system.

Regulation and market segmentation

Trade regulations, first put into practice by the butcher guild, by the late 17th

century, came under the directive of the lieutenant general of police and his corps of

forty-eight commissaires and inspectors. The history of the butcher guild statutes, revised

over the early modern period, demonstrate the civil authority’s growing presence in the

regulation of the trade. New statutes were registered in 1587, 1650, 1744, and 1782. Each

encompassed greater numbers of police sentences and parlementary arrêts that paid

closer attention to specific aspects of butcher practices. According to the eighteenth-

century Encyclopedia, because of meat’s perishable nature, the police took of “all the

necessary precautions such that the livestock destined for the butchery be healthful, so

that those [livestock] be slaughtered and not dead from sickness or suffocation, so that

the preparation/dressing of meat be done properly, and that the meat be sold in an

expedient time.”41 Such policing went beyond what the guild could accomplish as it

surveyed transactions at the livestock markets, the traffic in cattle and fresh meat, as well

as the activity at butcher stalls.

Police and urban authorities who imposed market rules on the meat trade focused

their attention on the most flagrant cases of fraud and malfeasance that posed health risks

to the unsuspecting consumer. The practical knowledge that shaped policing, informed by

15

commissaires’ experience on patrol, as well as guild butchers who wanted to maintain

standards that were in keeping with the guild, further shaped the market segmentation

that on one hand, created barriers to “rogue butchers” whose malfeasance threatened the

safety of the food supply, and on the other hand, allowed for a wider supply chain to

furnish the city with fresh meat.

At the most basic level, city leaders classified what meat was safe to eat, and how

best to avoid contaminating meat. By law, butchers could not sell “rotten” or “corrupted”

meat; all veal had to be at least six weeks of age. The butchering and sale of still-born

calves and aborted animals were strictly prohibited. 42 Inspectors monitored the cattle

markets to ensure that livestock were free of disease and required cattle merchants to

mark and quarantine any animals who showed signs of infection. Nicolas Delamare, in

his treatise on policing, listed seven of the most common examples of malfeasance, the

last of which were “Those who show cattle that they know to be harmful or sick, or that

they falsely (par artifice) make appear to be fatter than they are in fact.”43

If we are to take these well documented efforts of regulation as any indication,

the trade was not without its cases of fraud. The police recognized that butchers passed

off goat for veal or ewe for mutton, and whenever possible punished butchers for the

deception. Selling the meat of non-ruminants such as horses and dogs was a more serious

crime as it violated the common understanding of what was edible meat. 44 There is no

evidence that Parisians, even the hungriest, consumed these ersatz meats intentionally out

of necessity. Rather such persons who engaged in such activities were deemed to have

malevolently deceived their clients and were brandished as frauds. Typically, police

commissaires arrested these meat sellers (many of them women) with no guild affiliation

outside the meat markets and along the city limits. Their sentencing was often strict; they

suffered heavy fines if not long imprisonments.45

Standards of quality distinguished the meat provided by a sworn guild merchant

with public standing from the interloper who worked clandestinely. Guild butchers who

legally operated family businesses within the city staked their reputation on a reliable

product. They served the public as a corporate body of food providers; each year they

swore before the city leaders in the Chatelet’s civil courts to provide meat that was,

“good, trustworthy and marketable.”46 The meat sold by itinerant and country butchers

16

was either without merit or far from any standards of quality. Guild officers informed

commissaires and participated in seizures of “very defective meat” that was “inedible” or

arrested those “selling unqualified meats” in public squares and along busy streets. The

guild’s discourse against the non-guild trade bespoke a language of disorder,

incompetence, and immorality; it served to reinforce the corporate distinction that

masters made such efforts to maintain.47 Guild officers, aware of the fraudulent practices

of “rogue butchers” were intent on keeping the guild exclusive and reputable. Article IX

of the 1744 statutes made the re-sale of fresh meat by itinerant merchants illegal.48

The police, while clearly intolerant of threats to public health, were more tolerant

of “country butchers” who regularly furnished Parisian households directly from their

farms, and the unlicensed Parisian butchers who operated in certain areas of the city, such

as the faubourg Saint-Antoine. Contemporaries estimated this butcher population who

resided in the Parisian suburbs and villages of Ile-de-France to number anywhere from

one to three hundred.49 According to the guild, their commerce was criminal, especially

when it encroached upon the guild butchers’ supposed monopoly. Yet this population of

meat purveyors persisted, and in certain designated areas, they became legally recognized

by their “priviledged” status.50 Regraters, those who bought already butchered meat from

wholesalers and sold it at a profit, took a share of the market from butchers as well –

albeit a small one. More significant than the trade’s threat to meat safety (which is nearly

impossible to document) is the extend to which meat sellers saw opportunities to

participate in a burgeoning trade – how, in effect, they responded to changing tastes in an

expanding market. Considering the fact that the guild population never exceeded 240

master members and rarely exceeded 200 in a city of over half-a-million residents one

could assume there was room for more Parisian butchers.51 More than operating in a

black market, these sellers participated in a segmented market often in areas of the city

which were far from the central butcheries. Police often turned a blind eye to regraters

and food merchants who sold recycled meats and butchered their own prepared meats.

Guild butchers, defending their honor and reputation as guild merchants, pressured the

police to take action only when they felt their threatened. In a few instances, when a

country butcher’s volume of sales attempted to overtake the trade of certain guild

butchers did these competitors face heavy fines and possible arrest.52

17

Given that the burgeoning market for meat far surpassed what the guild masters

and merchants could supply, we must consider how this additional trade shaped the

market by offering a hidden supply in a commercial world relatively free of regulation.

The suburban meat trade along with the country eateries flourished in areas where the

working poor could find another source of meat at competitive prices.53 Furthermore, the

push for refinement in meat eating created a surplus of lesser meats and offal, much of

which became part of an important shift in eighteenth century popular cuisine. 54

Evidence from Daniel Roche’s serial study of the probate records of eighteenth-century

further demonstrates how the frying pans and other kitchen equipment found in the

modest households of Parisian artisans and domestics were used to fry meats and prepare

quick sautés. Rather than stews (pot-au-feu), modest households prepared quick-fried

cracklings made from trimmings and meat scraps.55 The greater numbers of cuts and their

price structure promoted a plethora of choices for meat-eaters. One could argue that this

popular market also benefited the guild merchant who could defend his high quality

product with the expertise and reputation of a sworn guild member. Meat selection

diversified as the trade become further segmented, providing an assortment of edible

portions from the haute to the basse boucherie to suit the rank and the purchasing power

of each individual.

Conclusion

Standards of healthfulness and the criteria used to discern “bad meat” varied

according to the concerns of producers, consumers, and urban officials. Any interest in

acquiring a safe supply of fresh, red meat hinged upon the knowledge people brought to

the butcher shop. Scientific and medical explanations informed how people defined

putrid meat, as well as the dangers of eating too much beef. As this knowledge

disseminated, savvy consumers became more discriminating as to what foods were safe

and why. During the eighteenth-century expansion of the trade, dietary and religious

prohibitions gave way to a growing taste for beef, particularly sautéed meats, consumers

demanded better selection and item-pricing in the marketplace.

18

The eighteenth century established meat’s medical necessity and cultural value

resulting in urban policies that further differentiated meat consumption and production

along a social hierarchy. Police set a standard for price and quality that distinguished the

better from the lesser cuts to insure that the lowest sections of society would be able to

afford some form of animal protein. Changing tastes that made “bourgeois beef” the food

of choice for any Parisian of moderate means accelerated market expansion by drawing

in other meat purveyors outside the guild, many of whom operated clandestinely. Urban

elites, who became increasingly discriminating about types of butcher’s meat, contributed

further to this market segmentation by “skimming off the top” of the supply, leaving

butchers with more cuts to resell and recycle. Knowledgeable consumers who cultivated

good taste paid greater attention to the quality of meat and, in their own ways, influenced

butchers’ standards of meat selection.

The fact that the city as a whole benefited from a relatively prodigious meat trade,

one can quickly assume that the elites consumed vast quantities of fresh meat while the

indigent and working poor fed off the discarded and rotting scraps, or that this rising tide

of supply furnished all homes with meat. But this assumption ignores much of the

practical knowledge and institutional guidelines that influenced what happened in the

meat markets. Parisians could become more selective as the offerings in the market

became more diverse with greater participation of meat sellers. Even as the royal

government instituted new regulations that responded to health concerns and a broader

conception of the public good that insured an affordable and safe food, the police allowed

for greater supply through various supply chains, some of which competed with the guild

butchers’ exclusive hold over the trade, others remained a market apart. The result gave

consumers greater access to meats of different quality and price. Guild butchers may have

stood as the decisive intermediaries in the distribution of meat, yet these outside pressures

from meat sellers further diversified and segmented the market for meat, and in many

cases, threatened their corporate standing. Hence, guild butchers sought police support to

eliminate disreputable meat sellers, imposing new qualitative criteria on the meat trade,

further demonstrating how healthful, quality meat was a political as much as a personal

necessity.

19

1 In 1774, for example, a burgeoning demand for red meat – a demand that defied Lenten rules offasting and fueled an expansive black market – dictated a royal edict to end state-enforced fasting.By this time political leaders had recognized its position as a good of first necessity In September1774, former minister Léonard-Jean-Baptiste Bertin wrote to then controller general Anne-Robert-Jacques Turgot that butcher’s meat represented “a commodity in some sort of firstnecessity, as is white bread” to the people of Paris. Letter dated September 1774, Anne-Robert-Jacques Turgot, Oeuvres de Turgot (Paris: F. Alcan, 1913-23), IV: 200; Archives Nationales deFrance (herewith ANF) F11 265; “Baux des étaux” ANF Y 9502, 9503, 9503B; BibliothèqueNationale de France (herewith BNF) Collection Delamare, mss. fr. 21656, folio 159; EugèneD’Auriac, Essai historique sur la boucherie de Paris. (Paris, 1861), 8-10. For further discussion,see Sydney Watts, Meat Matters: Butchers, Politics, and Market Culture in Eighteenth CenturyParis (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2006).

2 Over 40,000 steer and over twice the number of sheep were needed to provision Paris in 1637(pop. 412,000). As the city’s population surpassed a half-million during the latter part of theeighteenth century, cattle traders and farmers supplied anywhere from 150,000 to 200,000 head ofcattle (including cows and veal) and 300,000 to 400,000 sheep. Bernard Garnier calculates theannual per capita consumption, based upon livestock entering the city, at 52 kg at the mid-seventeenth century, to the 62 kg end of the 18th century. The rate of growth (le taux decroissance) for meat went from 0.45 in the period 1635-1700, to a negative growth rate of -2.40during 1700-1711, then advanced consistently from 0.57 (1711-1819) to 1.10 (1819-1843),finally exploding at 2.27 (1843-1882) to the period when the average annual meat ration reached77 kg in 1891. B. Garnier, “Les marchés aux bestiaux. Paris et sa banlieue,” Cahiers d’Histoire42, no. 3-4 (1997), 575-609.

3 Sydney Watts, “Boucherie et hygiène à Paris au XVIIIe siècle,” Revue d’Histoire moderne etcontemporaine, 51:3 (juillet-septembre 2004), 79-103.

4 Such distinct understandings may have operated in alliance or in isolation of one another; nocognitive framework was employed exclusively by either the learned or menu peuple whenthinking about what was bad meat. Rather, the ideas that informed dietary choices foundexpression in diverse and contrasting ontologies as well as evolving definitions. Taking LeviStrauss’ culinary triangle as a model, a diagram that distinguishes the raw from the cooked fromthe rotten, these three sources of knowledge provide a similar cultural framework through whichwe can explain how biological and medical understandings of meat quality inflected socialprocesses, which were, in turn, expressions of these understandings.

5 Steven Shapin, The Scientific Revolution (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press,1996), 3.

6 Galen’s theory drew on a mélange of concepts that included the four classical elements (earth,air, fire and water), the four humors (blood, yellow bile, black bile and phlegm), the threegoverning organs (heart, brain, and liver), the spiritus (a kind of air or pneuma produced in theheart that mixed with blood). Alongside these “naturals” that explained bodily function were the“non-naturals” that could pollute or corrupt a well-balanced constitution.

20

7 Mary Lindemann, Medicine and Society in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press, 1999), 11-12.

8 Piero Camporesi, Bread of Dreams: Food and Fantasy in Early Modern Europe. Translated byDavid Gentilcore (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989).

9 While the police didn’t specify the number of days after slaughter which meat could beconsumed, regulations did stipulate that meat should not be sold “entirely hot” (toutes chaudes)that is, the day they have been slaughtered, nor should they be sold once the meat has gone bad.Delamare, Traité de la police (Paris, 1705), II:1274.

10 The prefix “iatro” denotes either medicine or doctors. An iatrogenic condition is one resultingfrom medical treatment. This approach to physiology differed from the Galenic/Hippocraticapproach in its ways of perceiving and explaining how the body functioned. Mary Lindemann,Medicine and Society, 79.

11 As Tourtelle explains, «le suc gastrique jouit dans un dégré éminent de la vertue antisceptique,car des morceaux de chair pourrie, mis dans ce suc, cessent de pourrir, et mise leur putrefactionsemble rétrograder». Etienne Tourtelle, Elémens d’hygiène (Strasbourg, 1796), II:87.12 Laurence Brockliss and Colin Jones, The Medical World of Early Modern France (Oxford:Clarendon Press, 1997), 154.

13 The understanding of transference as “magic” resides in the mimetic action and contagiousforces of food. As the anthropologist, James Frazer explains, magic had nothing to do with moralsor religion. Rather, natural philosophers, like shamans and healers, commonly accepted magic asan explanation for mechanical, impersonal impulses that changed matter. See Sir James Frazer,“Sympathetic Magic” in Lessa and Vogt, ed. Reader in Comparative Religion, (New York:Harper and Row, 1911), 415-430.

14 The Galenic system defined digestion less as a process of putrefaction than as refinement: foodwas taken into the stomach and changed into chyle, which was then conveyed to the liver throughthe vena cava and formed into the four humors. The liver concocted this nutritive juice in aprocess something like cooking or blending. Chyle, a liquid with essential life force, enriched theblood which nourished all parts of the body. Meat was considered the food of greatest substance,one which produced the greatest sanguine effect. Galen spoke of the curative powers derivedfrom the essence (le suc) of red meat, prescribed to pregnant women as its sanguinecharacteristics were thought to be an essential component of reproduction. These medicalprescriptions continued well into the eighteenth century, found in popular dietary regimes thatcited beef as “very healthy (saine) and with a very good taste. It contains the coarse juices that,once condensed in the fibers, do not easily separate; it is why those who eat lots of beef arestrong, vigorous, and robust.” Méthode aisée pour conserver sa santé jusqu’à une extremevieillesse, Fondée sur les Loix de l’oeconomie animale, & les Observations pratiques desmeilleurs Medecins, tant anciens que modernes (Paris, 1752), 78-79.

15 Anguillara continued, “the doctor must study those things which cause good digestion, for it isfundamental, since bad digestion corrupts the blood, generating bad and foul humors [… ]Therefore, in digestion lies the entire foundation.” Vaticinio et avertimenti per conservare lasanità, et prolongar la vita humana (Ferrara: Vittorio Baldini, 1589), 18-19.

16 Méthode aisée pour conserver sa santé, 33.

21

17 Méthod aisée pour conserver sa santé, 79.

18 Colin Jones, p. 249. See also M. Dinges, “L’Hôpital Saint André de Bordeaux au XVIIe siècle:Objectifs et réalisations de l’assistance municipale,” Annales du Midi, 99 (1987), 323; and for theeighteenth century, C. Jones and M. Sonenscher, “The Social Functions of the Hospital inEighteenth-Century France: The Case of the Hôtel-Dieu of Nimes,” in Jones, CharitableImperative: Hospitals and Nursing in Ancien Régime and Revolutionary France, (London:Routeledge, 1989), 48-86, esp. 76-78.

19 Bouillon, a restorative and the signature dish of early restaurants, became the “fad diet” forthose with delicate appetites. See Rebecca Spang, The Invention of the Restaurant: Paris andModern Gastronomic Culture. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000).

20Le Thresor de santé (Paris, 1607) as quoted in Jean-Louis Flandrin, “From Dietetics togastronomy: The Liberation of the Gourmet” in Food: A Culinary History. Edited by AlbertSonnenfeld (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999), 421.

21 Méthode aisée pour conserver sa santé, 78.

22 Samuel Tissot, Essai sur les maladies des gens du monde (Lausanne, 1770), 15.

23 The corpulent bon vivants with “bellies of gold” set out to prove their stature through physicalmeans, proudly porting their paunch with a gold watch chain. In the Aude and Quercy regionsduring the Grand Siècle, notables known as “monsieurs” were recognized by their “ventres d’or.”R. Chartier and H. Neveu, “La ville dominante et soumise,” Histoire de la France urbaine, vol. 3,(Paris: Editions Seuil, 1981).

24 Ménagier de Paris (1493) espoused techniques of larding, braising, par-boiling, and marinatingportions of meat with fat to make even the largest, toughest cuts more succulent. Flandrin’s studyof culinary texts across four centuries also makes the case for the growing use of animal fats(especially butter) and aromatics (herbs, garlic and onion) in French cuisine. Jean-Louis Flandrin,“Dietary Choices and Culinary Technique: 1500-1800,” Food: A Culinary History, 403-417. Seealso Barbara Ketchum Wheaton, Savoring the Past. The French Kitchen and Table from 1300 to1789 (Philadelphia: The University of Pennsylvania Press, 1983), 22; Le Cuisinier françois. ed.by Jean-Louis Flandrin, Philip and Mary Hyman, “La révolution culinaire au XVIIe siècle,”(Paris: Editions Montalba, 1983), 14-28.

25 Louis-Sebastien Mercier, Tableau de Paris (Amsterdam, 1783) V: 597-598.

26 Les Oeuvres complètes de Voltaire (Oxford: The Voltaire Foundation, 1987), 33:129.

27 Les Oeuvres complètes de Voltaire, 128.

28 Anne C. Vila, Enlightenment and Pathology: Sensibility in the Literature and Medicine ofEighteenth-Century France, (Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998),157-158, 182-224.

29 This evolution in cuisine is well noted among culinary historians. See Barbara KetchumWheaton, Savoring the Past, 113-128, Alice Peeters, “Postface,” La cuisinière bourgoise de

22

Menon (Brussels, 1774, 1981), 481-494; Flandrin and Hyman, “Le Cuisinier françois sesprédécesseurs et ses concurrents,” Le cuisinier françois: Textes présentés par Jean-LouisFlandrin, Philip et Mary Hyman (Paris: Montalba, 1983), 12-14.

30 The earliest evidence of a butcher guild appears in 1146 when Louis VII granted “masterbutchers” the task of providing meat and wine to the city’s lepers. Even at this early date, thecrown directed butchers in serving the public good. See Eugène D’Auriac, Essai historique sur laboucherie de Paris (Paris, 1861), 8-10.

31 Letter from de Sartine to butcher guild leaders dated May 10, 1766, ANF Y 11253. See alsopolice ordinance for the butchers of Versailles dated March 18, 1758, Archives DepartmentalesYvelines, 5E5 “Ordonnances de Police, 1711-1785.” In 1788, a shopper paid 2 sous for eachbeef’s liver, 5 sous for the heart, 9 sous a pound for prepared tripe. By definition, the basseviande also included beef tongue, veal’s feet, and tête de veau as well as other lower-end cuts.Police Ordinance, BNF, mss. fr. 6687.

32 Taken from a published ordinance of 1770 that echoes earlier declarations dated 1741, 1762,and 1764 in H. Monin, L'État de Paris en 1789, 441.

33 BNF Fonds Le Senne 599 (14).

34 Menon, in his Cuisinière bourgeoise, identified the poitrine (breast) that included the brisket as“the most esteemed pieces, after the culotte (eye of the round).” (Paris, 1774), 51. Although thisselect piece also appears as one of the cuts that the bailliage of Versailles identified as basseboucherie. Both the poitrine and the culotte came from areas of much used muscle (neck andhips) that gives meat a tougher quality. Tougher muscles that are frequently used may containmore myoglobin that imparts a deep red color. They are also very flavorful which may explaintheir popularity.

35 J-L. Flandrin, “Dietary Choices and Culinary Technique,” 414.

36 Widow bouchère Lemoine’s business supplied the château and the community of Versailles.Among the fifty-two accounts of noblemen and women that she carefully catalogued appear,“The Small Apartments of the King” with anywhere from eleven to thirty-nine deliveries a monthtotaling 589 to 13,655 pounds of meat consumed monthly. The second book of over one hundredbourgeois clients includes names of untitled men and women who lived in Versailles as well asroyal musicians, royal wet nurses, the château’s kitchen staff, and low-ranking officers. The kingpaid 10 sous a pound, the lesser nobles paid 9 sous, and the commoners 8 sous. ArchivesMunicipales de Paris D5B6 registers 63, 249, 483, 1396, 3198.

37 L-S. Mercier, Tableau de Paris (Paris, 1783), V:288.

38 According to Audiger, the author of La Maison reglée (1692), himself a maître d’hôtel for thegrandes maisons of Paris, the head servant’s responsibility consisted of “being familiar with meatand to make an agreement with the butcher, to oblige him in doing this by giving him twodeliveries of offal a week.” See Variétés gastronomiques (Paris: Libriarie Plon, 1891), 264-65.

39 Butchers were known to add lesser cuts of meat to purchases at market, a practice that Parisiansknew as charge (and in Toulouse as surpoids). Butchers would weigh the bones and basseboucherie together with finer cuts and price them collectively. See Observations sur l’Article XXI

23

du Bail de la Vente Exclusive de la Viande, qui prouvent qu’il est avantageux au peuple de laventre nette & sans charge ou surpoids (Toulouse: de l’Imprimerie Me. Rayet, 1779).

40 ANF Y 11936, January 2, 1754.

41 Encyclopédie méthodique, (Paris, 1783) 26:229.

42 Article VII of the 1782 statutes prohibited “de vendre & débiter des viandes gatées &corrompues... aucunes bêtes défectueuses, comme veaux morts, étouffés, nourris de son ou eauxblanche, & qui aient moins de six semaines, ou plus de huit à dix semaines.”43 The other six categories included 1) those who keep their livestock too long at their homes oron the roads to make it appear that there is a dearth in the market and raise the price; 2) those whosell at the stable on their way to market or elsewhere than in the market and in other times thanthe hours prescribed by the regulations; 3) those who buy from other merchants and from secondhand merchants for resale use and to make profit; 4) those who work together to control allcommerce in a province; what one calls a monopoly; 5) those who have agents or representativesresiding where markets take place, so that they are not pressured to sell to return, that they refuseto deliver their goods only when they are offered a reasonable price where they find a legitimateand sufficient earnings; 6) those who take away or return with cattle before having shown it forsale for three consecutive days, and for having wanted to sell it above the just price. Delamare,Traité de la police, II:1173.

44 The first horse meat butcher shop (boucherie chevaline) opened in 1866. Veterinarians andpharmacists became the proponents of eating horse meat. In 1855, M. Renault, director of aveterinary college, held a comparative tasting of horse versus beef. A twenty-three year-old horsesuffering from incurable paralysis was slaughtered and its meat cooked in the same way asequivalent cuts of beef. The panel of tasters, accredited gourmets all, judged that horse bouillonwas superior to beef bouillon while boiled horse, thought not quite as good as the best boiledbeef, was still superior to beef of ordinary quality, T. Stobart, The Cook’s Encyclopedia (1982),12. See also the treatise written by the vet, Emile Decroix, L’Alimentation par la viande decheval, par Decroix vétérinaire en premier de la garde de Paris, 2nd ed. (Paris, 1864); EdmeBourgoin, graduate en première classe of the Ecole supérieur de pharmacie, “De l’alimentationdes enfants et des adultes dans une ville assiégée en particulier de la viande de cheval,”Conférence faite le 25 novembre 1870, à l’école de pharmacie de Paris (Paris, 1870); and HubertBourgin, L’Industrie de la boucherie à Paris au 19e siècle (Paris: l’Année sociologique, 1903-04).

45 In March 1739, two day-workers suffered the “grande peine” of a 300 livre fine for trying tosmuggle in the illegal substance through the Saint-Denis gate. Geneviève Jasmin, wife of abutcher, faced repeated incarcerations at Salpetrière prison in the spring and summer of 1728 forselling horsemeat and stillborn veal in the Faubourg Saint-Marcel. Police accused her (arecognized bouchère) of practicing the trade freely, not under guild or police supervision. She hadlearnt her butchering skills as the wife of a journeyman butcher. After he abandoned her, shecontinued the trade alone. According to the police reports, her illegal status and Lenten commercewere lesser evils than the sale of ersatz butcher’s meat. See September 1739 Police Sentence,ANF AD I 27 B; B. Lizet, Le Cheval dans la vie quotidienne: Techniques et representations ducheval de travail dans l’Europe industrielle (Paris: Berger-Levrault, 1982); Bibliothèque del’Arsenal, Archives de la Bastille, mss. 10999, fols. 220-228.

24

46 Butchers made an annual pledge in the presence of these two policing institutions, promising tofurnish their stalls and shops with fresh meat that was “bonne, loyale, et marchande.” This oathclaims a standard that is “good, trustworthy, and marketable.” By connotation, the words elicitwhat is edible or taste-worthy, consistently or honestly provided, and either competitive (in thesense of worthy of sale) or in keeping with the stature of the guild merchant. The pledgereminded butchers of their public service to maintain the commonweal and provide the city withan important source of food. Each yearly roll, signed by the city and guild administrators,included the statement concerning the oath administered by the Royal Procurator and theLieutenant General of Police, called the “lettres de serment.” ANF Y 9503/B.

47 A spate of these seizures took place in the winter of 1722-23 under commissaire Blanchard,ANF Y 14519, November 22, 1722; Y 14519A, November 29, 1722; Y 14519B, December 1,1722; Y 14519C, December 5, 1722; 14520, January 2, 1723.

48 “Défenses à tous Regratiers & Revendeuses de colporter ou vendre aux Halles ni autres lieuxdes Viandes de Boucherie sous les mêmes peines, & de Prison.” BNF Joly de Fleury, mss. 1741,fol. 10.

49 Several "unofficial" references to the butcher population put the number well over this officialcount. A letter of remonstrance written by the butcher guild in the late 1760’s claims a total of307 Parisian butchers plus an additional 300 forain butchers. See BNF Collection Joly de Fleury,mss. 2542, fol. 198. In my own research of notarial records that concern butchers in Paris, thefaubourgs, and the surrounding communities, I have counted over 500 butchers.

50 The “privilege” these artisans acquired to practice their trade functioned on the basis ofseparate but equal in the world of commerce; their titles did not confer the same distinction ofmastership and all that was associated with guild membership, while it gave them the legal rightto practice the trade in the city. In 1654, a published list of all privileged artisans includes rightsgranted to twelve butchers to practice their trade within the capital. They were first restricted tothe Croix du Tiroir quarter of Paris but by 1630 found themselves forced out of this area becausetheir commerce interfered with a major thoroughfare on the rue de l’Arbre-Secq. Theysubsequently settled in various popular butcher quarters throughout the city, much to the chagrinof guild masters. Three privileged butchers settled in the Place Maubert in 1646 which “troubled”the master butchers of Montagne Sainte-Geneviève. The privileged butchers sought the protectionof the city government under an arrêt on April 27 of the same year, 1646. See Factum, BNF folioFm 12366.

51 According to Jacques Savary des Bruslons, the butcher guild never exceeded 240 mastermembers, Dictionnaire universel de commerce. 6th ed. (Paris, 1750). Other dictionaries give thesame population figure: Alfred Franklin, Dictionnaire historique des arts, métiers et professionsexercices dans Paris depuis le treizième siècle (Paris: H. Welter, 1906); M. Pary, Guide desCorps des Marchands et Communautés des Arts et Métiers (Paris: chez la veuve Duchesne,1766), 267-270; Macquer, d’apres Barbier. Dictionnaire portatif des arts et métiers (Paris: chezLacombe, 1766), I: 146.

52 Royal legislation clearly outlawed such practices, arrests only occurred in cases where largequantities of meat were discovered. See parlementary arrêt against merchants on the ruel’Oursine in Faubourg Saint-Marcel who were fined five hundred livres, BNF Collection

25

Delamare mss. fr. 1257, folios 97-100; and police sentence that puts six women in prison in 1667,BNF Collection Delamare, mss. fr. 21657, folios 91-92.

53 In the suburban villages such as Belleville, la Courtille, the Porcherons, and Vaugirard, tavernkeepers, wine merchants, as well as butchers, formed a very important part of the population. Thenon-guild cabaret workers and managers of auberges and guignettes (country eateries) oftenplayed the dual role of butcher. In doing so, these workers maintained control over both thewholesale and retail end of their businesses, keeping down costs for the consumer. Pierre ThomasNicolas Hurtault (1719-1791) described cabarets that brought in “an innumerable multitude of allkinds of people, especially artisans, skilled workers, and day workers who go there to relax fromthe exhaustion of the week.” Hurtault, Dictionnaire historique de la ville de Paris et ses environs,(Paris: Moutard, 1779), III: 198-199.

54 Certain variety meats such as tongue, eyes, the tail, kidney, liver, brain, sweetbreads, and lungswere used in cooking. See Marin, Les Dons de Comus, (Paris, 1739). Menon gives a list of offaleaten by “bourgeois and people who keep a good table” that limits this list to brains, tongue,kidney, and the tail. Menon, La cuisinière bourgeoise, (Paris, 1774), 44. For further discussion ofbourgeois cuisine see Alain Girard, “Le triomphe de “La Cuisine Bourgeoise.” Livres culinaire,cuisine et société en France aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles,” Révue d’histoire moderne etcontemporaine, XXIV (octobre-décembre 1977), 497-523.

55 D. Roche, “Cuisine et alimentation populaire à Paris,” Dix-Huitième Siècle, no. 15 (1983), 7-18.