Salmon
no more than twice a week?

Jacob van Oudenhoven relates in his book Out-Hollandt nu Zuyt-Hollandt ('Old Holland, Now South Holland') from 1654 that, when applying for work, domestic servants often specified that they were willing 'to eat salmon no more than twice a week'. Such claims appeared in any number of European countries around that time,

yet one still tends to doubt whether salmon in the Middle Ages and afterwards was truly food for poor people. It could also refer to the fact that these servants did not want to observe the Catholic fast more than twice a week, for salmon was the fish eaten most regularly in the cities. Eighteenth-century municipal ordinances mention salmon as a separate category from sea and freshwater fish. The 'grommer' (the man on the market who cleaned fish) was allowed to ask more for cleaning salmon than for any other kind of fish.


This is only one example of the many humorous and informative articles about food in the Golden Age that make this book so rich.