Cuisine and Culture

The sin of gluttony could be committed in three ways: (1) eating before meal time; (2) eating food “choicer than the necessity of the body or his rank and station in life demands”; and (3) “eating or drinking [more] than may benefit his health.”

It was “the first bodily sin,” because eating the apple caused Adam and Eve to lose the Garden of Eden.

Gluttony was against the teachings of the Church.

Drunkenness was part of gluttony—eating or drinking to excess.

Attempts to control them weren’t very successful, even though public drunkenness was against the law.

Linen saturated with a mixture of wine and salt dried hard as a board.1 However, the Church’s problem wasn’t beer-drinking barbarians but wine-drunk priests and monks who made spectacles of themselves.

Sometimes the bread is decorated with dyed hard-boiled eggs or shaped into a cross.

In the Mediterranean, it is lamb; in Northern Europe, ham; in England, beef.

They were in special egg breads like Ukrainian paska or Russian saffron-scented kulich.

In English, Easter gets its name from Eostre, the Old English goddess of fertility and dawn.