Larder
The Monks' Cellar and Larder is the only one of the three
principal claustral structures to communicate directly with
the service yard to the south of the Claustrum. A door in
the middle of its southern gable wall opens into the court
around the Kitchen and other adjacent yards. This connection
is indispensable, since in addition to wine and
beer, all the meats and staples stored in the Larder above
the Cellar had to be brought in from the outer areas.
As with the Dormitory and the Refectory, the plan of the
Cellar tells us nothing about the location of the stairs that
connected the ground floor with the upper level, and since
the Plan concentrates on the furnishings of the Cellar, we
are left in the dark about the layout of the Larder. This gap
can fortunately be closed by a vivid literary account from
the pen of Abbot Adalhard. In a chapter devoted to a discussion
of the "number and disposition of the pigs,"[252]
Adalhard instructs us that the full number of pigs that were
killed per year "at the cellar" of Corbie amounted to 600.
Sixty of these went to the porter for the table of the guests,
370 to the cellarer for the sustenance of the serfs and the
sick monks, 120 to the prebendaries and fifty into the
abbot's reserve.
The 370 pigs that went to the cellarer for use by the
serfs and the sick were to be issued at the rate of one pig
per day (365 a year), leaving a reserve of five to be used for
emergencies. These 370 pigs, the abbot tells us, are to be
hung in the larder, entrails and all, in monthly batches of
thirty. If anything is left over from the previous month, it
must remain hanging in its place and may be removed only
if a shortage occurs in the meat or fat supply of the subsequent
month. Never should the cellarer "take anything
from a future month to compensate for a shortage of a
preceding month," but always "a shortage of the following
month must be covered by a saving from the preceding
month." Since the entrails spoil faster than the meat and
the lard, they must be distributed first. And since the lard,
when rendered in January, is not fit for consumption before
Easter, the cellarer must build up a reserve from the preceding
year, to be used during this critical interval.[253]
One cannot infer from Adalhard's account that a full
year's supply of pork was hung at the first of January.
Several months' batches must have existed at a given time,
however, since otherwise the abbot could not have warned
against the loan of meat from a following month to make
up for a shortage incurred in the preceding month. One
must remember that in the Middle Ages, when farming
practices provided only a limited supply of winter food for
stock, at the end of each year the farmers customarily killed
all but a small number of their cattle, sheep, and pigs and
salted down the flesh for their winter meat supply. The
traditional month for slaughtering pigs was December. In
the illuminations of medieval calendars illustrating the
labors of the months, this event is depicted with lavish
attention.
Adalhard tells us nothing about the disposition in the
larder of the other kinds of meat, but if we add to the pig
the carcasses of beef, mutton, and goat, and the vast array
of sacks or baskets filled with beans, lentils, and onions,
plus the racks of fruit, cheeses, and bread that passed
through the larder, we have a fairly vivid picture of the
disposition of the 2,700 square feet of storage space above
the Cellar that insured the livelihood of the community.
