Journal of Interdisciplinary History, xliv:4 (Spring, 2014), 427–452.

ANIMAL PROTEIN AND RATIONAL CHOICE

Martin Bruegel, Jean-Michel Chevet, and Sébastien Lecocq
Animal Protein and Rational Choice: Diet in the
Eighteenth Century The historiography of consumer be-
havior during the early modern era has two strands of inquiry. The
ªrst, based on the expanding world of goods, postulates a “con-
sumer revolution,” most notably in England and the Netherlands
where exotic comestibles, tableware to serve them, and tobacco to
stimulate digestion—not to mention the art of conversation—
came within the reach of the middle and lower classes. The second
line of inquiry explores the parallel opening of a labor market in
which women (and some men), released from households and in-
stitutional constraints, could earn income to spend on these new
consumer goods. France provides much support for the hypothesis
of what de Vries termed the “industrious revolution,” as well as of
a revolution in the possession of nonperishable consumer goods
that provided greater material comfort.1

Martin Bruegel is Researcher, French National Institute for Agricultural Research (inra),
Alimentation et Sciences Sociales (aliss). He is the author of Farm, Shop, Landing: The Rise of
a Market Society in the Hudson Valley (Durham, N.C., 2002); editor of A Cultural History of Food
in the Age of Empire (New York, 2012).

Jean-Michel Chevet is Researcher, French National Institute for Agricultural Research
(inra), Institut des Sciences de la vigne et du vin (isvv) adess-umb 5185. He is the author of
“Reconsidering a Rural Myth: Peasant France and Capitalist Britain,” in John Broard (ed.),
A Common Agricultural Heritage: Revisiting French and British Rural Divergence (Exeter, 2009),
37–54; with Sébastien Lecocq and Michael Visser, “Climate, Grapevine Phenology, Wine
Production and Prices: Pauillac (1800–2009),” American Economic Review: Papers & Proceedings,
CI (2011), 142–146.

Sébastien Lecocq is Researcher, French National Institute for Agricultural Research
(inra), Alimentation et Sciences Sociales (aliss). He is the author of, with Jean-Michel
Chevet and Michael Visser, “Climate, Grapevine Phenology, Wine Production and Prices:
Pauillac (1800–2009),” American Economic Review: Papers & Proceedings, CI (2011), 142–146.
The authors thank the readers and editors of the Journal of Interdisciplinary History for
their helpful suggestions on the ªnal draft of this article, and Reynald Abad, Jérôme Bourdieu,
Anne McCants, Ulrike Thoms, and Sydney Watts for commenting on its earlier versions.

© 2014 by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and The Journal of Interdisciplinary
History, Inc., doi:10.1162/JINH_a_00609

1 Consumer revolution: John Brewer and Roy Porter (ed.), Consumption and the World of
Goods (New York, 1993); for a good overview, Michael Prinz, “Aufbruch in den Überºuss?
Die englische‚ ‘Konsumrevolution’ des 18. Jahrhunderts im Lichte der neueren Forschung,”
in idem (ed.), Der lange Weg in den Überºuss. Anfänge und Entwicklung der Konsumgesellschaft seit
der Vormoderne (Paderborn, 2003), 191–217. Industrious revolution: Jan De Vries, The Industri-
ous Revolution: Consumer Behavior and the Household Economy, 1650 to the Present (New York,
2008); Cissie Fairchilds, “The Production and Marketing of Populuxe Goods in 18th-century

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428 | BRUEGEL, CHEVET, AND LECO CQ

This article investigates food trends by taking advantage of a
century-long account of purchases at the wealthy convent school
of Saint-Cyr, showing how its diet of wheat and meat eventually
yielded to a healthier and more diverse offering, which included
milk, sugar, and fruit. Because innovations in consumption and the
emergence of consumer capital require careful inscription into his-
torical contexts, we distinguish between the weight of social ex-
pectations, the vagaries of taste, and the exigencies of price trends
in the evolution of the school’s menu throughout the century.

At the outset, butchery meat—beef, veal, and mutton—was
the most prized, the most regulated, and the most indispensable
food at Saint-Cyr. In December 1696, ten years after the institu-
tion’s opening, Madame de Maintenon (Françoise d’Aubigné), its
founder, reminded the Mother Superior to make sure that the
quantities of meat speciªed in the “rules of the interior” were actu-
ally available to the pupils. Guidelines to run the school, written
in the early eighteenth century, deªned the daily allowance of
“butchery meat and poultry . . . as one pound or half a pound per
person.” The existence of an entitlement to meat underlined its
priority in the school’s diet, giving away the establishment’s aristo-
cratic status. White bread was taken for granted and routinely ac-
companied the three daily meals, but other foods received merely
an occasional mention in the administrative correspondence.
Only meat had its daily ration speciªed; it supplied 20 percent of
the daily energy intake per person (as measured by us in calories,
which were as yet unknown) throughout the century.2

Quantity mattered, but so did quality. The school exclusively
purchased ªner cuts. Institutional wealth found expression in the
inmates’ food and the silver cutlery with which they ate it. “Only
very good and well conditioned meat, such as is served on the best
tables,” was to arrive at Saint-Cyr, and the butcher was warned
never to “try on the sly to pass pieces that are commonly called
lower butchery” (which included shin, shank, and neck). Hence,

Paris,” in Brewer and Porter (ed.), Consumption and the World of Goods, 228–248; Daniel
Roche, Histoire des choses banales: Naissance de la consommation XVIIe—XIXe siècles (Paris, 1997).
2 Madame de Maintenon to Madame de Fontaines, Dec. 1696, in Marcel Langlois (ed.),
Lettres de Madame de Maintenon (Paris, 1939), V, 157 ; Mémoire de Monsieur Mauduyt sur
l’administration de l’intérieur de la maison de Saint-Cyr, fol. 3, no date (between 1710 and
1745), 144 AP 145, Archives d’Ormesson, Archives Nationales. Ledgers of the Maison Royale
de Saint-Cyr are located at D246–263, D446–449, D474, Archives Départementales des
Yvelines (hereinafter ady).
3

forks, knives, and goblets were made of silver. See Jean-Joseph Milhiet,

Spoons,

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ANIMAL PROTEIN AND RAT IONAL CH OICE | 429

roasting prevailed over stewing, and Madame de Maintenon
frowned on warming remnants. Although lard was used as a cook-
ing fat, the absence of plebeian pork (charcuterie) on Saint-Cyr’s
shopping list corroborated the table’s aristocratic standing.3

Social expectations impelled the school’s supervisory board to
determine the portion of meat. This measure was not just an ex-
pression of status ambition; it also had a practical purpose—“to
know,” as the house rules stipulated, “precisely or at least more or
less the amount of ordinary expenses.” Recommended meat serv-
ings both communicated Saint-Cyr’s eminent rank in the kingdom
of France to its pensionnaires and the outside world and operated as
an accounting tool.4

The combination of a noble establishment and ªnancial con-
trol produced much paper work. Saint-Cyr’s administrators ran
their institution carefully, their eyes riveted on the food market.
They did not tolerate compulsive shopping or squandering (left-
overs were not to be sold but used in pies). According to an outside
observer who commented on the institution’s tight accounting at
mid-century, the économe (steward), the nun who managed the
daily business, “must keep expenses low, must not waste anything
but buy only prime goods, be well informed about markets and
provisioning, . . . keep up with prices of everything and avoid be-
ing cheated.” Personnel regularly ventured into the outside world
to sample, compare, and acquire much of the food. Indeed, in-
structions for purchasing insisted that “the person in charge of lo-
gistics . . . must not only stop at one sole merchant of each kind

“Historique de la Maison Royale de Saint-Louis,” in Les Demoiselles de Saint-Cyr: Maison
Royale d’Education 1686–1793 (Paris, 1999), 74. For information about the cut and classiªcation
of meat from butchers’ contracts, see D 446, ady. Maintenon to Madame de Fontaines, April
1694, in Langlois (ed.), Lettres (Paris, 1935), IV, 259. For the hierarchy of cuts and their prepa-
ration, see Sydney Watts, Meat Matters. Butchers, Politics, and Market Culture in Eighteenth-
Century Paris (Rochester, 2006), 27–41.
4 Mémoire de Monsieur Mauduyt,” fol. 2. Voltaire used a letter by Maintenon to illustrate
how a budget helps to run a well-managed aristocratic household; meat made up 35% of the
expenses at the household in question, its quantities per person slightly larger than at Saint-
Cyr. See “Économie,” in Voltaire (ed. Nicholas Cronk and Christine Mervaud), Questions sur
l’Encyclopédie, par des amateurs in Les œuvres complètes de Voltaire (New York, 2009), XL, 593–
595. For the entire letter, dated Sept. 25, 1679, see Théophile Lavallée (ed.), Correspondance
générale de Madame de Maintenon (Paris, 1865–1866), II, 64–70; for Saint-Cyr’s material set-up,
its educational project, and organization of daily life, idem, Histoire de la Maison Royale de Saint-
Cyr 1686–1793 (Paris, 1853); Milhiet, “Historique,” 8–111; Lucette Peter, “Le Temporel de la
communauté des Dames de Saint Cyr 1686–1789,” thèse de doctorat (Université Paris I—
Panthéon-Sorbonne, 1975).

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430 | BRUEGEL, CHEVET, AND LECO CQ

who could abuse her trust but must enter all the shops and bou-
tiques to ªnd the best merchandise and the business that sells it
most cheaply.” This policy provides the very portrait of a rational
consumer. During the school’s existence, institutional guidelines
offered a blueprint for cautious decision making when purchasing
food. Changes in the économe’s ofªce had no effect on the way in
which the daily business was run. The house rules and provisioning
procedures authorize economic analysis in terms of prices, reve-
nues, and budget parts without running the risk of anachronism.5

Meticulously kept purchase ledgers show how the school’s ad-
ministrators translated social values and economic constraints into
meat consumption. These exceptional data expand our documen-
tary evidence about consumer behavior during the ancien régime,
especially since Saint-Cyr’s archives offer quantitative data about a
segment of the population whose economic conduct has received
relatively little attention. Extant expense registers yield 1,200
monthly prices for butchery meat from 1688 to 1788. The series
thus capture short-term, month-to-month variations of meat pur-
chases and their long-term development. They also contain yearly
budget ªgures for chicken, ªsh, and game between 1703 and 1788,
thus chronicling routines, shifts, and shocks. They unveil a penny-
pinching operation forced to adjust on the ºy to changing condi-
tions. Indeed, Saint-Cyr’s standards did not prevent meat portions
from varying substantially during its 100 years of existence—rising
for the ªrst forty-ªve years, sliding for the next thirty-ªve years or
so, and then climbing again for the remaining ªfteen years. The
questions are why did Saint-Cyr’s provisioning of animal proteins
drift from the original norm deªned at the outset and re-afªrmed
several times later, and which variables explain the recomposition
of the institution’s food basket during the eighteenth century?6

Social status and economic shrewdness were the hallmarks of
Saint-Cyr’s commercial behavior. The analysis of Saint-Cyr’s led-
gers of meat consumption provides an opportunity to enter into a
dialog with other scholarly disciplines that feature elaborate theo-
ries to “account for taste(s).” Both economics and sociology reºect

5 Mémoire de ce qui s’observe dans la royale Maison de Saint-Louis établie à Saint-Cyr,
fol. 25–26, no date (mid-18th century), Ms. Nlle. Acq. Fr 10677, Bibliothèque Nationale de
France; Mémoire de Monsieur Mauduyt sur l’administration de l’intérieur, fol. 4.
6 Philip T. Hoffman, David S. Jacks, Patricia A. Levin, and Peter H. Lindert, “Real
Inequality in Europe since 1500,” Journal of Economic History, LXII (2002), 324–325.

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ANIMAL PROTEIN AND RAT IONAL CH OICE | 431

on preferences in consumer behavior, relying on certain axioms to
explain human agency. Much of their disagreement stems from dif-
ferent deªnitions of taste as well as divergent hypotheses about
their formation and their inºuence. Economists, the foremost
protagonists in this intellectual dispute, interpret taste in a way
that captures predilections (in other words, tastes for something);
they posit the permanence of taste—or its distribution across a
population—subject only to varying material constraints. Sociolo-
gists use taste as a tool of classiªcation—constructing hierarchies ac-
cording to good or bad iterations—the aim of which is to establish
and maintain social distinction and inºuence.7

Whether taste appears as irrelevent or active, these studies
rarely rely on extended historical data series. Hence, their preten-
sions to the contrary, they lack dynamic factors: In sociology, the
mechanism of social competition is timeless, and in economics,
material stimuli always cause the same rational response. In a para-
doxical way, volition, however indexed to economic or social cir-
cumstances, is foreign to consumer choices. Such is the historical
weightlessness and the absence of change that the Saint-Cyr re-
cords help to overcome. The literary and quantitative sources
herein animate the elusive category of utility that haunts econom-
ics, and they revise the notion of luxury consumption as free ex-
pression that has a place in sociology. Our explanation moves from
the testable inºuence of quantitative variables to contextual evi-
dence. It thus integrates economic, social, and symbolic concerns
that tend to appear more disjointed in historical attempts to explain
change in food repertoires.8

The analysis offers three insights. First, economic rationality as
an expression of income and relative prices works well in the short
run but cannot explain the long-term transformation of the con-
sumption pattern. Second, although the search for social distinc-
tion helps to explain the composition of the food basket and its per-
sistence in time, the notion that wealth automatically leads to
capricious, even idiosyncratic, behavior ªnds no corroboration at

7 Gary S. Becker, Accounting for Tastes (Boston, 1996); Pierre Bourdieu, La distinction: Cri-
tique sociale du jugement (Paris, 1979).
8 The reliance on one or the other mode of explanation appears clearly in review articles
like Barbara Krug-Richter and Clemens Zimmermann, “Ernährung,” in Friederich Jaeger
(ed.), Enzyklopädie der Neuzeit (Stuttgart, 2006), III, 464–485; Reynald Abad, “Consom-
mation alimentaire,” in Michel Figeac (ed.), L’ancienne France au quotidien: La vie et les choses de
la vie sous l’Ancien Régime (Paris, 2007), 133–137.

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432 | BRUEGEL, CHEVET, AND LECO CQ

Saint-Cyr. In the eighteenth century at least, status claims func-
tioned as a moral imperative; failing to live by them would have
triggered a loss in reputation. Moreover, taste as a tool of social
judgment and power throws no light on the long-term alterations
to the school’s food repertoire. Having assessed the temporal reach
of rational choice and status disposition, our analysis focuses on
taste as an independent, organoleptic variable that imposes its own
demands on a diet’s composition and the management of the insti-
tutional purse.

provisioning saint-cyr The idea of
founding a boarding
school to raise and educate the orphaned daughters of the aristoc-
racy originated in the 1680s with Madame de Maintenon—widow
of the poet Paul Scarron, favorite mistress of Louis XIV, and later
the king’s wife, after a secret wedding in 1683. Louis generously
endowed the institution with farms and forests; with a real estate
of 14,826 acres, Saint-Cyr became one of the ªfteen richest fe-
male abbeys of the 300 or so that thrived during the eighteenth
century.9

Institutional wealth found expression in the inmates’ food. Al-
though the majority of the French population ate a monotonous,
starchy diet in which meat was scarce and cereals accounted for as
much as 80 percent of the energy supply (at best, peasants and the
urban lower classes ate only miniscule portions of beef, pork, or
chicken), the diet at Saint-Cyr was rich, varied, and, as at other
similar institutions for the titled elite, geared toward the inculcation
of aristocratic manners and taste. Vegetables (garden-fresh, cooked,
or pickled) and fruit (fresh, cooked, preserved, or baked in pies) ac-
companied the staples of bread and meat. One former demoiselle
reported that the older girls received 1 lb of meat per day—“a piece
of beef, and boiled veal or mutton in the morning, roasted beef and
mutton in the evening,” whereas the younger pupils received
12 oz. Maintenon was intransigent about servings and their variety.
“Do not allow a diminution of the food,” she wrote to the mother
superior in 1696, “diversify so that the Demoiselles eat well. They
must not only be fed, they must grow. We must assure them a good

9 Veronica Buckley, The Secret Wife of Louis XIV: Françoise D’Aubigné, Madame de Maintenon
(London, 2008); Peter, “Temporel.”

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ANIMAL PROTEIN AND RAT IONAL CH OICE | 433

health.” Physical appearance, with a premium on personal beauty,
was of great importance; a deformed, stunted aristocrat making her
worldly debut upon leaving the school at twenty years of age
would “ªnd neither a husband, nor a place in a convent, nor a posi-
tion as a retainer in a lady’s company.”10

An adament refusal to rely on indoor production buttressed
the administrators’ compulsion to keep meticulous accounting
ledgers. They recorded the purchases of six foods by quantity
and price (wheat, butchery meat, wine, butter, eggs, and milk) and
twenty foods by expense only (animal proteins from ªsh, fowl,
and game; condiments like sugar and olive oil; and fruits and vege-
tables). The accounting vision at Saint-Cyr extended to goods
coming from its property. Wheat from its farms entered its grana-
ries as an expense based on its current price in nearby markets, and
game from its forests had a price tag attached, too.11

The diet that the 250 pupils and 60 nuns enjoyed never fell be-
low 2,300 kcal per day throughout the eighteenth century. For lack
of quantities, this calculation omits the contributions of ªsh, fowl,
game, cheese, dried fruit, edible oils, sugar, fruits, and vegetables.
(boarding schools for the aristocracy’s male offspring made avail-
able about 4,000 kcal per day and per person, but this total included
leftovers to be sold or distributed among the poor). The memoirs
of the former pupil mentioned earlier situated all of these foods
precisely to highlight the profusion that reigned in the school’s din-
ing halls. The preparation of the dishes varied: Marinated, minced,
grilled, or boiled cuts were all represented, as was mince pie and
stew. The sick, the weak, and those who found the butchery meat
distasteful received poultry and game. Vegetables varied according

10 Fernand Braudel, Civilisation matérielle, économie et capitalisme 15e–18e siècle. I. Les structures
du quotidien (Paris, 1979), 216–221; Jean-Louis Flandrin, “Les temps modernes,” in idem and
Massimo Montanari (ed.), Histoire de l’alimentation (Paris, 1996), 549–575, 602–616, 660–665;
Watts, Meat Matters, 27–41. According to Milhiet, “Historique,” 81, no menus survive, but
the former demoiselle’s “Mémoire de ce qui s’observe dans la Maison Royale de Saint-Louis,
fondée par Louis XIV,” provides a suggestive description of the daily meal. Maintenon to Ma-
dame Du Pérou, May 30, 1696, in Langlois (ed.), Lettres, V, 66; Maintenon to Du Pérou,
March 20, 1696, ibid., 41.
11 For the resolve to forgo production on the premises, see Mémoires de Manseau, intendant
de la Maison royale de Saint-Cyr, publiés d’après le manuscrit autographe par Achille Taphanel
(Versailles, 1902), 69–70; H. Chouet, “Le temporel à la Maison Royale de Saint-Cyr,” Revue
d’histoire de Versailles (1912), 362. A different budget (its current whereabouts unknown) dealt
with such personnel as cooks, gardeners, et al.

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434 | BRUEGEL, CHEVET, AND LECO CQ

to the season, but fruit “always accompanied lunch and even din-
ner, if available” (dried fruit seemed to substitute when fresh fruit
had run out).12

Meat’s exceptional status among the comestibles available at
Saint-Cyr affected its mode of purchase. Whereas immediate trans-
actions in spot markets at Versailles were customary for such food-
stuffs as eggs, dairy products, groceries, vegetables, and wine, com-
mercial contracts regulated the school’s purchases of butchery meat
throughout its existence. The role of price taker for all comestibles
except butchery meat distinguished Saint-Cyr from many other
prestigious institutions with extensive market power. The Ecole
Militaire in Paris, charitable establishments like the Hôtel-Dieu in
Paris, or noble households tended to rely instead on contractual
purveyors of foodstuffs or on produce coming from their own
farms.13

At Saint-Cyr, local master butchers signed three-year agree-
ments; renewal typically required new signatures and a new expira-
tion date. When both parties were satisªed, relations could last for
decades, as in the case of master Michel Le Moine who supplied
meat to the boarding school for more than twenty-four years after
his initial engagement in 1762 (the relationship ended with the
French Revolution and the dissolution of the convent school).
Contractual stipulations extending three years into the future de-
termined the quality, quantity, and price of the carcasses and cuts
destined to provide for the daily needs of the 310 residents. They
unchangingly speciªed the weight of the ordinary delivery on
meat-eating days to be “three hundred and twenty pounds more or
less.”14

12 Willem Frijhoff and Dominique Julia, “L’alimentation des pensionnaires à la ªn de
l’Ancien Régime,” Annales, XXX (1975), 491–504; Bartolomé Benassar and Joseph Goy,
“Contributions à l’histoire de la consommation alimentaire du XIVe au XIXe siècle,” ibid.,
409–411; Mémoire de ce qui s’observe dans la Royale Maison de St Louis, fol. 9–13.
13 Robert Laulan, “Le service de l’alimentation à l’Ecole militaire de Paris (1753–1788),” in
L’alimentation et ses problèmes, I. Actes du 93e Congrès national des Sociétés savantes (Tours, 1969)
(Paris, 1971), 377–390; Maela Marzin, “Du blé au pain des malades: La ªlière paniªable de
l’Hôtel-Dieu de Paris
la direction
de Reynald Abad (Université Paris IV-Sorbonne, 2009); Pierre Couperie, “Les marchés de
pourvoirie: viandes et poissons chez les Grands au 17e siècle,” Pour une histoire de l’alimentation:
Cahiers des Annales n° 28 (Paris, 1970), 241–253; Natacha Coquery, L’hôtel aristocratique: Le
marché du luxe au 18e siècle (Paris, 1998), 169.
14 All contracts in D446, ady. For those that lasted longest, see Marché fait avec le sieur Le
Moine pour la fourniture de viande, Sept. 22, 1762, renewed for the last time Oct. 25, 1786.

(1701–1750),” Mémoire de Master d’histoire sous

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ANIMAL PROTEIN AND RAT IONAL CH OICE | 435

Nonetheless, long-lasting contracts did not result in stable
consumption volumes, though they did keep variations in expenses
for butchery meat within much narrower boundaries than those
recorded for wheat. The relative standard deviation of expenses for
wheat is 32.86 percent, whereas it stands at 14.78 percent for meat.
The relative standard deviation in price is 33.42 percent for wheat
and 15.14 percent for meat. The daily allowances of butchery meat,
adjusted for 160 meatless days, ºuctuated between a minimum of
300 grams per person during the subsistence crisis of 1694 and a
stunning 583 grams in 1738; the average between 1688 and 1788
stood at 436 grams (see Figure 1). The ªrst half-century, though
tending to an increase in the portion size, saw much more variabil-
ity than did the half-century after 1738—the year when the avail-
ability of butchery meat peaked at Saint-Cyr. The ªgures slid
downward during the 1760s and 1770s to levels that were actually
not much higher than those suffered in earlier crisis years (1694 and
1709). After this low point, purchases picked up again to reach a
daily allowance of 408 grams per head per day in 1788.15

The pattern is a puzzle to explain. Yet, reversal points in the
provisioning of butchery meat offer clues to moments of change.
Analysis of the late 1730s (when meat as well as food expenditures
reversed upward trends) and the decade after 1765 (when meat
portions grew again)
for Saint-Cyr’s
modiªed consumer behavior in both the short and the long run—
ªrst involving economic variables (prices, supply, and revenues)
and then adducing other determinants mainly regarding matters of
taste.

suggests possible causes

explanatory variables

Budget and Revenues While revenues and food expenses
moved apace at Saint-Cyr through mid-1765 (Figure 2), outlays for
meat followed an independent trajectory. On a short-term basis,

The butcher contract with Jacques Marche was in 1714, with Etienne Gallois in 1722, and
with Le Moine in 1762.
15 Relative standard deviation is calculated as 100*standard deviation/mean to arrive at
comparable values. No one else has calculated these boundaries, which are likely to explain
why other institutional or noble households relied on contracts; they kept the vagaries of the
market at a certain distance. The absence of information about the number of lean days ob-
served at Saint-Cyr forces reliance on Massimo Montanari, La faim et l’abondance: Histoire de
l’alimentation en Europe (Paris, 1995), 109–110; Abad, “Consommation alimentaire,” 136. Lent
and lean days affected yearly and weekly consumption, but their impact on total consumption

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436 | BRUEGEL, CHEVET, AND LECO CQ

Fig. 1 Daily Allowance of Bread and Butchery Meat (on Meat Days)

1688–1788 (kg/Person)

note The calculation allows for a 60% bolting factor in milling, since the demoiselles re-
ceived white bread.
source D246–263, D446–449, D474, Archives Départementales des Yvelines.

however, changes in food expenditures affected the quantities of
purchased meat. The connection is evident in the statistically sig-
niªcant but small budget elasticity for butchery meat (equal to
0.156). Although this development may seem to contrast with the
high and signiªcant value for wheat (1.879), it reºects only that
variations in quantities were smaller for meat than for wheat. Meat
by all accounts was a necessary good. Its consumption increased
with the institution’s food budget, but it did not do so propor-
tionately.16

Oddly, the model evaluates wheat as a luxury good because its
share in food expenses increased with expenses. This counter-
intuitive appraisal is the result of subsistence crises. Indeed, the cal-
culations for two sub-periods show signiªcant differences: Wheat
still appears as a luxury good in the sub-period of 1703 to 1742

did not vary during the century. The same point holds true for ªsh consumption—high dur-
ing lent and on lean days without changing the yearly pattern.
16 Budget elasticities illustrate the effect (in percentage) of a 1% increase in food expendi-
ture for each quantity. Uncompensated price elasticities measure the change (by percentage)
in consumption induced by a 1% change in prices, holding food expenditure constant.

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ANIMAL PROTEIN AND RAT IONAL CH OICE | 437

Fig. 2 Revenues and Food and Butchery Meat Expenses at Saint-Cyr

(1703–1788 (cid:2) 100)

source D246–263, D446–449, D474, Archives Départementales des Yvelines.

(2.813), characterized by more hard times and the consequent
higher volatility of purchased quantities. But it becomes a necessity
between 1743 and 1788, with a budget elasticity equal to 0.689.
When we split the century into sub-periods—covering, for exam-
ple, the rise and fall of the provisioning curve—meat does not
show a similar heterogeneity in time. Regarding revenues, the in-
come elasticity of meat is almost zero and insigniªcant; for wheat, it
is larger but still insigniªcant. The reason is the statistical discon-
nection between revenues and food budget.17

Accounting included more than records of revenues and ex-
penditures. Saint-Cyr’s steward anticipated yearly income. At
times, this anticipation was faulty, never more so than between
1734 and 1738 when reality shortchanged expectations by more
than 10 percent every year. The year 1738 was distinguished by
a cascade of ªve consecutive erroneous assessments; its reduction
of meat consumption, the budget’s largest part, could well have

17 For the time-series econometrics, see Bruegel, Chevet, Lecocq, and Jean-Marc Robin,
“Explaining the Food Purchases of the Convent School at Saint-Cyr 1703–1788,” Annals of
Economics and Statistics, CIX/X (2013), 63–91.

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438 | BRUEGEL, CHEVET, AND LECO CQ

Fig. 3 Price (in Livres Tournois) and Monthly Purchases (in lbs) of

Butchery Meat at Saint-Cyr, 1688–1788

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source D246–263, D446–449, D474, Archives Départementales des Yvelines.

been a reaction to revenues that did not meet the économe’s
extrapolation.
Prices

If the contracts signed between the institution and its
suppliers could not hold quantities constant, does the evolution of
meat’s price explain the long-run waves of its provisioning at the
convent school? Price variations rarely occurred after 1727 (Fig-
ure 3). Contractual terms succeeded in keeping rates steady, and
tacit renewal enforced the stated price beyond its usual three-year
application. Before 1727, however, price stability obtained for
shorter durations, often in months and sometimes in years. There is
no evident relationship between the waves of purchased quantities
and price movements in the long run. In the short run, a similar
picture emerges: Own-price elasticity is not signiªcantly different
from zero ((cid:3)0.098). It remains so regardless of period. As a com-
parison, the quantity of wheat purchased is highly sensitive to
wheat price ((cid:3)0.511), especially before 1742. Inspection of cross-
price elasticities (see Appendix) show that variations in the price of
other foods played a role in the explanation of short-run ºuctua-
tions in the consumed quantity of butchery meat: An increase in

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ANIMAL PROTEIN AND RAT IONAL CH OICE | 439

the price of milk or butter had a positive and signiªcant effect on
meat consumption (which was therefore a substitute for milk and
butter). Overall, variations in budget and prices are able to explain
77 percent of the short-term variations in the share that butchery
meat represented in the budget at Saint-Cyr.18

Supply Did supply control meat purchases at Saint-Cyr? A
look at the cattle markets provisioning Paris (Figure 4) provides an
intriguing angle on Saint-Cyr’s meat purchasing behavior (oxen
for beef, cows and calfs for veal, and lamb for mutton, though not
pigs for pork, were transformed into their beef-weight equiva-
lents). Before 1738, and even ªve years afterward, a great deal of
synchronicity existed between Saint-Cyr’s demand and the vol-
umes offered in the French capital. In both cases, 1738 represented
the century’s peak. But even though the market in Paris had recov-
ered from its steep, 30-percent decline by 1744 to enter forty
years of relatively constant, if cyclical, supply, Saint-Cyr’s con-
sumption of butchery meat declined steadily through the mid-
1760s, stabilizing at about three-quarters of a pound per head per
day, before rising again after 1774. These trajectories suggest that
by the 1740s, Saint-Cyr’s administrators were no longer taking full
advantage of the available meat volumes. They obviously made dif-
ferent choices, demonstrating a great deal of independence with
respect to meat supply. Average availability per head declined in
Paris from 0.188 kg to 0.165 kg during the last two decades of the
ancien régime, at the precise time when they began to recover in
the convent school.19

Social Expectation The levels of butchery-meat consumption
that had remained more or less stable but comparatively low be-
tween 1767 and 1773 fell to around 316 grams and 308 grams per
day per person in 1774 and 1775, respectively. This low point,
however, was also a turnaround, triggering, if not a complete
volte-face, at least a decision to reverse the decline of meat rations
at Saint-Cyr. During the decade following 1765, the institution
was apparently willing to save on meat expenses, but only above a
certain quantity. By this time, three-quarters of a pound—the ra-
tion that Maintenon had once considered adequate for the younger

Ibid.

18
19 Marcel Lachiver, “L’approvisionnement de Paris en viande au 18e siècle,” in La Société
de démographie historique (ed.), La France d’Ancien Régime: Études réunies en l’honneur de Pierre
Goubert (Toulouse, 1984), I, 352.

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440 | BRUEGEL, CHEVET, AND LECO CQ

Fig. 4 Cattle Supply (Beef Equivalent) in Paris and Butchery Meat
Purchases at Saint-Cyr in the Eighteenth Century (Series’
Means (cid:2) 100)

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sources D246–263, D446–449, D474, Archives Départementales des Yvelines; Marcel
Lachiver, “L’approvisionnement de Paris en viande au 18e siècle,” in La France d’Ancien
Régime: Études réunies en l’honneur de Pierre Goubert (Toulouse, 1984), I, 345–354.

pupils—had become the benchmark below which the quantity of
butchery meat should not fall without betraying the school’s aristo-
cratic standing.

Administrators appeared to have decided to take action against
further decline when butchery-meat rations fell drastically low in
1774, eighty years after their touching rock bottom in the terrible
winter of 1693/94. They had already faced such a crisis in 1765
when the daily allowance dropped below three-quarters of a
pound per person when the économe, after having saved on butch-
ery meat since 1738, could no longer refrain from spending extra
money. This ªrst jolt in 1765 and then the second one in 1775
forced the school to raise the bar to maintain conventional quanti-
ties of butchery meat. The short-term upset of 1774/75 must cer-
tainly have left an indelebile mark on the consumption routine that
recalled the school’s reaction to crises during the ªrst thirty years of
its existence.

Indeed, in the early days, when the subsistence crisis of 1709

ANIMAL PROTEIN AND RAT IONAL CH OICE | 441

loomed on the horizon, Maintenon left no doubt about the impor-
tance of meat to a person’s social identiªcation. She derided a fel-
low nobleman for failing to honor the aristocratic custom of pro-
viding 1 lb of meat per day per soldier in his squadron. The
measure seemed to hold elsewhere in the eighteenth century. A
tally taken shortly before the French Revolution in a noble house-
hold put the portion of butchery meat on fat (meat) days at 1 lb 8 oz
(roughly 640 grams) per person. In an institutional context, the
norm regulating aristocratic meat consumption led to upheaval:
Discontent among the blue-blooded pensionnaires at the Ecole
militaire led the minister of war to mandate a meat-heavy diet in
1777, the daily ration of one-and-a-half pound of meat deemed
insufªcient for adolescent gentilhommes at an institution wishing to
maintain its reputation. The cultural deªnition of adequate supply
came with an economic fee; the disability to meet it entailed a
decline in honor and may have fostered anxiety about the demoi-
selles’ health. Saint-Cyr’s experience demonstrated that this imper-
ative operated as a threshold below which it was socially unaccept-
able for meat rations to fall.20

Substitute for Butchery Meat The contribution of game to the
institutional diet escalated after 1738 (Figure 5). Deer, rabbits,
young boars, and partridges were occasionally served at Saint-Cyr
before butchery meat began its twenty-ªve-year decline at the
end of the 1730s. Thereafter, the administrators made a concerted
effort to offset some of this diminution with a supplement of veni-
son. The budget allotted for poultry continued to oscillate around
3 percent, suggesting that chicken did not substitute for red meat.
The new fare by no means exhausted the 10 percent savings in the
budget for butchery meat as it amounted only to a 1.5 percent addi-
tional expenditure. Yet game was cheaper than butchery meat by
unit weight and by calorie.

Game weighed about 36 grams per meat day on average be-
tween 1768 and 1789 (years for which extant data allow a quantita-
tive estimation). The contribution of wild animals to overall por-
tion size after 1738 may have been small, but the addition of
venison made sure that meat rations never slipped below three-

20 Maintenon to the Duc de Noailles, June 22, 1709, in Mémoires et lettres de Madame de
Maintenon (Maestricht, 1778), XI, 128; Sean Takats, The Expert Cook in Enlightenment France
(Baltimore, 2011), 80–81; Laulan, “Service de l’alimentation,” 386–390.

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442 | BRUEGEL, CHEVET, AND LECO CQ

Fig. 5 Budget Parts of Poultry and Game, 1703–1788 (Percentage)

source D448, D449, Archives Départementales des Yvelines.

quarters of a pound per day when beef and veal were on the down-
ward trend (Figure 6)—Maintenon’s recommendation for girls
aged seven to twelve. Feathered and ground game compensated in
part for vanishing butchery meat, helping to maintain quantitative
standards. The negative and highly signiªcant correlation between
the two series ((cid:3)0.605) is clear when plotted as variations around
their trend (Figure 7), showing that provisioning with butchery
meat and game was contrapuntal, aimed at ensuring a certain quan-
tity in the short run. Game not only increased the variety of the fare
and kept meat’s volume above aristocratic expectations; it also held
great symbolic value. Its emblematic meaning as a noble food
added more distinction to the alimentary regime at the convent
school.

Taste Meats were not the only food group in which the
components changed. Reshufºing affected the entire food basket
(see Appendix). Just as in Dutch orphanages and English house-
holds, Saint-Cyr turned toward sweeter foods. The increasing
prominence of sugar on the shopping list was singlehandedly re-
sponsible for the growing budget share of groceries. While its share
in food expenditures grew from 1.5 to 5 percent, consumption ex-
panded from less than 1,000 lbs per year during the ªrst decade of
the eighteenth century to roughly 5,000 lbs during its last. The sec-

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ANIMAL PROTEIN AND RAT IONAL CH OICE | 443

Fig. 6 Daily Availability of Butchery Meat and Game per Person,

1768–1788 (kg)

source D448, D449, Archives Départementales des Yvelines.

ular expansion translated into a climb from 4 to 20 grams per per-
son per day.21

Attention to the 1730s, a turning point, brings greater
reªnement to our knowledge of consumption shifts and the arbi-
trages that they required. Growth of sugar consumption proceeded
faster during the ªrst half of the eighteenth century than during the
second half, but purchases were more regular after the ªrst third.
The development of a provisioning routine—the curtailment of
opportunist purchases after the 1730s—owed much to increased
supply, as overseas plantations grew and exportations to metropoli-
tan France expanded. This increased supply stimulated the taste for
sugar. Price did not play even a minor role in the development;
the correlation between price and purchased quantities is (cid:3)0.1436
(p-value(cid:2)0.3583).

The popularity of sugar was the key to another modiªcation
of consumer conduct. At Saint-Cyr, just as at the table of Louis
XIV, the willful spurning of such exotic goods as coffee, chocolate,
and tea coincided with the consumption of sugar with fruit and

21 Anne McCants, “Monotonous but Not Meager: The Diet of the Burgher Orphans
in Early Modern Amsterdam,” Research in Economic History, XIV (1992), 89; Carole
Shammas,”The Eighteenth-Century English Diet and Economic Change,” Explorations in
Economic History, XXI (1984), 284–286.

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444 | BRUEGEL, CHEVET, AND LECO CQ

Fig. 7 Provisioning of Butchery Meat and Game, 1768–1788: Varia-

tions around Trend*

*Moving average: 11 observations (5 lags, 5 leads).
source D448, D449, Archives Départementales des Yvelines.

berries. Their part of the budget grew from 1 to almost 4 percent.
Although our sources are silent about acquired quantities, the
économe at Saint-Cyr was certainly willing to spend enough
money on fresh fruit to allow the demoiselles to continue prepar-
ing fruit pies or to serve fresh apples, apricots, cherries, pears,
plums, and peaches as desserts.22

Pastry required butter and eggs. Butter’s rise in price more
than doubled that of meat, and eggs outpaced it by 50 percent. But
the culinary imperative prevailed over this economic constraint.
Their respective quantities could not suffer trimming without
compromising the quality of baked desserts at Saint-Cyr, even to
the detriment of the original budget. Hence, their shares increased,
respectively, from about 2.5 to 4.5 and 6 to 8 percent over the cen-
tury. Gourmandise was a privilege that put pressure on the budget.
The incurred expenses affected the costliest item on the institu-
tional shopping list; the most substantial savings derived from cut-
ting back on butchery meat.

22 There is no single accounting instance of Saint-Cyr’s buying such stimulants as tea, cof-
fee, or chocolate. See Stanis Perez, La santé de Louis XIV: une biohistoire du Roi-Soleil (Seyssel,
2007), 232, for Louis XIV’s avoidance of them. Mémoire de ce qui s’observe, fol. 24.

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ANIMAL PROTEIN AND RAT IONAL CH OICE | 445
Fig. 8 Food Expenditures Indices (1703–1788 (cid:2) 100)*

*Moving average (5 leads, 5 lags).
source D246–263, D446–449, D474, Archives Départementales des Yvelines.

This remarkable conºuence of developments regarding meat,
game, sugar, and fruit may have reinvigorated Saint-Cyr’s account-
ing vigilance, which had been reeling from the aforementioned er-
roneous assessments that severely constrained the food budget dur-
ing the late 1730s. The various indices of food expenses throughout
the century suggest that the rising taste for sweets, and for the but-
ter and eggs that complemented it, combined to diminish expenses
for butchery meats. Figure 8 reproduces the secular evolution of
outlays for butchery meat and other food groups. When indices of
game, butter, eggs, sugar, and fruit augment the index for meat,
they do not alter the dynamics of total food expenses, even after the
1740s when the outlays for meat declined. Responding to different
economic cycles, the other groups injected spikes into the long-
term pattern of food expenditures that do not align with its general
form. This additional evidence clinches the point. Meat consump-
tion declined in order to maintain the quantities of butter and eggs
required in a rich cuisine. Furthermore, the reduction in meat con-
sumption favored the epochal shift toward a sweeter diet. The crit-
ical decade between 1765 and 1775 reveals the extent to which the
consumption of meat could fall without compromising the aristo-
cratic canon.

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446 | BRUEGEL, CHEVET, AND LECO CQ
aristocratic consumption: between social anxiety and eco-
nomic pressure The convent school at Saint-Cyr was not just
another old-regime institution in which the nobility indulged its
usual, proºigate mode of living. Analysis of the nobility’s pur-
chases of butchery meat not only opens a window on consump-
tion and consumer behavior in the eighteenth century; it also
reªnes our information on food markets and the strategies that
people deployed to acquire merchandise. The improvement in
factual knowledge yields amendments to conventional wisdom,
particularly in two areas: (1) The inºuence of economic consider-
ation on institutional management is not to be denied. Saint-Cyr’s
accounting stipulations enforced close attention to the food mar-
kets; costs mattered. (2) Management and bookkeeping were far
from myopic; they were forward-looking enterprises. In fact, a
cascade of uncharacteristically ºawed anticipations of revenue dur-
ing the mid-1730s likely helped to convince the administration to
reduce expenses for butchery meat. However, the wave-like ºuc-
tuation in the quantities of butchery meat consumed during the
school’s century-long existence bear no relation to such economic
variables as revenue, food budget, or produce prices. Reactive to
economic variables in the short run, butchery-meat consumption
responded to other considerations in the long run.

Data from Saint-Cyr suggests that a sociology of taste ascribing
ever-greater choice to people as their place on the social pyramid
rises is not entirely accurate. This view neglects the manner in
which social expectation and representation affect everyday con-
duct. Material welfare was not a fail-safe key to freedom of choice
at Saint-Cyr. Creature comfort and the absence of physical depri-
vation did not automatically lead to the satisfaction of whimsical
desires. To be sure, the 250 demoiselles and their 60 caretaking
nuns had access to a diet well beyond the means of most French
people during the eighteenth century. But this population had a
scripted alimentary regime. Veblen’s acerbic description of the so-
cial expectations facing the leisure class captures the salient trait of
life at Saint-Cyr better than Bourdieu’s rosy picture of insouciant
and carefree living at the top of the social pyramid. Butchery meat,
its place on the menu and in the budget, perfectly illustrates the im-
perative of aristocratic self- and social representation during the
school’s 100 years of existence. Rarity and high price transformed

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ANIMAL PROTEIN AND RAT IONAL CH OICE | 447

meat into a prized food, endowing it with special signiªcance. The
consumption of meat meant superiority.23

Aristocratic values compelled Saint-Cyr’s managers never to
purchase quantities of beef, veal, and mutton that undercut their
conventional minimum standard. A shortcoming of available meat
would have undermined the school’s social position and shaken its
pensionnaires’ understanding of themselves as members of the
kingdom’s nobility. The diminution of the school would have illico
presto downgraded its pupils’ honor and compromised their stand-
ing as wives, ladies’ companions, or nuns. The eventual substitu-
tion of game for butchery meat occurred for both material and
symbolic reasons. To the extent that it was meant to compensate
for shrinking purchases of beef and veal, it emphasized the school’s
privileged claim to the products of forests and of hunting. When,
by the mid-1760s, that strategy proved insufªcient, the économe
continued to devote additional money to butchery meat until the
school’s demise.

Saint-Cyr’s aristocratic demeanor never resulted in the conspicu-
ous and wasteful consumption that characterized individual noble
households and apparently occurred with a vengeance at the royal
court in Versailles (the city where Saint-Cyr did much of its shop-
ping). Management responded immediately to price changes of
both meat and wheat to keep quantities constant. The reliance on a
contract to regulate the quality and quantity of meat supplies and
keep commercial vagaries at a distance shows the importance of
calculation and foresight at Saint-Cyr, just as the provisioning with
game responded to short-term changes in the supply of butchery
meat. Such proactive consumer behavior also epitomizes the de-
gree to which this afºuent institution was enmeshed in the market
economy.24

Nonetheless, economy was not the salient issue in the cutback
of butchery meat during the late 1730s. Neither the market nor the
school’s expense account was the engine for dietary change. The
shopping list would have remained the same if Saint-Cyr’s palate

23 Bourdieu, La distinction, 178–180; Thorsten Veblen, The Theory of the Leisure Class (New
York, 1967; orig. pub. 1899), 115–166.
24 For waste at the royal court, see Norbert Elias, Die höªsche Gesellschaft (Frankfurt, 1983),
416–430.

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448 | BRUEGEL, CHEVET, AND LECO CQ

had done so. Nor was the penchant for sugar dependent on the
concomitant expansion of other exotic goods like chocolate, tea,
or coffee in Europe. On the contrary, larger outlays for sugar stim-
ulated an increased purchase of such traditional goods as fruit, but-
ter, and eggs. The pensionnaires’ sweet tooth exerted pressure on
the budget, and butchery meat suffered the consequences.25

The evolution of Saint-Cyr’s provisioning conªrms the im-
portance of economic rationality. Moreover,
in showing that
Saint-Cyr held to an aristocratic standard of meat rationing, this
analysis veriªes sociology’s claim that taxonomies reinforce social
hierarchies. But neither economics nor sociology captures the en-
tire story; in this context, both disciplines fail to predict the com-
position of the institution’s diet in the long run. Economic vari-
food consumption
ables cannot account for the evolution of
because they cannot anticipate changing tastes. Sugar’s growing
importance at Saint-Cyr owed hardly anything to its putative
power to signify distinction (meat, white bread, and variety re-
mained the mainstays so far as status was concerned). It does high-
light, however, a third dimension in this picture of the eighteenth-
century French diet: Technical constraints in the kitchen—recipes,
to be precise—imposed their own demands on the foodstuffs to
buy. The point is so self-evident that contemporary studies easily
overlook it.

25
Sidney Mintz, Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History (New York,
1985), 125–146; Shammas, “English Diet,” 265–266; McCants, “Poor Consumers as Global
Consumers: The Diffusion of Tea and Coffee Drinking in the Eighteenth Century,” Economic
History Review, LXI (2008),172–200.

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ANIMAL PROTEIN AND RAT IONAL CH OICE | 449

Appendix 1. Budget Parts

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450 | BRUEGEL, CHEVET, AND LECO CQ

Appendix 1. (Continued)

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ANIMAL PROTEIN AND RAT IONAL CH OICE | 451

Appendix 1. (Continued)

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3 Journal of Interdisciplinary History, xliv:4 (Spring, 2014), 427–452. image

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