In this week’s Matter of Great Import, Tom notes that hobbits seem unimpressed by pats of butter but think slabs of butter are fine, and wonders how much it actually takes to satisfy a hobbit. The Tolkien Professor himself weighed in with a citation from The Hobbit.
@alas_not_me Re: your blog post — We also have Gandalf at Beorn’s house, who “had eaten two whole loaves (with masses of butter and honey and clotted cream).” So is a Mass larger than a Slab?
— Tolkien Professor (@tolkienprof) September 27, 2018
On a matter of this weight, I consulted with my mother-in-law. She grew up on a subsistence farm about the time JRRT started writing The Hobbit. (As I have remarked elsewhere, rural Virginia might be closer to the Shire than any other place you can visit now.) She says her mother’s round butter mold held a pound. After the butter sat out for a while with people cutting pieces off, the word “mass” is about the most specific shape-name you’d care to give it. We can assume Beorn had a rather larger mold.
A butter slab. Source.
A “slab”, though, is not a unit of measure – it’s how butter was presented commercially for sale. Human-sized slabs held a few pounds, from which pats were cut. Barliman, knowing how hobbits are, apparently just brought out the whole slab when they called for a meal.
A “pat” is one tsp to 1/2 tbsp, which is an amount that’s not even big enough to mark on the paper wrapping of modern sticks. Poor Pippin’s pathetic pat paints a picture of the penury of the Pelennor, opposed to plenty at the Prancing Pony.
In answer to the specific question, I’d have to say that the amount of butter a hobbit would deem adequate is non-linear. It appears to be a couple of pounds, regardless of how many hobbits are eating, plus another couple of pounds for the Wizard.
Jeff Snider
For reference, this ’20s English butter box is over 2 cu ft., which is over 50 lbs of butter. It has a hasp and loop for a lock, because butter thieves walk on quiet feet
http://www.onlinegalleries.com/art-and-antiques/detail/vintage-butter-storage-box/83209
Joe
I pity the fool who tries to steal a butter-box from Beorn.
Revenant
A butter pat is not 1tsp to 1/2 tbsp!
A butter pat is the wooden paddle with a pair of which a “slab” of butter is shaped and after which the slab is named. A typical domestic butter pat would produce a small slab much the size of a modern British pack of butter, which is sold as 250g or about 8oz / half a pound. Commercial dairies may have used larger pats in the same way that catering suppliers will sell bigger blocks of butter or, god forbid, tubs of margarine, but I suspect most were similar in size because the retail market was the intended sale. The pat would be stored in a butter dish with a lid and these have not changed size since Victorian times. Butter has a pre-metric soul!
I have my grandmother’s butter pats somewhere, if I can find them I can send a picture.
As a Devonian (a very buttery part of Britain), we keep several pats in the fridge at any one time and we probably get through one every couple of days, for a family of four. The rural table would have used a lot of butter. For example buttered crumpets need a good slice, maybe 2-4mm thick, placed on tip to melt; toast should be buttered so that the butter is a distinct stratum on top, not just an absorbed monolayer; potatoes love a knob of butter at least a teaspoon size per potato etc.
Joe
Today I Learned. I can find photos of the paddles you mention, but otherwise the Internet is sadly deficient in its expertise on Devonian dairy practices. (I can’t find any instructions on how to milk a trilobite.) Given that the context was “very inadequate pat of butter”, it seemed like the modern US usage makes the sentence read better.
This is what I love about Tolkien fandom — where else can one talk about buttering things, switch rapidly from geological latinisms to materials-science imagery, and know that the readers will have no trouble following?