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 “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.