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In modern society, where anyone in theory can make money, it is difficult to appreciate that once upon a time wealth was tied absolutely to social class, and therefore social class determined what you ate, even to the extent of determining the type of pastry making up your pie. Farming and household manuals of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries clearly instructed that the piecrust for the master's family be made from the finest wheat flour, whereas for the servants' piecrust the second milling of wheat or barley was to be used, or maslin (a mix of wheat and rye) or rye.
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