A vantage loaf or vantage of bread is the thirteenth loaf of a baker's dozen, [1] a loaf of bread which is to the buyer's advantage, being in addition to the number ordered. [2]
The 13th-century English law governing trade in bread and ale, known as the Assize of Bread and Ale, imposed severe punishment for short measure. This could be a fine, destruction of the baker's oven, or even the pillory. To protect themselves, bakers would add a small piece of bread to each order, called the "in-bread", to ensure they could not be accused of short measure. For large orders of 12 loaves, this would be a whole extra loaf.
In years of good harvest, a baker could be making more bread than could be sold from the shop. Extra bread was then sold on to middlemen or " hucksters", who would resell it in the streets. Since the price of bread was fixed by law (again by the Assize of Bread and Ale), this was advantageous for both parties: the baker would manage to sell the surplus bread to the huckster, and the huckster would in turn make a profit by selling the vantage loaf, the 13th loaf gotten free. [3]
Origin
The term appears in Randle Cotgrave's A Dictionarie of the French and English Tongues (1611), translated from the old French "trezain":
Trezain: m. A thirteenth; whence;
Le trezain du pain. Vantage of bread; the thirteenth loafe given by Bakers unto the dozen.— Randle Cotgrave, A Dictionarie of the French and English Tongues (1611), page 928
References
- ^ Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable. London: Cassel and Co. 2000. pp. 1227. ISBN 0304350966.
- ^ "Vantage loaf - Oxford Reference". 2010. doi: 10.1093/acref/9780199829941.001.0001. ISBN 9780199829941. Retrieved 2018-09-06.
- ^ Darra Goldstein, Sidney Mintz (2015). The Oxford Companion to Sugar and Sweets. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0199313624.
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