“Lenten fare” denotes foodstuffs for which no fasting or abstinence rules prohibit consumption on obligatory church fast days. During the late Middle Ages, church fasting rules forbade the consumption of the meat of warm-blooded animals and their products (milk, cheese, butter, lard, eggs) on more than 150 days of the year. Unlike in the Greek Orthodox Church, however, these rules were eased from the 15th century by the issue of papal or episcopal dispensations (in Germany called Butterbriefe, “butter letters”). These sporadically permitted the consumption on certain fast days of m…