Definition
In old English law, a term of art describing dairy and egg products collectively: milk, butter, cheese, eggs, and any preparation or composition made from them. The phrase was a recognized category in historical English legal usage, particularly in the context of tithes, customary rents, and manorial obligations, where distinguishing categories of agricultural produce had practical legal consequence.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Plural of "white meat" — in contemporary usage, poultry flesh (especially chicken and turkey breast) or, more broadly, light-colored animal flesh as distinguished from red meat.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): "White meat" referred to food made from milk and dairy products, or alternatively to the flesh of poultry and veal.
The gap here is significant and runs in two directions. First, the legal term refers to dairy and egg products — not flesh of any kind — making it closer to what a modern speaker would call "dairy" than anything associated with "meat" today. Second, even within historical common usage, Webster's 1913 preserved both the dairy sense and the poultry sense as competing meanings. The legal term is exclusively the dairy-and-eggs sense. A researcher encountering "white meats" in a legal instrument, tithe record, or manorial document should not import any modern flesh-based meaning.
Common Confusion
The modern reader's instinct — that "white meats" means poultry or pale animal flesh — is incorrect in the legal historical context. The term belongs to a pre-industrial agricultural vocabulary in which dairy produce was classified separately from flesh meats ("black meats" or simply "flesh"), grain, and other categories for purposes of tithe assessment, customary dues, and estate accounts. Confusion with the modern dietary sense of "white meat" will systematically misread historical legal documents.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers will encounter "white meats" almost exclusively in historical English legal materials: tithe disputes, ecclesiastical court records, manorial surveys, agricultural leases, and estate instruments from the medieval period through the eighteenth century. The term carries specific weight in tithe law, where the obligation to pay tithes on white meats — and the customs governing whether such tithes were due in kind or commuted — generated substantial ecclesiastical litigation. Understanding that "white meats" is a defined category of goods (dairy and eggs), not a vague description of color or flesh type, is essential to reading these documents accurately.
The term also appears in proximity to related vocabulary — "white tithes," "white rents," and "white spurs" — that share the "white" prefix but carry entirely distinct meanings. Rapalje & Lawrence consolidates several of these terms in adjacent entries, which is useful context: white rents (payments in silver coin), white tithes (a related but distinct tithe category), and white spurs (a rank of esquire) are not synonymous with white meats and should not be conflated simply because they share the modifier.
Because the term is obsolete in modern legal usage, it will not appear in contemporary statutes, regulations, or case law. Corpus searches should be directed at historical English sources: ecclesiastical records, Cowell's Interpreter (the authority cited by all three source dictionaries), Blackstone, and early chancery or common law reports involving tithe and manorial disputes.
Historical Dictionary Support
All three source dictionaries — Black's (1st ed.), Black's (2nd ed.), and Rapalje & Lawrence — give substantially identical definitions and cite the same authority: Cowell's Interpreter. The consistency across sources reflects that this was a settled, if narrow, term of art with a fixed meaning rather than a contested concept. None of the dictionaries elaborate beyond the list of goods (milk, butter, cheese, eggs, and compositions thereof), which suggests the term functioned as a practical classificatory label rather than a legal concept with developed doctrinal content.
What historical dictionaries do not address is the procedural and jurisdictional context in which "white meats" most commonly appeared — namely, ecclesiastical tithe disputes and the customs that varied by parish and manor as to whether white meats were titheable and at what rate. Researchers needing that context should look beyond the dictionaries to tithe law treatises and ecclesiastical court records.
Jurisdictional Note
This term is specific to old English law and has no recognized equivalent or survival in American, Scottish, or other common law jurisdictions. It is a term for historical English legal research only.