rec-in-verse-msg –2/2/07
Period recipes written down in a verse format.
NOTE: See also the files: redacting-msg, Redacting-art, easy-p-recip-msg, poetry-msg, poems-msg.
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This file is part of a collection of files called Stefan's Florilegium. These files are available on the Internet at: http://www.florilegium.org
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Stefan at florilegium.org
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Date: Tue, 11 Jul 2000 19:28:59 -0400
From: Philip & Susan Troy <troy at asan.com>
Subject: Re: SC - verse and vice
Robin Carroll-Mann wrote:
> And it came to pass on 11 Jul 00,, that Jeff Gedney wrote:
> > Sir Gunthar, you are not approving of such antics are you?
> > next thing you know there'll be a period Recipe Haiku contest!
>
> Recently, on rec.food.historic, there *was* a thread on rhyming recipes.
> The ones I saw quoted were 18th or 19th century. I have a vague notion
> that there were some done in period...
Yeah, I saw that too. How about the approximately 60 recipes in the
15th-centuy English Liber Cure Cocorum? I'm still working on getting
scans of the 1862 edition turned into text files, but all of them are in verse.
Adamantius
Date: Wed, 24 Dec 2003 11:12:30 -0800
From: Susan Fox-Davis <selene at earthlink.net>
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Re: recipes in verse - OOP?
To: Cooks within the SCA <sca-cooks at ansteorra.org>
On 12/23/03 7:32 PM, "Devra at aol.com" <Devra at aol.com> wrote:
> In the version of 'Cyrano de Bergerac' by Rostand that I read in high
> school (we are speaking of many many moons ago, before there were rocks to be
> soft) there was a pastry cook who recited his opus...a recipe for almond
> tarts, in verse.....
> Devra (no, I don't remember which translation I read - actually there
> were two, and one had a great recipe and the other was...much less
> inspiring to a cook.....)
Act II http://www.tonykline.free-online.co.uk/Cyranoact2.htm
Selene C.
Date: Fri, 4 Mar 2005 11:20:21 -0500
From: Daniel Myers <edouard at medievalcookery.com>
Subject: R: [Sca-cooks] Documentation Help
To: Cooks within the SCA <sca-cooks at ansteorra.org>
On Mar 4, 2005, at 10:22 AM, Wildecelery at aolcom wrote:
> So...Ardenia is working on documenting her entries for Laurel's Prize
> and Northern Lights....
>
> Does anyone have suggestions on possible sources to prove that some
> basic cooking tasks and/or recipes were often put to poerty or simple
>song for ease of remembrance...I've heard it somewhere...but I'm
> hitting a brick wall in my search.
Liber cure cocorum (ca. 1430) is a cookbook that is entirely in verse.
I doubt if it was meant to make it easier to remember, but you never
know.
Thoma Gloning has the text available on the web at the following URL:
http://staff-www.uni-marburg.de/~gloning/lcc3.htm
- Doc
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Edouard Halidai (Daniel Myers)
http://www.medievalcookery.com/
Date: Fri, 4 Mar 2005 12:17:24 -0500
From: Daniel Myers <edouard at medievalcookery.com>
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Documentation Help
To: Cooks within the SCA <sca-cooks at ansteorra.org>
On Mar 4, 2005, at 11:25 AM, Phlip wrote:
> I think she might be referring to the tendency of some recipes to use
> prayers for timing different processes.
Ah, missed that. Her saying "for ease of remembrance" made me think
she meant memorizing the recipe or technique.
I knew I'd seen at leat one instance of this, and after a brief search
I found it.
From: Libro di cucina/ Libro per cuoco, Louise Smithson, (trans.)
http://www.geocities.com/helewyse/libro.html
CXXVII To candy fresh almonds, peaches, walnuts that are perfect,
neither too hrd nor too soft etc.
Take the said items, peel them and put holes in them, the walnuts want
six holes each, the peach pits six, the almonds four. These should be
put in water, the water should be changed every day until the nuts are
sweet, then boil themin water, the walnuts should be boiled for half
an hour, the peach pits and almonds from when they start to boil for a
quarter of an hour. Then put them to dry in the shade and in the wind
in a fruit basket under a lattice for three days, the peach pis ad the
almonds for two. Then fill each hole with gloves, cinnamon and
ginger. Then let them boil in honey for the time it takes to recite
six ÒOur FathersÓ. Take them out of this honey and boil them in fresh
honey until that honey is cooked. Then powde fine spices above the
honey and put them in a closed pharmacy pot in the sun for the space of
five days. The peach pits should be made the same way except that they
should be boiled in the first honey until it is cooked, there is no
need to change them o fresh. Note that the almonds will not last past
the middle of April in a hot location, because their skin will become
too hard.
- Doc
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Edouard Halidai (Daniel Myers)
Date: Fri, 4 Mar 2005 15:49:36 -0500
From: Barbara Benson <voxeight at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Re: Documentation help
To: Cooks within the SCA <sca-cooks at ansteorra.org>
I am afraid that you might run into difficulties there for the
following reason. These rhyming recipies, taught by mother to
daughter, were created to pass down information to those that could
not read. It was a way of passing on information by those who were not
literate. So, I believe that it will be very difficult to find written
documentation of items such as this:
1 cup of sugar, 1 cup of milk.
2 eggs beaten as fine as silk;
Salt and nutmeg, lemon will do,
Baking Powder teaspoons two;
Lightly stir the flour in,
Roll on pie-board, not too thin.
Drop with care the doughy things
Into the fat that briskly swells
Evenly the spongy cells.
Watch with care the time for turning,
Fry them brown just short of burning.
Roll in sugar, serve them cool
Price a quarter for this rule.
Lucretia Allyn Gurney, Oregon, 1851
Most of our written culinary manuscripts reflect the upper levels of
whatever society they were written for, and such rhyming verses are
found in the lower classes.
With that being said, I do have a link to a 16th century poem written
by Thomas Tusser: http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/%7Erbear/tusser1.html
It is 100 Good pointes of husbandrie, about gardening and household
management - not cooking.
Glad Tidings,
--Serena da Riva
> 1) I was actually asking about writing in verse.
>
> 2) Any ideas on possible sources that might qualify as pre 15th
> Century?
>
> -Ardenia
Date: Thu, 14 Dec 2006 01:02:14 -0500
From: "Stephanie Ross" <hlaislinn at earthlink.net>
Subject: [Sca-cooks] Liber cure cocorum
To: "Sca-cooks" <sca-cooks at lists.ansteorra.org>
For freture. With egges and floure in batere thou make, Put berme
ther to, I undertake. Coloure hit with safrone er thou more do. Take
powder of peper and cast ther to, Kerve appuls overtwert and cast
therin, Frye hom in grece, no more ne mynne. [Liber cure cocorum]
Does this whole manuscript rhyme like this? How bizarre.
Aislinn/AEscwynn
Date: Thu, 14 Dec 2006 00:32:08 -0600 (CST)
From: "Sydney Walker Freedman" <freedmas at stolaf.edu>
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Liber cure cocorum
To: hlaislinn at earthlink.net, "Cooks within the SCA"
<sca-cooks at lists.ansteorra.org>
Yes, it does. Recipes and health regimens in verse were common in the
middle ages.
> For freture. With egges and floure in batere thou make, Put berme
> ther to, I undertake. Coloure hit with safrone er thou more do. Take
> powder of peper and cast ther to, Kerve appuls overtwert and cast
> therin, Frye hom in grece, no more ne mynne. [Liber cure cocorum]
>
> Does this whole manuscript rhyme like this? How bizarre.
>
> Aislinn/AEscwynn
Date: Thu, 14 Dec 2006 06:09:01 -0500
From: "Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius" <adamantius1 at verizon.net>
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Liber cure cocorum
To: hlaislinn at earthlink.net, Cooks within the SCA
<sca-cooks at lists.ansteorra.org>
On Dec 14, 2006, at 1:02 AM, Stephanie Ross wrote:
> For freture. With egges and floure in batere thou make, Put berme
> ther to, I undertake. Coloure hit with safrone er thou more do. Take
> powder of peper and cast ther to, Kerve appuls overtwert and cast
> therin, Frye hom in grece, no more ne mynne. [Liber cure cocorum]
>
> Does this whole manuscript rhyme like this? How bizarre.
Yes, it does. You can find the whole thing here:
http://www.pbm.com/~lindahl/lcc/
I'm not sure how many other recipe collections, if any, are in
English verse; I seem to recall a version of The Babees Booke in
verse, which deals rather peripherally with food, but isn't a recipe
book. I also think there's an al Baghdadi variant in verse.
Adamantius
Date: Thu, 14 Dec 2006 10:12:56 -0500
From: Cindy Renfrow <cindy at thousandeggs.com>
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Liber cure cocorum
To: Cooks within the SCA <sca-cooks at lists.ansteorra.org>
On Dec 14, 2006, at 6:09 AM, Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius wrote:
> I'm not sure how many other recipe collections, if any, are in
> English verse; I seem to recall a version of The Babees Booke in
> verse, which deals rather peripherally with food, but isn't a recipe
> book. I also think there's an al Baghdadi variant in verse.
>
> Adamantius
Yes, this entire section of Sloane MS 1986 rhymes. As Adamantius points
out, sections of the Babees Book rhymes too. However, the Boke of
Curtasye (included in the Babees Book by Furnivall, p. 297-327) is
actually part of the same manuscript! Liber Cure Cocorum continues
*uninterrupted* from the Boke of Curtasye. The scribe writes (my
translation):
Now speak I will a little more
Of craft, truly, that takes great lore
In court; that men call cookery?
He then goes on to list over 120 recipes in verse. The verse, I
believe, was intended as a mnemonic device for a professional cook who
already knew how to make all these standard dishes. The scribe mangles
a few of them quite badly to force his rhyme scheme, i.e. leaving out
ingredients & steps. So it's prudent to find the same recipe in another
collection and compare the two. Many of these recipes, unrhymed, can be
found in A Noble Book of Cokery for a Prince's Household, Holkham MS.
674. this can be found in Duke Cariadoc's Miscellany, IIRC.
I've got the new transcription and translation from the original Sloan
manuscript 1986 finished, BTW. I'm just held up on dotting the i's and
crossing the t's. It should be available online soon.
Cindy Renfrow
www.thousandeggs.com
Date: Thu, 14 Dec 2006 10:52:38 EST
From: Devra at aol.com
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] rhyming recipes
To: sca-cooks at lists.ansteorra.org
Well, it's rather late, but in Rostand's 'Cyrano de Bergerac', there is a
pastry cook who writes his recipes in verse he recites one for almond tarts as
part of the play...
Devra
<the end>