"The Medieval Cook" by Lady Jehanne de Huguenin.
NOTE: See also the files: p-cooks-msg, p-menus-msg, headcooks-msg, Fst-Menus-art, feast-serving-msg, kitchen-clean-msg, camp-kitchens-msg.
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NOTICE -
This article was submitted to me by the author for inclusion in this set
of files, called Stefan's Florilegium.
These files are available on the Internet at:
Copyright to the contents of this file remains with the author.
While the author will likely give permission for this work to be
reprinted in SCA type publications, please check with the author first
or check for any permissions granted at the end of this file.
Thank you,
Mark S. Harris
AKA: Stefan li Rous
stefan at florilegium.org
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Originally published in August, AS 34 in "Storm Tidings", the newsletter for the Shire of Adamastor in Cape Town, South Africa.
(http://users.iafrica.com/m/me/melisant/stidings.htm)
The Medieval Cook
by Lady Jehanne de Huguenin
The 10th August is the feast of Saint Laurence, a Spanish deacon supposedly
martyred at Rome in 258 by being roasted on a gridiron. In the somewhat
obscure and slightly sadistic fashion of medieval associations, Saint
Laurence has become the patron saint of grilling, baking and cooking
generally, and hence of cooks. We have also just passed the feast of Saint
Martha, also a patron of cooks, on 29th July. In honour of these
feast-days, a feast of cooking notes for you!
The cook must be cleanly both in body and garments. She must have a quick
eye, a curious nose, a perfect taste, and a ready ear; and she must not be
butter-fingered, sweet-toothed, nor faint-hearted. For the first will let
everything fall; the second will consume what it should increase; and the
last will lose time with too much niceness.Ó
Gervase Markham, The English Huswife, 1683.
(An ideal for the Guild to aspire to!)
A COOK they hadde with hem for the nones
To boille the chiknes with the marybones,
And poudre-marchant tart and galyngale.
Wel koude he knowe a draughte of Loundoun ale.
He koude rooste, and sethe, and broille, and frye,
Maken mortreux, and wel bake a pye...
... For blankmanger, that made he with the beste
Geoffrey Chaucer, the General Prologue to The Canterbury Tales
...Woe was his cook but if his sauce were
Poynaunt and sharp, and redy al his geere.
Geoffrey Chaucer, the General Prologue to The Canterbury Tales
First you need a clerk or varlet to shop for the green herb, violet,
bread-crumbs, milk, cheese, eggs, fire-wood, coal, salt, vats and tubs for
the dining-room as well as for the pantry, verjuice, vinegar, sorrel, sage,
parsley, fresh garlic, two brooms, shovel and such small things.
Item, a cook and his varlets who will cost two francs to hire, without
their other rights, but the cook will pay the varlets and porters, and as
they say: the more bowls, the more to hire.
Item, two bread-slicers, of whom one will crumb the bread and make
trenchers and salt-cellars out of bread, and will carry the salt and the
bread and the trenchers to the tables, and will provide for the dining-room
two or three strainers for the solid leftovers such as sops, broken breads,
trenchers, meats and such things: and two buckets for soups, sauces and
liquid things.
Item, you need one or two water-carriers.
Item, big strong sergeants to guard the door.
Menagier de Paris, tr. Janet Hinson.
(This is a fourteenth century French text in which a wealthy merchant
instructs his young wife in household matters. I rather like the need for
kitchen bouncers!)
... [the] Chief Cook should have supplied and dispensed to him, quickly,
fully, generously and cheerfully, anything he may ask for or that may be
necessary for his lord or lady, or for the both of them, so that he may
serve them as he should.
Maitre Chiquart, Du Fait de Cuisine, 1420 Savoyard treatise.
(The above serves well as an admonition to Shires on how they should treat
their cooks!)
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Copyright 1999 by Lady Jehanne de Huguenin, jessica at beattie.uct.ac.za, P O Box 443, Rondebosch 7701, Cape Town, South Africa. Permission is granted for republication in SCA-related publications, provided the author is credited and receives a copy.
If this article is reprinted in a publication, I would appreciate a notice in
the publication that you found this article in the Florilegium. I would also
appreciate an email to myself, so that I can track which articles are being
reprinted. Thanks. -Stefan.
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