p-cooks-msg – 7/16/06
Comments and information on specific period cooks.
NOTE: See also the files: p-kitchens-msg, p-tableware-msg, p-menus-msg, utensils-msg, pottery-msg, Kentwell-Hall-art, cook-ovr-fire-msg.
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NOTICE -
This file is a collection of various messages having a common theme that I have collected from my reading of the various computer networks. Some messages date back to 1989, some may be as recent as yesterday.
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
I have done a limited amount of editing. Messages having to do with separate topics were sometimes split into different files and sometimes extraneous information was removed. For instance, the message IDs were removed to save space and remove clutter.
The comments made in these messages are not necessarily my viewpoints. I make no claims as to the accuracy of the information given by the individual authors.
Please respect the time and efforts of those who have written these messages. The copyright status of these messages is unclear at this time. If information is published from these messages, please give credit to the originator(s).
Thank you,
Mark S. Harris AKA: THLord Stefan li Rous
Stefan at florilegium.org
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Date: Fri, 15 Jan 1999 14:37:36 -0500
From: Philip & Susan Troy <troy at asan.com>
Subject: Re: SC - Who Were Those Guys?
THLRenata at aol.com wrote:
> Does anyone have any biographical data on Sabina Welserin, John Murrell,
> Thomas Dawson, Sir Hugh Plat and the countless less others I'm forgetting?
See Eric Quayle's "Old Cook Books: An Illustrated History" 1978 Eric
Quayle, Pub. E.P. Dutton, NewYork
ISBN: 0-87690-283-2 for a chapter on Hugh Plat. There may be other
useful information for you in this book.
As for Le Menagier, I was under the impression we really had little
proof one way or t'other as to who he was, let alone any biographical
details. There's been some speculation, based on some tantalizing
textual references, that he was of the emergent middle class, well-to-do
but not really noble, possibly a clerk of some kind.
Adamantius
stgardr, East
Date: Fri, 15 Jan 1999 12:44:51 -0800
From: david friedman <ddfr at best.com>
Subject: Re: SC - Who Were Those Guys?
At 12:58 PM -0500 1/15/99, THLRenata at aol.com wrote:
>I'm thinking about an article for my baronial newsletter about the cooks of
>our period (or close) whose cookbooks we still use.
>
>I have info on Tallevent (sorry about the spelling -- I'm at work and the
>books are at home), the Goodman of Paris and Chiquart (sp), and Eleanor
>Fettiplace.
>
>Does anyone have any biographical data on Sabina Welserin, John Murrell,
>Thomas Dawson, Sir Hugh Plat and the countless less others I'm forgetting?
Digby was moderately famous, and you should be able to find biographical
information on him fairly easily. I believe his library was the start for
the current library at either Oxford or Cambridge.
David/Cariadoc
Date: Fri, 15 Jan 1999 14:49:33 -0700 (MST)
From: Mary Morman <memorman at oldcolo.com>
Subject: Re: SC - Who Were Those Guys?
There is a lot of biographical info on Digby in the new Prospect Press
edition of his "closet openeed".
Elaina
Date: Thu, 28 Jan 1999 07:11:06 -0500
From: Philip & Susan Troy <troy at asan.com>
Subject: Re: SC - When Were Those Guys?
James Gilly / Alasdair mac Iain wrote:
> I'd appreciate it if someone could quickly give me approximate dates for
> the following:
>
> Chiquart
events described occurred ~1405, written ~1425, IIRC
> Taillevent
1379 C.E.
> Apicius
More than one person by that name, probably late 1st, early second
century C.E.
> Platina
1475 C.E.
> Sabina Welserin
Insufficient caffeine. Press any key to continue. (16th century???)
> Elinor Fettiplace
~1580 - 1605 C.E.
> Le Managier
~1390 C.E.
> Sir Kenelm Digbie
published posthumously, 1669 C.E., presumably written _pre_ posthumously...
> *Das Buoch von Guter Speise* (and is there an author's name
> to go with that?)
Anonymous, AFAIK. 1st half 14th century C.E., ~1325.
Adamantius
stgardr, East
Date: Thu, 28 Jan 1999 07:11:43 -0600
From: "Decker, Terry D." <TerryD at Health.State.OK.US>
Subject: RE: SC - When Were Those Guys?
> > Sabina Welserin
> Insufficient caffeine. Press any key to continue. (16th century???)
>
1553, according to the cover of Valoise Armstrong's translation.
Sabina was a member of one of "commercial nobility" of Augsburg, the
Fuggers, the Welsers and the Hochstetters. The three families were
international mercantile bankers and venture capitalists.
Bear
Date: Wed, 3 Feb 1999 14:41:33 -0800
From: david friedman <ddfr at best.com>
Subject: Re: SC - Did medieval cooks read Apicus?
At 11:39 AM -0500 1/22/99, Philip & Susan Troy wrote:
>I think it's pretty likely that most cooks knew, to some extent by
>heart, the dishes taught them by whoever taught them the craft, and not
>much else in the area of cookbooks. There may even have been the
>rationale that one wouldn't need cookbooks if one had cooks to figure
>out all that stuff.
>
>Adamantius
Master Chiquart, who was the chief cook of the Duke of Savoy in the early
15th c., says explicitly that he has never read a cookbook--and given how
different in style his book is from all others, I believe it. However, many
of his dishes are the same that you see elsewhere--he just takes five times
as many words to describe them.
Elizabeth/Betty Cook
Date: Thu, 4 Feb 1999 21:39:28 EST
From: LrdRas at aol.com
Subject: SC - Medieval writing styles
memorman at oldcolo.com writes:
<< I was reading CHiquart last night looking
for a quote and realized what a verbose and downright pompous fellow he
was! I can well believe from his writing that he never read a book at
all!
Elaina >>
A quick glance at a few of my books dating from the Victorian era back,
clearly shows that verbose and pompous writing was , in fact, the sign of a
good writer. IMO, Chiquart clearly shows hinself to be a man of learning in
his writings as opposed to those who set down works like Ancient cookery and
FoC on parchement. It is not until; we get into this century that simplistic
writing styles break any ground and in recent years writers have become so
simplistic and inane that there are few, if any, works worth reading at all.
Ras
Date: Sat, 6 Feb 1999 08:33:10 SAST-2
From: "Christina VAN TETS" <ivantets at botzoo.uct.ac.za>
Subject: SC - Henry Peacham
Ras, I think perhaps you misunderstood the use of the Henry Peacham
extracts. Although they were published in the 1620s and 30s, he
wrote them originally for his charges (he was a tutor). Now if I
had written something for an individual, I think I'd wait a decent
interval before publishing it for all and sundry, purely as
politeness. Judging by the rest of his writing, I think he'd
probably feel much the same way. In addition, he was writing when
fairly old (oh, 37?) about what the continent was like in his youth.
Since his youth he had worked as tutor, and so his charges would have
known the continent too and this stuff would have been unnecessary.
To my mind, then, he was writing of things fairly close to our cut
off date, and could presumably be used (if no earlier, better
description exists) of an Englishman's impressions of French habits
in late period. Sure it doesn't give you mediaeval, but the the SCA
isn't just 'mediaeval'.
Cairistiona
Date: Sun, 14 Feb 1999 09:45:24 -0500
From: Philip & Susan Troy <troy at asan.com>
Subject: Re: SC - Nobles and cooking?
david friedman wrote:
> Which raises an interesting question--was cooking seen as something that
> noblewomen wouldn't dirty their hand with in period? Or was it assumed that
> since part of their job was running a household, they ought to know how it
> was done from the ground up?
I think this is the eternal problem with all forms of upper
management...can Bill Gates actually program (it's debatable whether any
of his employees can), or can the CEO of General Motors actually build a
car?
Certainly there are examples of middle-to-high ranking women who at
least had to supervise others in their service. Both le Menagier's wife
and the women mentioned in the Domestroi appear to be supervising cooks
at times, and then you have people like Elinor Fettiplace (the wife of a
country knight), who was familiar enough with cookery to record a book
of receipts for her progeny, even if she didn't actually do most of the
cooking, although her familiarity with the finer points suggests she may
have been an integral part of kitchen activities.
As to whether Eleanor of Aquitaine had a mean recipe for cuskynoles,
there's no evidence I'm aware of to suggest this is or isn't the case,
but I believe the involvement of very-high-ranking ladies in projects
requiring needlework, for example, even when they didn't do it alone,
suggests to me it's possible such a lady might have been familiar enough
with cookery to discuss an intelligent menu with the steward. This isn't
hard evidence, of course. It actually seems fairly likely to me that
someone like Maud/Mathilde, wife of William the Conqueror, who went from
being the wife of a bastard Duke to being Queen of England, probably
didn't forget how to make a hot posset for William in the interim after
a hard day of oppressing Saxons.
> So far as al-Islam is concerned, I think it is clear that high ranking men
> did take an interest in cooking, whether or not they did it themselves. At
> least, there are surviving recipes attributed to Ibrahim ibn al Mahdi, who
> was a close relative of several caliphs and himself an unsuccessful
> claimant to the caliphate at one point. And I believe one of the cookbooks
> in the 10th c. collection is attributed to one of the Barmakids, the family
> that served as viziers for al-Rashid until he turned on them.
Yes, there seems to be a class of gentleman gourmets in al-Islam. I
wonder if their legacy of cookery texts might be the result of their
literacy...not that women couldn't have written or dictated, but I'm put
in mind of the Chinese food poetry and recipes written down by men (not
always high-ranking in a political or social sense, but realtively
well-known to us). Many of them were artists of various types (Su Tung
Po, Li Po, Ni Tsan, to name a few) who either developed a taste for fine
foods in the patronage of the wealthy, in contrast to the cooking in
various cookshops, high and low, or developed some skill in cookery
because they couldn't afford to have someone else do it for them.
Fortunes change rapidly, but a good recipe for stuffed carp is eternal.
The Chinese gourmet artists seem to be rather similar to some Roman
poets like Martial and Juvenal.
Adamantius
Date: Sat, 20 Feb 1999 19:56:28 -0800
From: varmstro at zipcon.net (Valoise Armstrong)
Subject: Re: SC - SC German Herbs, Spices, and Ingredients (long)
Adamantius wrote
>I was thinking that there's a big change between Ein Buoch Von Guter
>Spise (early 14th century) and Sabina Welserin's kochbuch (mid 16th),
Yes, exactly. There is a definite change to what we would perceive today as
German, even though there a many dishes that appear to be carried over from
an earlier time.
>Now, one might be able to argue
>(and this is something I haven't researched sufficiently) that the
>former source is more like court cookery, while the latter is more
>wealthy but bourgoise, along the lines of Le Menagier. My point is only
>that the differences I see might be the result of comparing apples and
>oranges. Can anyone address that one?
When I first looked at Sabina Welserin I thought it would be a clear case
of bourgoisie vs. court cooking. But then I started researching the Welsers
and found that this was not an average merchant family. by any means. In
the first half of the 16th they financed a colony in the Carribean and
obtained the rights to colonize Venezuela as a reward for bankrolling some
of the Hapsburgs activities. As a matter of fact, Phillipine Welser married
a Hapsburg who became the Archduke of Tyrol.
There is also the problem of the recipe for a sauce thickened with a roux
that appears in Sabina's book. Not a distinctly German idea, but definitely
a modern and not medieval method.
Nice puzzle to unravel.
Valoise
Date: Thu, 15 Apr 1999 12:03:32 -0400
From: Philip & Susan Troy <troy at asan.com>
Subject: Re: SC - Cook's Knight Out?
Vicki Eldredge wrote:
> There was a cook/chef that was knighted for his culinary talents? Remember
> that discussion? Who was that? When did it happen?
Sieur Guillaume Tirel, dit Taillevent, 14th century...
Adamantius
Date: Thu, 30 Dec 1999 01:14:34 +0100
From: Thomas Gloning <Thomas.Gloning at germanistik.uni-giessen.de>
Subject: SC - Marx Rumpolt, was: Information access / Hungarian cuisine
As far as I know, the name of Marx Rumpolt is "Marx Rumpolt" :-}
The form "Marxen" was used as a dative and accusative case form (given
names were inflected at times).
"Marx" is a common given name around 1600, another wellknown Marx is
Marx Welser from Augsburg who wrote a chronicle of Augsburg and who
first edited the book of falconry of Frederick II. (Reliqua librorum
Friderici II. imperatoris ..., Augsburg 1596).
Other (German) people called our author "Marx Rumpolt" (and not Rumpolt
Marx), e.g. the people of the imperial chancery of Rudolf II. in the
privilegium against the reprint of Rumpolt's cookbook. Rumpolt himself
signed the preface: "Marx Rumpolt/ Churf. Meintzischer Mundtkoch".
Concerning Rumpolt's biography, there is a further, though minor detail
in his preface: his ancestors lived in the little Walachei:
"Denn weil ich ein geborner Vnger/ vnd aber der grausam Wtricht vnnd
Erbfeindt Christliches Namens/ der Trck/ nach dem er meine Voreltern
von Landt vnd Leuten vertrieben/ das vnsere/ so in klein Walachey
gelegen/ bi auff den heutigen Tag jnnen hat/ auch vns nach Leib vnd
Leben trachtet/ Als hab ich mich von Jugendt auff vnter frembden mssen
erhalten/ darauff geflissen vnd bedacht seyn/ wie ich heut oder morgen
meinen vnterhalt vnnd aukommen haben mchte. Hab derwegen von einem
Land in dz ander/ meiner notturfft/ vnd der Herren/ so ich gedienet/
Geschffte halben/ verreisen mssen/ also/ da ich einer Sprach nach
notturfft nicht hab obligen knnen".
Rumpolt says here that he is a native Hungarian, that his ancestors were
expelled by the turkish invasion from the little Walachei and that the
possession of his family was lost this way, therefore he had to look for
work and money in several different countries.
All this is meant as an _excuse_ for the fact that he could not learn
languages. Rumpolt says that he describes dishes "so viel ich mit
eygener Handt gemachet" ('that I prepared with my own hands').
It seems to me (please correct me if I am wrong) that a background for
Rumpolt's excuse might be different ways of producing a cookbook:
(a) compiling a cookbook from other sources (thereby using knowledge of
foreign languages);
(b) producing a cookbook by describing the dishes that one has prepared
oneself (using one's experience as an international chef).
Thomas
Date: Thu, 01 Jun 2000 03:03:34 +0200
From: Thomas Gloning <gloning at Mailer.Uni-Marburg.DE>
Subject: SC - Symeon Seth (11thC) on foodstuffs. What else?
Recently, Phlip mentioned that someone was preparing a translation of
Symeon Seth based on a French version (Brunet 1939). Symeon Seth was an
important 11th century byzantine writer on dietetics and foodstuffs.
Yesterday, I got an interesting, if somewhat obscure booklet by
"Gymnasialrektor Dr. Georg Helmreich", entitled "Handschriftliche
Studien zu Symeon Seth" ('Manuscript investigations about Symeon Seth';
Ansbach 1913). In the first place, Helmreich criticizes the edition of
Langkavel (1868) in various respects; he says that the older editions
are still valuable, especially the Bogdanus edition Paris 1658.
According to Helmreich, Symeon Seth was widely read in the Middle Ages;
his text is extant in many manuscripts now in Paris, Milano, Modena,
Venice, Oxford, Vienna, Moscau, the Athos and Munich (p.32f.).
Here is what I have found on Symeon Seth and his book on foodstuffs so
far:
- -- Brunet, M.: Simon Seth, mdcin de l'Empreur Michel Doucas.
Bordeaux: Delmas 1939.
- -- Helmreich, G.: Handschriftliche Studien zu Symeon Seth. Programm des
K. humanistischen Gymnasiums in Ansbach fr das Schuljahr 1912/13.
Ansbach 1913.
- -- Krumbacher, K.: Geschichte der byzantinischen Litteratur von
Justinian bis zum Ende des ostrmischen Reiches (527-1453). Zweite
Auflage, bearbeitet unter Mitwirkung von A. Ehrhard und H. Gelzer. Zwei
Teilbnde. Mnchen 1897.
- -- Meyer, E.H.F.: Geschichte der Botanik. Vier Bnde. Knigsberg
1854-57.
- -- Sarton, G.: Introduction to the history of science. Five volumes.
Baltimore 1927-1947. Reprint 1954-67.
- -- Symeon Seth: Syntagma per literarum ordinem de cibariorum facultate
(...) Lilio Gregorio Gyraldo interprete. Griechisch und lateinisch hg.
von G. Gyraldus. Paris 1538.
- -- Symeon Seth: Simeonis Sethi Magistri Antiocheni volumen de
Alimentorum facultatibus: nunc vero per Dominicum Monthesaurum correctum
[et] pene reformatum. Basel 1561.
- -- Symeon Seth: De alimentorum facultatibus juxta ordinem literarum
digestum (...) emendatum et Latina versione donatum a M. Bogdano. Paris
1658.
- -- Symeon Seth: De alimentorum facultatibus. Ed. B. Langkavel. Leipzig
1868. [Dazu die sehr kritische Abhandlung von Helmreich, Ansbach 1913.]
What else is there on Symeon Seth and his book on food?
Thomas
Date: Fri, 01 Sep 2000 02:19:25 +0200
From: TG <gloning at Mailer.Uni-Marburg.DE>
Subject: Re: SC - Renaissance (and other) Cooks
<< I'm still looking for around for books that can give me some
biographical information on various cooking people in the Renaissance.
I've been thinking hard and the only person I can come up with would be
the wife in Le Menagier du Paris. >>
I am not sure if she is supposed to cook herself; the beginning of