Reviews and comments about the book "Fabulous Feasts" by Madeleine Pelner Cosman.
NOTE: See also the files: cookbooks-msg, cooking-bib, cookbooks-bib, cookbooks2-bib, cookbooks-SCA-msg, cb-rv-Apicius-msg, cb-novices-msg, books-food-msg.
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From: TALLAN at flis.utoronto.CA (David Tallan)
Newsgroups: rec.org.sca
Subject: re:forwarded recipe
Date: 19 Apr 1993 13:46:43 -0400
> Greetings from one who is new to the net and the SCA, but not to medieval
> cooking:
>
> I have a very good book of recipes called "Fabulous Feasts" by Madeleine
> Pelner Cosman which covers what was eaten, how it was presented and what
> what was available. Definitely two thumbs up! This book has a whole
> section on Appetizers.
As someone who has been collecting medieval cookbooks for quite a
while I would advise anyone new to medieval cookery to treat
_Fabulous Feasts_ with a great deal of caution. While it does indeed
contain many recipes which purport to be medieval, there is no
indication of what the basis is on which they make that claim. In
other words, unlike many medieval cookbooks on the market today, the
original recipes are not given with the author's adaptations, nor is
there ANY indication of what the source is. As a number of the
recipes include Out Of Period ingredients, I think it is fair to say
that, while any particular recipe in the book MIGHT be period, it
might just as well not. And one has know way of telling which is
which.
David/Thomas
David Tallan (tallan at flis.utoronto.ca)
snail: 42 Camberwell Rd. Toronto ON M6C 3E8
From: silbrmnd at acf4.nyu.edu (The Dark Mage)
Newsgroups: rec.org.sca
Subject: Fabulous Feasts (was: Re: veggie feasts)
Date: 4 Apr 1994 05:32:34 GMT
Hey.... I was at the Met on friday, got a couple of neat books (and
drooled over a bunch more ;) including one called "Fabulous Feasts:
Medieval cookery and ceremony" by Madeleine Pelner Cosman... Started
reading it the other day, it's really kew-ul... The first half of it
talks about everything from descriptions of feasts in contemporary
literature to a discussion of ingredients to how to prepare a medieval
feast today (including setting up the room so it looks period and has
lots of atmosphere without completely remodelling your house ;)
The book has lots of illustrations from period manuscripts (some b&w,
some color plates).
Some of the chapter headings: "A Chicken for Chaucer's Kitchen:
Medieval london's market laws and Larcenies", "Fountain, River, Privy,
Pot: Medieval London's Polluted Waters", and "Sex, Smut, Sin, and
Spirit: Medieval Food and Character".... The second half contains
"Over 100 recipies from medieval manuscripts" translated into modern
english (just wish she'd included the original text, tho, those are fun
to try and figure out :) The bibliography is a 20 page list of
manuscripts, archive aids, and readings. Haven't tried anything yet (I
sorta have a vague idea how to cook ;) but once I move out of the dorm
and get a place that has a kitchen I'll try out some of this stuff and
write up some sort of review...
ObVegetarianStuff: She divides the recipies into 9 categories, and
mentions that there should be at least 1 dish from each category in a
feast... merging meat fish and fowl into one group, and making
"Spectacle, Sculpture and Illusion Food" very optional, that still
leaves 5 categories: m/f/f; Appetizers, cheese, and appetizing
aphrodisiacs; soups, sauces, and spiced wines; breads and cakes;
vegetables and vegetarian variations; fruit and flower desserts. There
usually _are_ all well represented at feasts - there's a lot of room for
_everyone_ to be able to eat _something_... :)
-Gabrielle the Clueless
----------------------------------------------+-------------------------
"Life -- and I don't suppose I'm the first to | net.name: DarkMage
make this comparison -- is a disease: | IRC handle: Morpheus
sexually transmitted, and invariably FATAL..."| SCA persona: Gabrielle
- Death | silbrmnd at acf4.nyu.edu
----------------------------------------------+-------------------------
From: sbloch at ms.uky.edu (Stephen Bloch)
Newsgroups: rec.org.sca
Subject: Re: Fabulous Feasts (was: Re: veggie feasts)
Date: 4 Apr 1994 12:41:59 -0400
Organization: University Of Kentucky, Dept. of Math Sciences
The Dark Mage <silbrmnd at acf4.nyu.edu> wrote:
>Hey.... I was at the Met on friday, got a couple of neat books (and
>drooled over a bunch more ;) including one called "Fabulous Feasts:
>Medieval cookery and ceremony" by Madeleine Pelner Cosman... Started
>reading it the other day, it's really kew-ul....
Fabulous Feasts does indeed have plenty of good illustrations, and some
interesting commentary. The recipes, unfortunately, are questionable. As
you pointed out, she doesn't give the originals; in a few cases, this is
apparently because she made them up (the Parsley Bread comes to mind).
Also, she makes substitutions and uses new-world ingredients
without warning. Haslett, one of the few for which I was able to find the
original, calls for almonds, dates, and raisins (don't have the recipe in
front of me, unfortunately; there may be one or two more ingredients);
Cosman's Haslett calls for these and also pears, filberts and dried
pineapple rings (!!)
Authenticity aside, other cooking buffs in my acquaintance have pointed out
that Cosman's recipes are weird, and just don't taste good. Some SCA folk's
aversion to medieval food can be traced to early exposure to Cosman
recipes.
Fab Feasts is a good source for feast illustrations and the like, but a
better source for recipes is Pleyn Delit, by Constance Hieatt and Sharon
Butler. The redacted recipes are tasty and easy to follow, and the editors
print the original recipes and variants. Medieval cooking is fun and
rewarding; I hope you'll give it a try soon.
D.Peters (posting from SBloch's account)
--
Stephen Bloch
sbloch at s.ms.uky.edu
Newsgroups: rec.org.sca
From: marian at world.std.com (marian walke)
Subject: Re: Fabulous Feasts (was: Re: veggie feasts)
Organization: The World Public Access UNIX, Brookline, MA
Date: Thu, 7 Apr 1994 06:54:26 GMT
For a long time I thought, well the recipes in FF are bogus, but at least
there are all those great illustrations....
Then one day I started reading the small print next to the illos and
realized some of THEM are bogus, too - attributed to a 19th C. forger!
Really: Plein Delyte, Curye on Inglysch, etc - anything that gives you
all the ORIGINAL recipes so that you can judge the reconstructions -
these are the books to go with if you need other people's versions of
Medieval cookery (and Dining with Will Shakespeare, if you can find it,
for 16/17th C recipes).
If you're willing to dispense with the
reconstructions, Duke Cariodoc's cookbook collections are the best
because they have more recipes in one volume than anyone else's. If you
can't get those, try Falconwood Press, 1983 Colonic Street, Albany NY
12210-2501; they've put out quite a few (mostly 16th/17th C) cookery
books (retyped from original publications, usually). They'll send you a
catalogue if you send an SASE.
--Old Marian
(marian at world.std.com)
From: sbloch at ms.uky.edu (Stephen Bloch)
Newsgroups: rec.org.sca
Subject: Re: Fabulous Feasts (was: Re: veggie feasts)
Date: 7 Apr 1994 11:24:47 -0400
Organization: University Of Kentucky, Dept. of Math Sciences
marian walke <marian at world.std.com> wrote:
>For a long time I thought, well the recipes in FF are bogus, but at least
>there are all those great illustrations....
I should say a word in defense of FF. There's an hypocras recipe that is
paraphrased in either _Pleyn Delit_ or _To the King's Taste_ (I forget which)
and printed in full in FF. There's also a lot of information about food
and sanitation regulations; I'm not knowledgeable enough in that area to
know whether it's sound.
--
mar-Joshua ibn-Eleazar ha-Shalib
Stephen Bloch
sbloch at s.ms.uky.edu
From: Philip & Susan Troy <troy at asan.com>
Date: Wed, 07 May 1997 19:05:51 -0400
Subject: Re: SC - "Fabulous Feasts"
linneah at erols.com wrote:
> I know everyone has bad things to say about the recipies in "Fabulous Feasts",
> but how accurate is all that other information included in the book? You
> know, like who ate what, how and why? I haven't had time to read the copy I
> was given and I'd like to know if I should make the time or forget it and
> donate it to a library.
>
> Linneah
How odd it is to hear myself complimenting that book! I feel that most
of what's in it is pretty good, except for the redactions, which aren't
strictly speaking, redactions at all, since they bear so little
resemblance to the recipes they are based on.
Cosman has much useful information on how a SCAdian can eat a meal as a
member of a medieval society, using medieval manners in a medieval
world. An interesting perspective that we often forget.
Now, about the frumenty made from Grape-Nuts, and whatever dish it was
that was garnished with red liquorice whips...
Adamantius
From: Mark Schuldenfrei <schuldy at abel.MATH.HARVARD.EDU>
Date: Thu, 8 May 1997 11:16:47 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: Re: SC - "Fabulous Feasts"
I know everyone has bad things to say about the recipies in "Fabulous
Feasts", but how accurate is all that other information included in
the book? You know, like who ate what, how and why? I haven't had
time to read the copy I was given and I'd like to know if I should
make the time or forget it and donate it to a library.
I feel it is all of a piece. Don't put it in a library... burn it. Then,
burn the libraries copy.... (:-)
I truly enjoyed the review of "A Buttock Of Beef", where the reviewer
claimed it made Fabulous Feasts look good.... and it does. I wasn't sure
until then that it was possible to write a worse book than Fabulous Feasts.
To be sure: most people tell me that the recipes, if made, are delicious.
But that's not what I am on about. One guys opinion.
Tibor
From: Stephen Bloch <sbloch at adl15.adelphi.edu>
Date: Thu, 8 May 1997 22:24:41 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: Re: SC - "Fabulous Feasts"
> I truly enjoyed the review of "A Buttock Of Beef", where the reviewer
> claimed it made Fabulous Feasts look good.... and it does. I wasn't sure
> until then that it was possible to write a worse book than Fabulous Feasts.
I bought _Take a Buttock of Beef_ for one reason: unlike _Fabulous
Feasts_, it includes original recipes, so you can just shut your eyes at
the facing-page redactions and learn something. I'm assuming, of
course, that the "original recipes" are in fact reprinted accurately.
mar-Joshua ibn-Eleazar ha-Shalib
Stephen Bloch
sbloch at panther.adelphi.edu
http://www.adelphi.edu/~sbloch/
Math/CS Dept, Adelphi University
P.S. Yes, _Fabulous Feasts_ includes at least one original recipe --
IIRC, a lengthy series of instructions for preparing hypocras which was
omitted from _Pleyn Delit_ in the interest of brevity.
From: Stephen Bloch <sbloch at adl15.adelphi.edu>
Date: Fri, 13 Jun 1997 07:35:46 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: SC - Re: Fabulous Feasts
> So far as availability of other sources at the time is concerned, I am
> reasonably sure that _Two Fifteenth Century Cookery Books_ predates
> _Fabulous Feasts_ by quite a bit.
The EETS edition of _Two Fifteenth Century Cookery Books_ is copyright
1888, reprinted 1964. _A Fifteenth Century Cookry Boke_, which contains
most or all of the same source, was published in a mass-market form (by
Scribner's) in 1962. The latter gives most or all of the recipes in the
same source, in Middle English without translation, redaction, or
commentary, but with a moderately-accurate glossary in the back, and
with with hand-drawn illustrations that will make even the average
costume-ignorant SCAdian laugh.
Lorna Sass's _To the King's Taste_ was originally printed in 1975, and
is much better documented than _Fabulous Feasts_. Sass too makes some
questionable substitutions for hard-to-find ingredients (many of which
are easier to find now), but she documents each recipe individually
and distinguishes clearly among the original recipe, her translation
into modern English, and her redaction.
But I had the same impression on reading _Fabulous Feasts_ as the
original poster: there's a lot of information here, which seems to reach
a low point in the actual recipes. Could anybody who's familiar with
sumptuary laws, sanitation laws, and the other subjects Cosman touches
on tell us how accurate those parts of the book are?
mar-Joshua ibn-Eleazar ha-Shalib
Stephen Bloch
sbloch at panther.adelphi.edu
http://www.adelphi.edu/~sbloch/
Math/CS Dept, Adelphi University
From: Stephen Bloch <sbloch at adl15.adelphi.edu>
Date: Sat, 14 Jun 1997 19:54:47 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: Re: SC - _Fabulous Feasts_
> Note to Lord Ras: I did try (just out of twisted, morbid curiosity)
> the recipe for "Fruytes Ryal Rice: Artichokes in Blueberry Rice"...it
> was GHASTLY, so your comment cheered me up immensely - maybe it's not
> me, maybe it's the recipe itself!!
After a few years of SCA feasts and pot-lucks, you develop the ability
to detect a Fabulous Feasts recipe, even if you haven't read that
particular recipe. I think Cosman decided that medieval food gloried
in contrasting or surprising flavors and colors, and therefore
concluded that anything with contrasting or surprising flavors and
colors was medieval food, even if many of the ingredients are native
either to the New World or to the laboratories of General Foods.
Almost every dish must combine sweet, fruity flavors with savory ones.
There's a lot of fish, but mysteriously never served by itself with a
simple sauce -- it requires fruit. Some of the more infamous recipes
are the "artichokes in blueberry rice" you discovered, the "pears
stuffed with lentils and cranberries", the "chicken stuffed with
lentils, cherries, and cheese", the "salmon and fruit tart", and the
parsley bread. The parsley bread differs from the rest in being
actually fairly tasty, but since there is indeed (as Cosman says) a
severe shortage of medieval bread recipes, it draws people's
attention, and nobody else has been able to find a source for it.
_Fabulous Feasts_ also includes a roux-based white sauce, dated
precisely to 1357 Cesena, Italy (we ought to be able to pin down the
source from that, wouldn't you think?), hundreds of years before any
other roux-based sauce I've heard of.
mar-Joshua ibn-Eleazar ha-Shalib
Stephen Bloch
sbloch at panther.adelphi.edu
http://www.adelphi.edu/~sbloch/
Math/CS Dept, Adelphi University
Date: Wed, 08 Sep 1999 08:31:31 -0400
From: Philip & Susan Troy <troy at asan.com>
Subject: Re: SC - favorite sweet
swbro at mail.telis.org wrote:
> Speaking of Esther Aresty's _The Delctable Past_, I picked up a copy of it
> at an auction this weekend. It looks like a survey type of book, has
> anybody read it, and what do you think about it?
As I recall it had two or three recipes that were immensely popular (and
incidentally good food) and which were considered state-of-the-art in
the SCA 25 or 30 years ago, when there were fewer primary source
materials easily available. As with a lot of the older, less-used source
materials, it lives in the buried-and-only-semi-accessible layer of my
bookshelves, along with things like "Dining With William Shakespeare". I
recall Aresty's adaptations of such period recipes as the Mustard Sops
from Le Viandier de Taillevent, and an adapted eighteenth-century recipe
for Richmond Maids of Honor doing double-duty for both the
Georgian/Regency sweet and medieval darioles, even though they're pretty
different. Aresty is also the source of the recent hubbub on this list
regarding the Great Rosti Question.
In general I'd say she represents state-of-the-art SCA cookery, also
incidentally tasty food, from 30 years ago, which has been superceded by
just as tasty food made through better research.
As I've frequently said in the past, many of us unfairly revile books
like "Fabulous Feasts", and the one discussed above, for their
inadequacies, while at the time of their publication there wasn't a lot
else available in the way of source materials for those who didn't want
to deal with untranslated or unmodernized primary sources. There was no
"Take a Thousand Eggs or More", no second edition of "Pleyn Delit". No
first edition, in fact. Also, these books don't address the specific
needs of SCAdians very well at all, but they weren't designed to. They
were designed more for people to play at home with doing a medieval
feast that was more about costume-party fun than about education.
Authenticity wasn't considered important, and since it sold fewer books,
why include it as a criterion?
In any case, I have a soft spot in my heart for such books, and can't
bear to get rid of them, but I rarely cook from them today.
Adamantius
Date: Sat, 18 Oct 2003 03:50:27 -0400
From: Alex Clark <alexbclark at pennswoods.net>
Subject: RE: [Sca-cooks] Book - The Medieval Kitchen
To: Cooks within the SCA <sca-cooks at ansteorra.org>
At 10:06 PM 10/17/2003 -0400, Elewyiss wrote:
>Can I interperate this to mean you do not like Fabulous Feasts? Is there
>a problem with the text?
My recollection (from some years ago) is that there are problems with
almost every recipe in _Fabulous Feasts_. Most of the recipes in this book
are not attributed to any period source, and many of them look like heavily
modified adaptations of period recipes, or substitutions, or outright new
inventions. Though of course it's hard to prove this when you aren't told
where these recipes are supposed to have come from.
The only recipe that I remember as coming from a specific, identified,
period source is mammenye bastarde. The quoted recipe seems to have many
serious errors; in particular, several of the spices are said to be one
pound each. By comparison with the other recipes from _Two
Fifteenth-Century Cookery-Books_ (Cariadoc's reprint, 1988) it seems very
likely that the spice measurements were scribal errors, and that where the
_Fabulous Feasts_ recipe calls for almonds the original called for amydon.
If this is indeed (as I think I remember) the only recipe in FF to provide
its source, then for interpretations of cited/quoted period recipes FF
scores 0 out of 1.
More generally, it seems to include more non-period (or at best
implausible) recipes than almost any other book on period cooking that I've
read, with the possible exception of _How to Cook Forsoothly_.
Alex Clark/Henry of Maldon
Date: Sat, 18 Oct 2003 21:09:50 -0400
From: "Christine Seelye-King" <kingstaste at mindspring.com>
Subject: [Sca-cooks] Fabulous Feasts.
To: "Cooks within the SCA" <sca-cooks at ansteorra.org>
This is very funny. I am saving it for posterity.
However, I feel I have to put in at least one vote for nostalgic reasons.
It was one of my first historical cookbooks, and there are a couple of
recipes in there that I like, even if they aren't documentable. Mine has
notes in the margins, has had art work copied out of it countless times, and
has provided much good information. Yes, all of the previous comments are
correct, no, I wouldn't recommend it now, but by golly, it was one of the
few things we had in the early days, and I liked it!
Ok, back to FF bashing, but it's such an easy target.
Christianna
off to cook a galantine pie and fry up some oranges....
I do not like Fabulous Feasts.
I will not use it, Elewyiss.
I will not use it to cook feasts.
I will not use it to roast beasts.
I will not use it at a war.
I will not keep in my drawer.
I will not use it for day board.
I will not use it to feed the Horde.
I will not keep it in my kitchen.
I do not think that it is bitchin'.
I will not use it for Iron Chef,
Even if the chef's named Jeff.
Its best use is as a weapon;
Flung via catapault beyond Japan.
I do not like Fabulous Feasts.
I will not use it, Elewyiss.
Dr. Huette Seuss
From: "Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius"
<adamantius.magister at verizon.net>
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] food on St Val's day
To: Cooks within the SCA <sca-cooks at ansteorra.org>
Also sprach Linda Anderson:
> I don't know the author pilloried earlier but enjoyed the idea that
> no one could figure out how "That accent came from Brooklyn" as
> priceless.
Ah. Back in the old days, when the SCA was a couple of groups on the
West Coast of the US and a group in New York City shortly thereafter,
one of the first things an East Coast SCAdian cook did was go to the
bookshop at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and get a copy of
"Fabulous Feasts". Well-meaning friends would award copies for
birthdays, Christmas gifts, etc., because when people found out about
your weird hobby, that was the only book they could find on the
subject. People began to use stacks of "Fabulous Feasts" to hold up
the coffee table with the broken leg. Made a good doorstop...
It actually has a fair amount of good information on medieval eating
habits, but the adaptations of period recipes are pretty dreadful,
probably because the author didn't (and still doesn't, I'm told)
actually know how to cook, and saw no need, since she was not
specifically catering to the needs of reenactors, _not_ to go for a
rather fanciful approach, one which posits that a drab-looking dish
can be brightened up with a bit of color, so dressing it up with some
shredded red licorice whip candy is an excellent idea. Never mind
that a period cook would have solved this problem, if a problem were
in fact perceived, in a totally different way. There are also some
recipes, allegedly, made up out of whole cloth, as it were, with no
foundation in any extant period recipe.
New York City SCAdians (such as myself, for example) have more reason
than those above to find the lady fairly silly: for years she helped
run the annual Cloisters Medieval Faire (at the Cloisters, the series
of relocated and reconstructed medieval European monasteries now
owned and run by The Metropolitan Museum of Art in uptown Manhattan).
She made herself fairly unpleasant to SCAdians trying to do demos at
that fair, doing things like cancelling parking privileges for
SCAdians at the last minute, so people had to park their cars about a
mile from the fighters' lists and lug their armor in and out. And
then there was the time she cancelled the SCA's entire demo one year
about fifteen minutes before it was scheduled to begin, and decided
to read from Chaucer with E.G. Marshall instead.
She used to hold medieval feasts for various organizations, and
trained her servers, as well as the diners, with the little speech I
paraphrased in my earlier post, about eating with the manifold
extensions to the hands, thah finnngaaaaaahhhs.
She ingratiated herself especially to my lady wife, who, while
enrolled in a class on Chaucer at the City College of New York, was
told by Professor Cosman that nobody without an English heritage (my
wife is of Chinese ancestry) could fully appreciate the subtlety of
Chaucer's language, so taking her class would be a waste of
everyone's time... her own heritage consisting of birth into, and
growing up in, a Polish-speaking Jewish community in Brooklyn, where
her grandfather's name (originally something like Pielzcsnewsky,
later changed by a clerk at Ellis Island) had become Pellner.
Currently, I understand she's made a fortune selling medical
practices, starting with that of her husband, when he passed away,
and expanding this into a sort of brokerage. And she really does talk
funny...
Adamantius
Date: Sun, 8 Apr 2007 14:26:19 EDT
From: Aldyth at aol.com
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] "Fabulous Feasts"
To: sca-cooks at lists.ansteorra.org
In a message dated 4/8/2007 12:13:07 A.M. Mountain Daylight Time,
StefanliRous at austin.rr.com writes:
<<< Actually the first half of "Fabulous Feasts", the section which talks
about the history of various medieval foods and cooking isn't that
bad. The problem is with the recipes in the second half, since many
aren't that good, and no original recipes or attributions are given.
So, it isn't a bad read, just don't use the second half of the book
as good examples of medieval recipes. >>>
I was gifted with this book at 12th night some 15 years ago. The person who
did the "deed" was convinced it was a wonderful source for me to continue my
cooking education. That said, I agree with Stefan. Although I did try St.
Johns Rice from the recipe section. Once. That volume "disappeared" from my
collection a few years ago. So I had to re buy it online. Just to have it
and show my guild members how far we have come.
Aldyth
Date: Sun, 8 Apr 2007 14:26:19 EDT
From: Aldyth at aol.com
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] "Fabulous Feasts"
To: sca-cooks at lists.ansteorra.org
In a message dated 4/8/2007 12:13:07 A.M. Mountain Daylight Time,
StefanliRous at austin.rr.com writes:
<<< Actually the first half of "Fabulous Feasts", the section which talks
about the history of various medieval foods and cooking isn't that
bad. The problem is with the recipes in the second half, since many
aren't that good, and no original recipes or attributions are given.
So, it isn't a bad read, just don't use the second half of the book
as good examples of medieval recipes. >>>
I was gifted with this book at 12th night some 15 years ago. The person who
did the "deed" was convinced it was a wonderful source for me to continue my
cooking education. That said, I agree with Stefan. Although I did try St.
Johns Rice from the recipe section. Once. That volume "disappeared" from my
collection a few years ago. So I had to re buy it online. Just to have it
and show my guild members how far we have come.
Aldyth
<the end>