food2-msg - 5/21/96

More of food-msg. History and descript. of various foods.

NOTE: See also the files: food-msg, fruits-msg, vegetables-msg, fish-msg, seafood-msg, bread-msg, cookbooks-msg, books-food-msg, eggs-msg.

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From: NIELSEN at falcon.mayo.EDU
Newsgroups: rec.org.sca
Subject: Day-long feasts, pineapples
Date: 8 Apr 1993 19:22:49 -0400

Greetings unto the Rialto from Lady Therica!

Speaking of feasts as we are, our Shire had a day-long one about 6 months
ago. Two cooks, one from Calontir and one from the Midrealm, challenged each
other on who was the better cook, thus producing the event 'Cook's Challenge'.
The first was done in Calontir, the second done in our Shire of Silfren Mere.

Basically the premise was: serve six courses over the space of a day, starting
at around noon and going until 8 or so. We invited a number of cooks who then
formed 6 teams and produced the courses. It was interesting...

Some advantages:
	1) You never got 'stuffed' because you didn't have a lot to eat all
	   at once.
	2) Since there were teams of cooks, not all the cooking was done by
	   a small (and weary!) minority.
	3) Some very good dishes were served (yum!) and the feast was anything
	   but boring.

Some disadvantages:
	1) You never got 'stuffed' because some of the cooks misjudged on the
	   food and those of us at the end of the line (we served buffet-style)
	   got little or none (and some people LIKE the 'stuffed' feeling you
	   get from feasts!).
	2) Some teams didn't clean as thoroughly as they should have, leaving
	   a mess for the next team. Or, they misjudged and were in the kitchen
	   longer than anticipated, making time short for the next team.
	3) The fighters (yes, the autocrat scheduled fighting for the day) did
	   not get most of the courses. Not happy campers. In fact, some of them
	   went to fast-food restaurants to get something to eat!
	4) Waiting in line. The food was kept warm (served in a cafeteria), but
	   the waiting wasn't much fun. And those at the end of the line (which
           was usually our Shire members) often got shorted on servings, or else
	   gallantly did without so a guest could try the dish.
	5) Clean-up between courses was impossible. We couldn't wash our feast
	   gear in the sinks in the bathrooms, of course, and we couldn't use 
	   the kitchen. Ultimately what we did was buy a LARGE supply of paper
	   towels and hand them out to people to wipe down their dishes.  Not a 
	   good solution, but at least it was something. 
	6) No real activities were planned for the day other than a Hall of
	   Arts and Sciences, fighting, and a rapier demo. Many people 
	   complained of being bored during the space between courses.

On the whole, it was an interesting way to do a feast, and I'd like to see it 
done again, but perhaps with some better planning. Most people had a good time.
I wouldn't like to see this done ALL the time, however --- I agree that each 
event calls for its own style of feast. I've attended many, many events and have
enjoyed every feast (even the ones with awful food --- usually *something's*
edible and as always, the company is wonderful!). 

About pineapples --- I write a monthly column called 'From the Kitchens of 
Castle Gillywick --- Willihilda, the Kitchen Wench' where there's a 3 to 4
page 'adventure' and at the end is a medieval recipe. One of the recipes had
pineapple in it, and I did (a small amount of) research to make sure it wasn't
something inconcievable. From what I found, pineapples were from the West 
Indies and were making their way north into Europe by the 1400's. However,
I could be wrong...

Therica
--'--,--< at 


Newsgroups: rec.org.sca
From: deane at binah.cc.brandeis.edu (David Matthew Deane)
Subject: pineapples
Organization: Brandeis University
Date: Thu, 8 Apr 1993 23:39:16 GMT

Greetings, Therica!

Surely you mean 1500-hundreds, not 1400-hundreds? There were no Europeans
in the West Indies until 1492, of course. This would not give pineapples
much time to be imported to Europe and become popularized in what remained
of the 1400-hundreds. I do remember reading how Columbus's sailors, on one
of his voyages to the new world, discovered pineapples. Given the appearence
of pineapples, it is not suprising that Europeans likened it to the pine
cone....much tastier, though! :-^)

David the Fretful
============================================================================
David Matthew Deane (deane at binah.cc.brandeis.edu)
     
When the words fold open,
it means the death of doors;
even casement windows sense the danger.   (Amon Liner)


From: David Schroeder <ds4p+ at andrew.cmu.edu>
Newsgroups: rec.org.sca
Subject: Sweet Thoughts, etc.
Date: Sat, 10 Apr 1993 15:04:25 -0400
Organization: Doctoral student, Industrial Administration, Carnegie Mellon, Pittsburgh, PA

Greetings good gentles --

I have recently been reading an entertaining volume, "Seeds of Change," by
Henry Hobhouse (a journalist, not a professional scholar).  The book looks
at the historical import of five key plants or plant products:  quinine,
sugar, tea, cotton, and potatoes. [c.1985  ISBN: 0-06-091440-8 (ppbk)].

Some of the more interesting tidbits are worth sharing.  For example, here's
a chart of the relative cost of 10 pounds of sugar expressed as a percentage
of 1 ounce of gold (taken as an average of London, Paris, and Amsterdam)...

      Period          Sugar %         Honey %
      1350-1400         35.0            3.30
      1400-1450         24.5            2.05
      1450-1500         19.0            1.50
      1500-1550          8.7            1.20

Note that Hobhouse doesn't cite his sources for this table and doesn't 
mention that the "value" of an ounce of gold may have changed in the 
last period due to the huge captured troves of the Aztecs and Incas, 
but it's still an interesting chart, if only to see the relative expense
of sugar and honey.  Clearly, using refined sugar in a dish would have
been an expensive proposition during almost all of the Society's scope.

Hobhouse also says:

"The sugar industry survived the gradual expulsion of the Moors from 
 the Mediterranean littoral, and was carried on by both Moslems and
 Christians as a profitable, expanding concern for two hundred years 
 from about 1300.  [Production was centered in Syria, Palestine, the 
 Dodecanese, Egypt, Cyprus, Crete, Sicily, North Africa, and Southern 
 Spain. *B*]  The trade (as opposed to production) was under the domi-
 nance of the merchant bankers of Italy, with Venice ultimately con-
 trolling distribution throughout the then known world.  The first sugar 
 reached England in 1319, Denmark in 1374, and Sweden in 1390.  It was 
 an expensive novelty and useful in medicine, being unsurpassed for 
 making palatable the odious mixtures of therapeutic herbs, entrails, 
 and other substances of the medieval pharmacopoeia."

Apparently, sugar cultivation in the Caribbean basin was substantial in
the second half of the 16th century leading to cheaper sugar prices and
a shift in leadership in the trade from Venice to Amsterdam.

TEA
On the matter of tea Hobhouse reports that in 1700 England was importing
50 short tons of tea with a wholesale value of 4,000 pounds sterling or
about two pounds of money for one pound of tea.  Again, not a cheap item!
He further states (in what is probably a typographical error) that:

"Tea, coffee, and cocoa all arrive in London in the same year, 1652.
 [Could it be 1562 or 1552?]  The word "tea" occurs in Shakespeare 
 and "cha," the Canton-Macao form, crops up in Lisbon from about 1550."

It's hard to understand the Bard's use of a term for something introduced
to England years after his death...

I'd best sign off now and return to my reading...  I found the book
remaindered for $1.98 at my local Borders Bookstore, so you may have
good luck finding a copy of your own.

My best -- Bertram

+-----------------------------------------------------------------------+
Bertram of Bearington                                      Dave Schroeder
Debatable Lands/AEthelmearc/East               Carnegie Mellon University
INTERNET: ds4p at andrew.cmu.edu                         412/731-3230 (Home)
+------------------------ PREME * Press On * PREME ---------------------+


From: Carole_Newson-Smith at net.COM (Carole Newson-Smith)
Newsgroups: rec.org.sca
Subject: Pineapple in China?
Date: 16 Apr 1993 05:02:02 -0400
Organization: The Internet

  Subject Pineapple in China?
Greetings to you all, gentle cousins, who visit on
the Rialto bridge

from Cordelia Toser

Several have written of late about the new world
food, called pineapple in the common era and 
speculated upon whether or no it was widely distributed in Europe and Asia by
the end of the time we seek to recreate.

Mayhap the following words may be of assistance in 
that endeavor.


According to Waverly Root in his encyclopedic 
book entitled _Food_, pineapple was discovered 
on the West Indian island of  Guadeloupe in 1493 
by companions of Christopher Columbus.

Root goes on to say (in part):

"When Europeans discovered the pineapple, it was a 
case of love at first sight.  

"It was first accurately described in 1535 by Gonzalo 
de Oviedo y Valdes, who reported that it had 
delicious taste which combined the flavors of melons, 
strawberries, raspberries and pippins*....   

"In 1595 Sir Walter Raleigh wrote on pinas, the princesse 
of fruits, that grow under the Sun, especially those of 
Guiana.

"The only sour note in this paean of praise came from 
Charles V, who, as King of Spain as well as Holy Roman 
Emperor, had an early opportunity to taste the pineapple 
and refused for fear that it might poison him.

"As a rule any new food is slow to enter foreign diets; 
often two or three centuries pass before those unfamiliar 
with it dare eat it.  The success of the pineapple was 
immediate; in a little more than half a century after its 
first discover by Europeans, it was being grown--and 
eaten--in tropical areas throughout the world.

"Its transfer to other countries may at first have been 
accidental.  Ships leaving America took pineapples aboard 
to provide fresh food for their crews during the voyage ... 
and the crowns, cut off when the fruit was to be eaten, 
were planted wherever the ship touched land to see if 
they would grow there.   We have written records of its 
cultivation in India, apparently already well established, 
in 1583.   

"One theory holds that China received the pineapple from 
Peru, across the Pacific, about 1592, another that it came 
from America, around Africa to the Philippines, and 
thence to China.  In any case, pineapples were being 
cultivated there at least by 1594."


*Pippin is a variety of apple mentioned in some medieval 
cookbooks, and is still widely grown in the modern era.

Should you wish to acquire a copy of this book, it is 
published by Fireside/Simon & Schuster
ISBN 0-671-22589-8

Cordelia Toser, Southern Shores, Mists, West
Internet: carole_newson-smith at net.com


From: aj406 at yfn.ysu.edu (David L. Tallan)
Newsgroups: rec.org.sca
Subject: Re: appetizers recipe
Date: 30 Apr 1993 04:17:18 GMT
Organization: Youngstown State/Youngstown Free-Net

I wish I had a copy of _Early English Meals and Manners_
a.k.a. _The Babee's Book_ but I must admit (with an
abiding sense of shame that I do not own a copy of this
fine work and must rely on the library. For those in a
similar unfortunate situation I should perhaps point out
that it was edited by Furnivall and is part of the
Early English Text Society Original Series. It was
mentioned in a TI research column not too long ago so
you can get the full citation there). [sorry, that )
should have been after "shame"]

This book is a "must read" for all of those interested
in the broader topic of the medieval meal (broader than
the individual recipes, that is). It contains a number
of fifteenth and sixteenth century "books of courtesy"
that give instruction in how a meal was to be served
and describes the table manners of the time.

What does all of this have to do with appetizers, you
ask. Well, one of the works contained therein, "John
Russell's Boke of Nurture" (15th C) in the instructions
on how a meal is to be served, tells of the food to be
fetched from the pantry and placed on the table both before
and after the meal. This does not appear in the menus and,
as it was not cooked or prepared, does not appear in the
recipe collections. The items after the meal were supposed
to aid the digestion and the items before the meal were,
if I remember correctly, supposed to prepare the stomach
for what was to come. They would thus seem to qualify as
appetizers.

So what were these items? Here's where I really wish I had
the book in front of me. My fallible memory tells me that
grapes, cherries and soft cheese were eaten before the 
meal and apples, pears and hard cheese were eaten after
the meal but I welcome correction from someone who has
possession of the book.

Yours in research of the medieval meal,
David Tallan (who, as Thomas Grozier, has a fine cook
and loves to eat)
-- 
David Tallan
aj 406  OR
tallan at flis.utoronto.ca


Newsgroups: rec.org.sca
From: ddfr at quads.uchicago.edu (david director friedman)
Subject: Variety of foodstuffs
Organization: University of Chicago
Date: Wed, 19 May 1993 04:32:00 GMT

This is Elizabeth of Dendermonde posting on Cariadoc's account.

Bertram and Angharad have been discussing the variety of foodstuffs
available to people in period vs. what is available to us.  I suspect
that several things are going on.

First, transportation costs were a lot higher, especially relative to
people's income.  The economic historian Carlo Cippola estimates that
with land transport the price of grain doubled in 20 miles.  You ate
things produced very locally, plus some things produced farther away
which could be shipped by water to where you were (dried and/or
salted fish was brought from Norway or even Icelandic waters to
England), plus (if you were well off) small quantities of high
price/low weight stuff such as spices, dried fruit or sugar which had
to be brought from very far away.  (Transportation does get better
over time through our period; citrus fruits, for example, seem to
have been unknown in England until the 13th century, very rare and
expensive there through most of our period, and somewhat more common,
although still fairly expensive, by Elizabethan times.)  This means
that unless you lived on a major waterway, you usually ate the grains
and fruits and vegetables that would grow locally--probably not even
the varieties growing 50 miles away.

Second, they were restricted to what was in season as we are not. 
Consider the difference between the season when you can find wild
strawberries and the season when you can get strawberries in market,
not counting the frozen ones available year round.

Third, there are the New World foods, not available in Europe until
near the end of our period or after, and some Old World foods that
did not make it to Europe, or to much of Europe, until after our
period (tea, coffee, and bananas all reach England in the 17th
century).

On the other hand, because they were a poorer society, there was a
tendancy to eat anything that moved or swam or grew, including many
things that have mostly dropped out of modern American
cuisine--Angharad has already listed a lot of fish and game birds,
but consider something as obvious as goat meat.  Goats are hardy and
easy to feed, but the meat tends to be relatively strongly flavored
and tough, so most modern Americans, who can afford beef and chicken
all the time, do not want it.  The same is true of many grains:  you
can find oats and barley and millet (all of which will grow on land
that will not support wheat) if you look hard enough, but how many
Americans stick strictly to wheat and rice?

Spices are a harder question.  Allspice and the chili/cayenne/paprika
family are from the New World, but those are balanced by the ones the
medievals used that we no longer do:  cubebs and grains of paradise
and galangale.  Also, while only the rich would have used a lot of
the imported spices, locally grown herbs, including mustard, would
have been available to everyone.  Why a lot of these have dropped out
of standard American (Anglo) cookery I don't know; I know that there
was a tendancy for upper-class English cookery to "simplify" in terms
of spices and sauces near the end of our period, but this is later
than the stuff I know really well.

Elizabeth (by the way, my source for a lot of the above is C. Anne
WilsonUs Food and Drink in Britain)


From: MCKAY_MICHAEL at tandem.COM
Newsgroups: rec.org.sca
Subject: Medieval Resteraunt in San Fransisco
Date: 1 Jun 1993 16:49:17 -0400
Organization: The Internet

   I heard about Medioevo through the SCA grapvine, but I have not seen mention
here, so I thought I would post a brief review.  Medievo is in San Fransisco
on Union Street (near Laguna), and specializes in early Italian foods.  They
have made a few concessions to modern tastes (the owner told me that he had to
include some tomatoe sauces; also if you search hard you can find potatoe and
chocalate on the menu).  But, by and large, menu items are from medieval/
renessance Italian recipies.  The owner (whose name I did not catch) is an
Italian emigree, who has done the redactions and transalations.  He used a
variety of sources, including regional and family documents.  I understand that
there is already some plans being made to make these available to the SCA (a
"trade", or something like that).
    The resteraunt has a nice atomophere, wooden beam ceiling, pennants, and
"period" curios hanging from the wall.  The staff dresses in tunics, with
multi-colored hose (when I mentioned that I was a member of the SCA, they asked
me why I was dressed funny, ie. mundane).  I went with 2 friends, and all the
food was excellent.  The preperation and the seasoning (although different from
most modern dishes) was excellent.  The prices are fairly high, the dishes
are designed more as courses, although the portions are generous.  Appetizers
soups, and "dinner" salads are $3-6, meat, pasta and fish entrees are $9-18.
Some entrees include vegies (and the like), but most are extra.  They have a
"Lords Feast" for $30, which includes soup, salad, pasta, fish, meat, and
desert.  Figure $12-25 per person.  If you are near San Fransisco, this is a
must!  The address is Medioevo, 1809 Union Street, phone is (415) 346-7373
(I'm told reservations are recommended).

Sean MacKay (aka. MCKAY_MICHAEL at tandem.com)  Caer Darth; Darkwood; Mists; West


Newsgroups: rec.org.sca
From: ddfr at quads.uchicago.edu (david director friedman)
Subject: Re: Period Herb Gardens, or, If I Could Save Thyme in a Bottle
Organization: University of Chicago
Date: Mon, 14 Jun 1993 03:19:03 GMT

"Are there any modernly common herbs and/or spices that are not
period?
If so which ones?  Are there any obscure herbs that were period yet
are not
in common use today?" (Chandler)

Vanilla, allspice, and the capsicum peppers (including chili,
paprika, cayenne, green peppers, ...) are from the New World and
became available in Europe at or just after the end of our period.
The same is true of cocoa, if you count it. Coffee and tea are old
world, but were apparently not used in western europe until just
after the end of our period; coffee is late period for Islamic
personae (c. 1400).

There are a number of spices that are common in the period cookbooks
but not in common use today. They include cubebs, grains of paradise,
long pepper, saunders, and turnsole (the last two were medieval food
coloring).

David/Cariadoc


Newsgroups: rec.org.sca
From: cav at bnr.ca (Rick Cavasin)
Subject: Re: Period Herb Gardens, or, If I Could Save Thyme in a Bottle
Organization: Bell-Northern Research Ltd.
Date: Mon, 14 Jun 93 12:53:52 GMT

David/Cariadoc writes:

There are a number of spices that are common in the period cookbooks
but not in common use today. They include cubebs, grains of paradise,
long pepper, saunders, and turnsole (the last two were medieval food
coloring).                 ^^^^^^^^

Not just food colouring.  Although the reference is not to hand, I believe
it was also used as one of several substitutes for (the extremely expensive)
myrex in dying parchment/vellum leaves.

I'd dearly love to know how to get my grubby little paws on some.

Cheers, Balderik


From: Gretchen Miller <grm+ at andrew.cmu.edu>
Newsgroups: rec.org.sca
Subject: Re: Delicious Nuts
Date: Mon, 21 Jun 1993 12:32:30 -0400
Organization: Computer Operations, Carnegie Mellon, Pittsburgh, PA

sucket is apparently a boiled sweet that is basically candied fruit
peels (or bitter things turned sweet).

In Banquetting Stuffe, the fare and social background of the Tudor and
Stuart banquet, (A wonderful book, all about sweets. It's the papers
from the First Leeds Symposium on Food History and Traditions. Contains
articles both scholarly and experimental.  Editor C. Anne Wilson,
publisher Edinburgh University Press, published 19912, ISBN
0-7486-0103-1),  Peter Brears gives the the following recipe and
redaction:

To make sucade of peeles of Lemmons (John Partridge, The Treasurie of
Commodious Conceits, and Hidden Secrets, 1573)

First take off your peeles by quarters and seeth them in faire water,
from three quartes to three pintes, then take them out, and put to as
much more water, and seeth them likewise, and doo againe, till the water
wherein they are sodden have no bitterness at all of the peeles, then
you are ready, now prepare a Sirop [of] the same liquor...one pint of
rosewater, and for every quart of liquor one half pound of sugar; seethe
them again together on a soft fire of coles till the Sugar bee
incorporated with the liquor, then put in your peeles, let them seeth
softly till you perceive that your sirop is as thicke as lite hony.  Put
them in a pot of stone.

Redation:
2 lemons
2 TBS (30ml) rosewater
14 oz (400 g) sugar
Halve the elmons, squeeze out the juice, cut the rinds into quarters and
scrape out any remaining membranes.  Boil the rinds in 1 pt of water for
30 minutes, changing the water three times during this period so that no
bitter taste remains and they are very tender.  Make a syrup with the
sugar, rosewater, and 3/4 pt (425 ml) water from the last boiling, and
simmer the peels in this until they are thrnaslucent and the syrup is as
thick as thin honey.  Store in sterilised jars until required.  Orange
peel may also be prepared in this way.  Being in syrup, these were known
as wet suckets.

You can also make them dry or candied (described later in the same paper).

Banquetting stuff is definately the book to get if you want a decent
bibliography of primary sources, and a decent discussion of what they
contain.

toodles, margaret


From: jtn at nutter.cs.vt.edu (Terry Nutter)
Newsgroups: rec.org.sca
Subject: Re: Delicious Nuts
Date: 22 Jun 93 01:16:24 GMT
Organization: The Rialto

Greetings, all, from Angharad ver' Rhuawn.

Margaret recently posted,

>sucket is apparently a boiled sweet that is basically candied fruit
>peels (or bitter things turned sweet).
>
>In Banquetting Stuffe, the fare and social background of the Tudor and
>Stuart banquet, (A wonderful book, all about sweets. It's the papers
>from the First Leeds Symposium on Food History and Traditions. Contains
>articles both scholarly and experimental.  Editor C. Anne Wilson,
>publisher Edinburgh University Press, published 19912, ISBN
>0-7486-0103-1),  Peter Brears gives the the following recipe and
>redaction:

[recipe omitted]

>You can also make them dry or candied (described later in the same paper).

According to the _OED_, suckets are sweetmeats made of fruit or vegetables
boiled in sugar.  This is closer to the recipes in Platt and Digbie than
the rather more limited definition above (indeed, neither has a recipe for
a sucket made of a fruit _peel_ at all, and neither concentrates even
primarily on things orinally bitter).  Now of course, meanings change over
time; but I would want more than two recipes for fruit peels to convince
me that both Platt and Digbie are atypical (it wouldn't be the first time
the _OED_ was wrong on a detail like this).

>Banquetting stuff is definately the book to get if you want a decent
>bibliography of primary sources, and a decent discussion of what they
>contain.
>
>toodles, margaret

Thanks for the reference.

I do think, though, that there's more to the sucket story than this so far
shows.  Anyone not interested in cooking research, stop now!  ;^}

Hugh Platt has the largest collection of recipes for sweets and confections 
from late period England that I am aware of.  (As neither late period nor
confections are particularly my specialty, I could easily be wrong about this,
and would like to hear of other, more comprehensive sources, if someone knows 
some.  Platt distinguishes a number of kinds of sweets, all of which fall under
the very general definitions given above: candied items, items in candy (which 
are different), confits, conserved/preserved items, marmalades, items in gelly, 
and items in syrup, all in addition to suckets.  The terms seem not to be
interchangeable: one never sees one term in the middle of a recipe for another,
and recipes that share a name seem also to share preparation methods, and
similarity of results, suggesting that the different terms really do refer
to different sorts of things.  For instance, candied rose petals are like 
candied orange peels, and unlike rose petals in gelly.  Confits are not like 
candied things (though they bear a sort of family resemblance to things in
rock candy).

Digbie is not nearly so rich a source on sweetmeats in general, but reproduces
some of Platts categories.  Throughout, his distinctions match Platt's: a
Digbie recipe for "x marmalade" tends to be more like a Platt recipe for "y 
marmalade" than like a Platt recipe for "x in gelly", or even "x conserve."  
This seems to be further evidence that we are looking at real distinctions 
among real categories.

The question then arises as to what distinguishes suckets from the rest; and
the data in Platt is pretty thin on the subject.  (While the _OED_ is little
help otherwise, it does have quotes in it that suggest that suckets were
distinguished from confits as early as 1509.)  What follows is conjectural, 
from looking at the two Platt recipes and the one in Digbie, and contrasting 
them with the other recipes in Platt that are called by different names.

What seems to distinguish suckets is that they have a substantial accretion of
sugar syrup on and through them, more than candied items by far, and not ending
in a crystalized coating.  They are almost like a bit for fruit or vegetable
surrounded by a sugar-syrup shell (of varying hardness, depending on how you
treat it).  This is moderately clear in what Platt says of lettuce suckets, and
very clear in Digbie.

To accept this, you must accept that Platt omitted a critical fact (repetition
over days) about the preparation.  Given what I have read in other recipes,
especially in earlier centuries, but also in the 16th and 17th, Ill buy that. 
Ive seen recipes that leave out the main ingredient, apparently on the
understanding that you know _that_.  It is common to leave out the boiling
step, and simply refer later to the broth -- as it is to omit mention of any 
liquid to boil a solid in, etc.  Period recipes were written for experts.  
What was obvious (to them), they often don't bother to say.

Anyhow.  For what any of it is worth....

Cheers,

-- Angharad/Terry



Article 40983 of rec.org.sca:
Path: risc.sps.mot.com!mogate!spsgate!uunet!enterpoop.mit.edu!ai-lab!bronze.lcs.mit.edu!not-for-mail
From: greg at bronze.lcs.mit.edu (Greg Rose)
Newsgroups: rec.org.sca
Subject: Re: Another Cypriot Candy
Date: 24 Jun 1993 06:00:12 -0400
Organization: MIT LCS guest machine
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References: <sg_INz200WB5MHbexS at andrew.cmu.edu>
NNTP-Posting-Host: bronze.ai.mit.edu

Greetings, all, from Angharad ver' Rhuawn.  Bertram asks about almonds
candied in sugar and grape juice.  I can't precisely reproduce this one,
but I can come close.

Hugh Platt has several recipes (#33 and 42 are particularly relevant) for
candying.  The two cited use a thick syrup of sugar and rosewater (and in
one case gum arabic).  Substituting grape juice for rosewater is a little
of a stretch, but not a serious one.  The things to be candied in the
Platt recipes are, in 33, "Nutmegs, Ginger, or such like", and in 42, 
nutmegs, ginger, mace, flowers, fruits, and "&c" (following the nutmegs
and mace).  So: how big a reach is it to substitute almonds?

Well, in the recipe for making confits, he says, "Worke upon Ginger, Cloues,
and Almonds, as upon other seeds."  This seems a reasonable basis for say-
ing that in recipes involving building a confection around some center,
Platt considered almonds to be "like" ginger, and so to fall into the category
of 33, and by extension (and similarity of recipe) of 42.

BTW, 33 and 42 are for candying in rock candy, which I gather is more or
less what Bertram had.  If he had something more like confits, then almonds
are explicitly allowed, but the coating is far more complex, and so is the
procedure.  The one he describes is a whole lot like #33 and #42.

Except that Platt does them individually, not in strings, but that sounds
like a convenience detail to me.

I'm off to my mother's, and from there to Interkingdom War Practice; so no
time for more.  Back to you all some time next week.

Cheers,

-- Angharad/Terry


From: jtn at nutter.cs.vt.edu (Terry Nutter)
Newsgroups: rec.org.sca
Subject: Origins of pasta
Date: 1 Jul 93 20:45:22 GMT
Organization: The Rialto

Greetings, all, from Angharad ver' Rhuawn.  In listing Chinese contributions,
Solveig mentioned pasta.  Cariadoc asked whether there is any evidence that
the west learned about pasta from China, given that the Middle East knew
about it well before Marco Polo.

Dennis O'Connor responded,

>It's possible that the earlier Middle-Eastern pasta was also
>an idea imported (or brought in by conquerers) from China.
>The Silk Road was open during the Roman Empire (early CE),
>and the Mongols conquered a lot of the Mid-East in the early
>part of the 13th C. This is purely speculation on my part, tho.
>And perhaps that's all there ever will be on this issue.

There is a little more.  There is a 13th C Anglo-Norman recipe
collection that contains recipes for noodles (Cressee) and ravioli
(ravieles); these may be found in Constance Hieatt's article
"Two Anglo-Norman Culinary Collections Edited from British 
Library Manuscripts Additional 32085 and Royal 12.C.xii" is
_Speculum_ v. 61 #4 (1986), 859-882.  It is unlikely that anything
that reached the middle east by the route Dennis describes would
have made it into Anglo-Norman collections so quickly.

Furthermore, cuisine is not a matter of an isolated dish or two.
It involves combinations of elements and preparation techniques.
Anglo-Norman cookery shows many elements of middle eastern
borrow, the most notable being the heavy use of almond milk as
a sauce base.  But in addition, there are many "saracen" sauces
that actually parallel known middle eastern dishes; and so on.

By contrast, if the west got pasta from the orient in the middle
ages, that seems to be all (apart from spices -- but not their
common combinations and uses) that it got.  That is most unlikely.

Furthermore, western noodles aren't much like oriental ones.  Also,
although Anglo-Norman cookery makes heavy use of rice flour, it
_never_ makes noodles out of it.

There is evidence on this matter, and it strongly supports independent
discovery.  This should not be surprising: given that you make stuff
out of flour, and boil most of what you cook, it won't be long before
somebody tries to boil something made out of flour.

Cheers,

-- Angharad/Terry


Newsgroups: rec.org.sca
From: cdh at specialix.co.uk (Alan Drew)
Subject: Re: British Meat Pies?
Organization: Specialix International, London
Date: Thu, 15 Jul 1993 10:11:25 GMT

jtn at nutter.cs.vt.edu (Terry Nutter) writes:

>> It is clear that nobody was expected to
>>*eat* the coffins... 

>So far as I can tell from recipes, at least in the 13th through 15th centuries,
>coffins (and traps, and other sorts of crusts) were indeed eaten.

To expand on this point, the Cornish Pasty (probably the most obvious
contemporary pastry "container") has a LARGE roll of pastry along one
edge. this was NOT designed to be eaten, this was put there in
order for you to be able to hold the hot pie.

of course that is not to say that you didn't eat it, it is after all 
only pastry.

just my $0.02

Alan
--


From: jtn at nutter.cs.vt.edu (Terry Nutter)
Newsgroups: rec.org.sca
Subject: Re: refrigeration
Date: 7 Oct 1993 23:42:24 GMT
Organization: The Rialto

Greetings, all, from Angharad ver' Rhuawn.

Tio recently posted,

>Aryk asks what refrigeration is used for:
>
> {snip}
>
>Well, the lack of refrigeration has been responsible for most of the
>world's ethnic cuisine, which is why MacDonald's tastes like
>cardboard....

I'm nor sure what Tio had in mind when he wrote this, but what I heard
was, "They spice it to cover the taste of rotten meat."  In case others
heard that:

Neither then nor now, guys.  Folks who do this do not live long enough
to pass on the tradition.  In fact, if you look at places where the 
native cuisine was real spicy before they much dabbled in world food
markets, they're often places that spices _grow_.  It's less a matter of
covering _anything_ than a matter of using what's in the garden.

There are a couple of pretty fascinating recipes in _Curye on Inglysch_
dealing with rot in venison (one with prevention, one with cure of not-
very-advanced cases).  Neither advises "Spice 'er up, they'll never
notice."  The first, if I recall correctly, calls for saltpetre, and 
perhaps pepper -- which are in fact preservatives.  The second calls
for cutting away the bad bits, and doing some pretty elaborate stuff
(including heavy salting, careful soaking, more salting, and then
very long -- three day -- slow cooking) to the rest, that should, in 
fact, take pretty good care of things, microbiologically speaking 
(we do dippier things in almost every SCA kitchen).

They understood rot.  They knew it was bad.  They didn't eat it.

Cheers,

-- Angharad/Terry


From: jtn at nutter.cs.vt.edu (Terry Nutter)
Newsgroups: rec.org.sca
Subject: Re: period vegetarianism/pacifism
Date: 19 Oct 1993 03:41:35 GMT
Organization: The Rialto

Greetings, all, from Angharad ver' Rhuawn.

Isabella Oakwood writes,

>As for the cows and chickens, you have a point there.  Mea culpa for using
>a poor example.  Maybe I should have said: ' "I don't wish to kill a bunny"
>rather than "I don't like the taste of rabbit" '.  Wild game of many varieties
>was much more likely to grace the table of a medieval (from kings down to the
>lowliest peasant) than domestic stock which had to be fed and sheltered and
>could contribute in other ways until it was no longer useful (e.g. eggs from
>chickens, milk and milk products from cows, wool from sheep.)  

This conjecture about the makeup of medieval diets is not borne
out by the distribution of recipes for the various sorts of meat
and fowl in cook books.  I've been involved in a project that entails, 
among other things, mapping out the ingredients of all the English 
recipes I can get my hands on from the 13th through 15th centuries.  
So far (ignoring a short start on one collection), I have 648 recipes 
entered, 445 from the 13th and 14th centuries and 203 from the 15th.  
These are all the recipes I can find within the collections involved: 
they include things like hypocras.  There are of course lots more 
collections; I haven't near finished.  But I haven't picked and chosen
within the collections I've entered so far.

Thanks to the discipline of the Catholic church, fish and seafood
are a complex question having much to do with necessity and little
to do with preference for domestic versus wild fare.  Ignoring them,
here's how the "meatlike substances" break down:

	Chicken: 88 recipes
	Birds other than chicken: 76 recipes 
	pork: 66 recipes
	rabbit: 28 recipes
	veal: 15 recipes
	beef: 13 recipes
	deer: 12 recipes
	kid: 8 recipes
	lamb: 6 recipes

As should be evident, the big winner is chicken.  The next category
includes some game, but also all the domestic birds that aren't
chicken.  The next big category is pork, and that certainly isn't 
all wild pig.

There are good reasons for this, I think.  People who have raised
chickens have some experience with the problem of the population
getting out of hand.  Most people I know who have any poultry are
rather more concerned with getting rid of eggs than with increasing
the supply.  Also, one doesn't want to have anywhere near as many
_roosters_ as are born.  A lot of that chicken is capon.

It is telling that veal is more common than beef, albeit only very 
slightly.  If you are keeping cows, most of your male calves are 
excess.  They don't produce milk, and you don't particularly want a 
whole lot of bulls around.  Castrating them is just good sense.  You 
may raise some of the steers for beef, but it costs money to keep
feeding them.  In these terms, veal makes a fair amount of sense -- 
i.e., eating them while still young.  Also, given what I've heard about 
domestic cattle in that period, veal was probably, on the whole, 
rather more edible than beef.

Look at the numbers for pork.  Pigs are pretty easy to keep, and they 
provide a lot of meat.  Again, you don't want but so many boars, and 
the rest you have to get rid of somehow.

By contrast, game is chancy.  You can't always find it.  The upper classes 
were frequently cooking for _very_ large numbers.  Counting on bagging 
that many deer does not mesh well with viewing taking a good deer in a
hunt as an accomplishment.  Notice in this regard that there are seven times 
as many recipes for chicken as for deer, and 5 and a half times as many 
for pork.  In terms of wild boar as a menu item, I refuse to contemplate
either setting out on a hunt to bag enough wild boar to feed 400, or
the consequences of letting the wild pig population grown until you could
do that on a regular basis.  One didn't hunt boar nearly so much for food
as because wild pigs -- boar or sow -- are _dangerous_.

Even rabbit, which weighs in at a hefty 28 recipes, is by no means obviously 
game.  People raised rabbits for food then as they do now.

I have not researched this issue deeply.  It may be that the distribution 
of recipes is misleading.  But I do not see any strong reason to support 
the "they ate mostly game" theory, and in the absence of some evidence for 
it, I am inclined to accept the distribution of recipes as indicating that 
what seems like common sense to me (:^) is in fact the case.

Cheers,

-- Angharad/Terry


From: DDF2 at cornell.edu (David Friedman)
Newsgroups: rec.org.sca
Subject: Re: New World foods in period (Was: Feast Formats)
Date: 9 Nov 1993 03:46:18 GMT
Organization: Cornell Law School

Joe Pepersack wrote:

> I have noticed a large number of gentles complaining about new world foods
> (potatos, corn, turkey, coffee, cocoa, etc) being served at SCA feasts.
> 
> My question is how soon after Columbus bumped into the New World were these
> food items introduced to Europe?  Would it not be safe to assume that these
> foods would appear on the table of a post-columbian noble, as delicacies?
> How common did these foods become in Europe during the 108 years between 
> 1492 and 1600?

Turkeys apparently became fairly common during the 16th century.  Potatoes
are, I think, the only other new world food for which I have seen a period
recipe; that was from the very end of period, and I am not sure if it was
for potato or sweet potato.The earliest mention of any European food (as
opposed to drink) using cocoa is apparently from the second half of the
seventeenth century. References to drinking chocolate in England start in
the 1660's according to one source, 1650 according to another. It seems
likely that some drink made from cocoa beans was being drunk in Spain in
the sixteenth century, but that it would have very little similarity to our
cocoa;  what we call chocolate is a post-period invention. 

Tomatoes were being eaten in Italy in the 16th century, although I do not
know of any surviving recipes. Gerard writes of Maize (our Corn) in 1597
"We have as yet no certaine proofe or experience concerning the vertues of
this kinde of Corne, although the barbarous Indians which know no better
... ."

Various sources suggest that tea was first brought to Europe in the 17th
century. Coffee seems to have appeared in Italy, Paris, and England in the
17th century. 

> Europeans could be argued to have knowledge/possession of far eastern foods
> and spices any time after the Crusades.  I understand that the Arabic/ Middle
> Eastern cultures traded with the Far East from before the 10th cent. 

Eastern spices, such as pepper and cinnamon, are standard ingredients in
period cooking. 

Fujimoto writes:

"While reading through _They Came to Japan_, an anthology of European
reports on Japan 1543-1640 (sorry, I don't have it in front of me) I
read the following description (paraphrased) about what the Japanese
raised:

"rice, wheat, _indian corn_,..." 

Sir John Sarus (I believe) also talks about introducing the "potatoe"
to Japan.  Now, for those food historians:  is "the potatoe" strictly
a new world plant, or are there tubers indigenous to the tropics?  I'm
asking because I know there's a Japanese "potato", plus many other
potatoid roots (taro, for one).  Are these breeds of the Central
American potato, or are they separate species entirely?  Any
botanists?

1. Corn (maize) is mentioned in a Chinese book on botany from 1562, so it
might well have been growing in Japan by 1640.

2. Both the ordinary and sweet potato are New World plants. Taro is old
world, and appears in period Islamic cooking.  There are other old world
tubers, some of them referred to as "yams."

For a much more detailed discussion of these issues, with sources, see the
essay "Late Period and Out of Period Foodstuffs" in _The Miscellany_.

On the more general issue of what is appropriate for SCA feasts ...  . We
get to eat new world foods all the time. Why serve them at SCA feasts when
we have no period recipes for them,  reason to believe they would have been
at best very unusual at period feasts (with the possible exception of the
turkey), and, in most cases, no clear evidence that they were ever served
at all at period feasts?

In my view, far too much energy in the SCA is spent  doing things for
reasons having nothing to do with their being period, then trying to
produce after-the-fact justifications for why they might possibly be
period. This makes sense if you view  "it ought to be period" as an
arbitrary restriction shackled about our necks, to be evaded as well as we
can--but if that is the situation, why have the restriction (or the SCA) at
all? If the reason for doing period things is that it is fun and
interesting, then there is little point in serving corn on the cob and
boiled potatoes at a feast and labelling them "exotic foods from the New
World."

David/Cariadoc
DDF2 at Cornell.Edu


From: jtn at nutter.cs.vt.edu (Terry Nutter)
Newsgroups: rec.org.sca
Subject: Re: New World foods in period (Was: Feast Formats)
Date: 9 Nov 1993 19:14:44 GMT
Organization: The Rialto

Greetings, all, from Angharad ver' Rhuawn.

Amiga/Joe Pepersack writes,

>I have noticed a large number of gentles complaining about new world foods
>(potatos, corn, turkey, coffee, cocoa, etc) being served at SCA feasts.
>
>My question is how soon after Columbus bumped into the New World were these
>food items introduced to Europe?  Would it not be safe to assume that these
>foods would appear on the table of a post-columbian noble, as delicacies?
>How common did these foods become in Europe during the 108 years between 
>1492 and 1600?

Most of them, not very common at all.  There are virtually no recipes for
them from England from the 16th century, or even the 17th.  Potatos were
particularly slow to catch on, except as animal feed.  Turkeys were about
the fastest.  (Independently confirmed, and not surprising, since any cook
knew what to do with a big bird.)  Various uses of chocolate were attempted,
but none that combined it with sugar, let alone milk.  Coffee is much later.

In fact, one of the earlier success stories in the Mediterranean is the
tomato, which was used (cooked) in period there.  BTW: the old line about 
Europeans being superstitious about tomatos is based largely on a correct 
realization on their part and a misunderstanding on ours.  Tomatos are 
related to nightshade, and the leaves _are_ poisonous.  Medievals tended 
to eat lots of greens: references to beets in English recipes are to beet 
_greens_, not to the root.  Tomato _greens_ are dangerous.  There probably
was some suspicion of the fruit as well, based on the extension that eating
nightshade fruit is a Very Bad Idea; but the primary warnings are about
the greens.

However: the word in Persian for "tomato" is pre-Columban, and refers to
something that was used in the same recipes without remark as the later
tomato.  There are paintings showing them, and they look like, well,
tomatos.  I don't know what they were, and haven't been interested enough
in Middle Eastern cuisine to chase them down.

I also don't know how quickly New World gourds and squashes caught on, or
how one would check, since they'd probably be referred to using the same
terms as old world gourds (white flowered gourd, primarily).  In general, 
things seem to have caught on quickly if they were close analogs of familiar 
things, and slowly otherwise.

>I also recall a gripe that tea was OOP.  By 1492, there was already fairly
>extensive trade with the far east for luxury goods such as china, tea, and
>spices; indeed, this was the very reason Columbus set out on his voyage --
>to find a more direct route to the far east.  I'm not sure when the first
>European expidition sailed around the horn of Africa, but it must have been
>a significant period of time before 1492.  When did European <-> Far Eastern
>trade become common? 

Long before tea use in western Europe.  Spices, yes; tea, no.  For that
matter, spice trade, yes; tea trade, no.  The fact that people have contact
with location X does not mean that they trade in their foodstuffs.  There's
also reason to suppose that flavorings (spices and herbs) are far more
traded than basic food items.  The big exception seems to be rice, which 
occurs in 15% of English recipes in the 13th and 14th centuries, and certainly 
isn't grown locally.

>These foods would definatly be OOP for an early period persona; A viking
>might be able to argue in favor of the North American foods (potatos, corn,
>turkey, squash, etc) seeing that there is evidence of pre-Columbian Viking
>settlements in NA.  I seem to recall hearing that the reason the Viking's
>didn't prosper in NA was partially due to their rejection of the native 
>foodstuffs.

And what percentage of all the Norse who went viking or knew someone who did
had any contact with anyone who had ever been to North America?

>Europeans could be argued to have knowledge/possession of far eastern foods
>and spices any time after the Crusades.  I understand that the Arabic/ Middle
>Eastern cultures traded with the Far East from before the 10th cent.  

I prefer to base my arguments on existing records of trade, household
accounts, and recipes.  These suggest very strong adoption of a few items
(almonds, for instance, and spices), but no wholesale introduction of new
foods, and certainly no general knowledge of what was eaten in the far
east, let alone possession of the items to make the dishes.

Please consider: travellers did not adopt the clothing styles of the places
they went wholesale, even while they were there, let alone when they came
home.  You will not find 13th century English lords wearing abbas, or 16th 
century Spaniards wearing Aztec styles in Seville.  They didn't adopt the 
language, or the habits, or the legends, or the stories.  Why do you so 
blythely assume they adopted the food?  It's not as if they had nothing of 
their own to eat.

It's not hard to find out what people really ate.  We don't have to 
speculate on stuff like this.

Cheers,
-- Angharad/Terry


Newsgroups: rec.org.sca
From: mfy at sli.com (Mike Yoder)
Subject: Re: New World foods in period (Was: Feast Formats)
Organization: Software Leverage, Inc. Arlington, Ma
Date: Tue, 9 Nov 1993 23:15:10 GMT

A portrait which food aficionados would find interesting is Arcimboldo's
"Rudolf II as Vertumnus," which is reproduced in _Arcimboldo the Magnificent_.
I do not recall when the painting was done, but Arcimboldo's lifetime fell
entirely within period.

This picture depicts Rudolf as an assembly of vegetables, fruits, etc.; his ear
is unmistakably an ear of maize, which is a striking coincidence.  I would like
to know whether 16th C. Italian contained the equivalent of our expression "an
ear of corn."

I am certain this is considerably earlier than the 1597 reference to maize
which David/Cariadoc cited, but it does not indicate more than the bare fact
that maize was considered edible.  It might be, for example, that it was used
to make bread rather than being eaten boiled or whatever.

It might be useful to examine the picture closely and enumerate the items found
therein.  But I leave this to the cooks among us to decide.

    Franz Joder von Joderhuebel (Michael F. Yoder) [mfy at sli.com]
"It looks like gray goop."
"Ah, but it's period gray goop!"
    -- ritual exchange over oatmeal between Franz Joder and Thome de Laurent


Newsgroups: rec.org.sca
From: mittle at watson.ibm.com (Arval d'Espas Nord)
Subject: Re: New World foods in period (Was: Feast Formats)
Date: Wed, 10 Nov 1993 17:03:59 GMT
Organization: IBM T.J. Watson Research

Greetings from Arval!  Franz wrote:

> This picture depicts Rudolf as an assembly of vegetables, fruits, etc.; his ear
> is unmistakably an ear of maize, which is a striking coincidence.  I would like
> to know whether 16th C. Italian contained the equivalent of our expression "an
> ear of corn."

It would be surprising, since that meaning of "ear" in English derives from
Middle English "ere, er" and thence from Old English "ear", both of which
apparently referred specifically to the fruiting head of a stalk of grain.
The words are related to words for "edge".  It seems unlikely that Italian
would have developed the same homonym coincidentally.

===========================================================================
Arval d'Espas Nord                                   mittle at watson.ibm.com


From: DDF2 at cornell.edu (David Friedman)
Newsgroups: rec.org.sca
Subject: Re: New World foods in period (Was: Feast Formats)
Date: 11 Nov 1993 05:30:04 GMT
Organization: Cornell Law School

In article <MFY.93Nov9181510 at ravel.sli.com>, mfy at sli.com (Mike Yoder)
wrote:

> 
> A portrait which food aficionados would find interesting is Arcimboldo's
> "Rudolf II as Vertumnus,"  ...his ear
> is unmistakably an ear of maize, which is a striking coincidence. 

...

> I am certain this is considerably earlier than the 1597 reference to maize
> which David/Cariadoc cited,

>     Franz Joder von Joderhuebel (Michael F. Yoder) [mfy at sli.com]

I am sorry if I was unclear. My quote was not intended as evidence on when
Europeans became aware of maize but as evidence of what Europeans, or at
least one prominent writer, thought of the idea of eating it as of the end
of the sixteenth century. There is a reference to growing Maize locally by
a German writer in 1542.

David/Cariadoc
DDF2 at Cornell.Edu


From: PBOYNTON%SESCVA at snybufva.CS.snybuf.EDU (ROWENA NI DHONNCHAIDH)
Newsgroups: rec.org.sca
Subject: New World Foods in Europe
Date: 9 Nov 1993 11:53:39 -0500
Organization: from SUNY College at Buffalo, NY 14222

	I had already posted, in the 993 thread, on the advantages of potatoes
in the New World, and one experts opinion on why they spread so fast (they can
be a complete nutritional meal, they grow in room that the standard crops
didn't use, they stored in the ground and thus didn't need to be harvested and
stored, and couldn't be easily stolen or raided, etc.)

	that same author (william H. McNeil, professor emeritus in history at
the University of Chicago) writes: "Northern Europeans, such as the harvesters
pictured opposite, relied primarily on rye, the only grain that dependably
ripened in the short and rainy summers.  But the climate was equally suited for
potatoes. ... By the end of the 16th century, Basques along the northern coast
of Spain were cultivating the tuber.  The potato's first record in European
literature appeared in 1597 in John Gerard's Herball."

	He also reports that shipping records indicate that  "shortly after
the Spaniards conquered Peru in 1536, Spanish ships operating in Pacific waters
off the coast of Peru began to use potatoes as a cheap food for sailors."
It seems to become a cheap shipboard food for the Atlantic crossing right
after, and for sailors around Spain sometime after 1550.

	The previously mentioned Herball is part of a record of a kind of
"potato craze" before 1600, that is recorded in the Herball.  Gerard "praised
the food value of the tubers and even recommended a meal of them as a stimulus
to sexual potency."

	He does not find many listings for corn until 1650, pointing out the
difficulty of making it grow without the right climate and amount of water.
However, there is a record for maize arrizing  in the Chinese province of
Yunnan in the 1550's.  And "peanuts were praised by an agricultural writer as
early as 1538, and in 1594 the governor of Fukien, on the southern coast,
touted sweet potatoes as an answer to a widespread failure of other crops in
his province in that year."

	"...maize is recorded as being grown in West Africa by 1550, and an
ambiguous Portuguese text may attest to its presence as early as 1502.  Maize
reached the coast of East Africa by 1561..."

	Sugar:  "Duty was paid on sugar shipped from Pernambuco to Portugal as
early as 1526; and a sturdy industry was in full swing by the time the Spanish
Caribbean industry was stagnating, around 1580."

	Professor McNeill thinks that many crops were well known, and eaten, by
the Europeans before 1600: "These crops included maize, potatoes, sweet
potatoes, tomatoes, peanuts, manioc, cacao, as well as various kinds of
peppers, beans, and squashes."

	I hope this answer - quoting an author who bases his work more on
shipping and agricultural records than on cookbooks - will help answer the
query:  My question is how soon after Columbus bumped into the New World were
these
food items introduced to Europe?  Would it not be safe to assume that these
foods would appear on the table of a post-columbian noble, as delicacies?
How common did these foods become in Europe during the 108 years between
1492 and 1600?"

And "peanuts were  Yunnan in the 1550s.  "
   ----------------------------------------------------------------
   Rowena ni Dhonnchaidh              BITNET: PBOYNTON at SNYESCVA.BITNET
   .       INTERNET:PBOYNTON at sescva.esc.edu
   Shire of Glenn Linn, EK
   
  ------------------------------------------------------------------


From: ayotte at milo.NOdak.EDU (Robert Arthur Ayotte)
Newsgroups: rec.org.sca
Subject: Tomatoes: You can put your WEED in them.
Date: 9 Nov 1993 20:15:47 -0500
Organization: North Dakota State University ACM, Fargo ND

In article <CG8suF.8LK at acsu.buffalo.edu> you wrote:

: 	My friend Karen and I met a wild-looking hippie guy at a chamber
: music concert in Cornell a few years ago (Elizabethan Conversation-- and they
: let me play with their lutes!) HE said that green tomatoes are narcotic. (Hey,
: Your Grace, watch out for mad botanists at chamber music concerts...)
: 	Fried green tomatoes anyone?
: 	On another note, every go up to a hurdy-gurdy player and ask if they
: know any Dead?

: 		Tristan

	Tomatoes are in in the same family (Solanaceae) as a large number of 
other plants (eggplant, tobacco, petunia, ...deadly night shade (aka 
wonderberry)).  This family is known for producing alkaloid poisons and 
in the case of Datura a hallucinogenic property.  Many of the wild
verieties of our current food crops from this family produce poisons
in their unripe forms.  It's a tribute to selective breeding that most modern 
tomatoes are not toxic when green.
	SIDE NOTE 1) Deadly nightshade is only deadly whne unripe or over 
ripe, when ripe it's non-toxic and for a long time has been used in pies
in some areas of this country, but be careful....
	Side Note 2) Potatoes produce an alkaloid poison in their skins 
when they are exposed to sunlight while growing.  You can see this in the 
green color that you sometimes see in the lighter color potatoes.  That's
why it's suggested you always peel them well (thus removing the possible 
toxins).  The possible dangers are VERY slight.

	Also, the reason the tomato did not catch on rapidly was it's 
connection to the nightshade, it was thought poison by many.

Horace


From: DDF2 at cornell.edu (David Friedman)
Newsgroups: rec.org.sca
Subject: Re: Tomatoes: You can put your WEED in them.
Date: 11 Nov 1993 14:56:49 GMT
Organization: Cornell Law School

In article <9311100035.AA13897 at milo.NoDak.edu>, ayotte at milo.NOdak.EDU
(Robert Arthur Ayotte) wrote:

> 	Also, the reason the tomato did not catch on rapidly was it's 
> connection to the nightshade, it was thought poison by many.
> 
> Horace

I have often seen this assertion made, but I do not think I have ever seen
any actual evidence--sixteenth century writers warning that tomatoes were
related to nightshade for example. I believe eggplant, which was probably
the most common vegetable in medieval Islamic cuisine, is also related to
the nightshade, as are a fair number of other things, as you point out. It
may just be another case of a plausible sounding guess that got converted
into a historical fact by multiple repetitions--does anyone know?

Tomatoes did not catch on particularly slowly--they were being eaten in
Italy in the sixteenth century.

David/Cariadoc
DDF2 at Cornell.Edu


From: jtn at nutter.cs.vt.edu (Terry Nutter)
Newsgroups: rec.org.sca
Subject: Re: Far Eastern Trade (Was: New World foods in period)
Date: 18 Nov 1993 05:15:45 GMT
Organization: The Rialto

Greetings, all, from Angharad ver' Rhuawn.

Ross Dickson wrote:

>>                               The big exception seems to be rice, which 
>>occurs in 15% of English recipes in the 13th and 14th centuries, and
>>certainly isn't grown locally.
>
>Does anyone else find this weird?  Where's the nearest place to England
>that rice was grown in 1200-1400?  Surely they didn't transport cheap
>grain regularly all the way from East Asia, did they?
>
>Or is "rice" another one of those words that didn't mean then exactly
>what it means now?  ("That word -- I do not think it means what you
>think it means...")

"Rice" means "rice".  That's clear.  

Before passing it off as a cheap grain: rice has some significant 
advantages relative to wheat (or rye, or oats), especially in a culture 
whose dishes frequently are a pot of something basically liquid and 
thickened, or something with a thickened sauce.  Rice flour has no 
gluten.  Because of this, you can dump it into a pot of stew over a 
not-well-regulated heat source, stir, and get gravy instead of the 
disgusting lumps that wheat flour makes in largely unaffected base.  
It is a _far_ better sauce base than straight wheat flour.  It is 
also more delicate and neutral in flavor, so that it lets the flavor 
of the broth come through better.  Since discovering it, I have
quit using wheat flour to make modern gravies.  (It's worth noting
that I know of both bread and amydon -- wheat starch -- being used
to thicken medieval sauces, but never wheat flour.  Not dumb,
those medievals.)

In addition, for the simple price of not grinding the stuff, boil it
and you've got a rather more interesting dish than boiled wheat.
Frumenty dishes exist, but are greatly outnumbered by dishes whose
primary constituent is rice.  And of course there's blancmange
(essentially chicken and rice, cooked in almond milk).

And it travels very well, doesn't spoil if it's kept even moderately
dry, and keeps essentially forever.

Hope this makes things less mystifying.

Cheers,

-- Angharad/Terry


From: DDF2 at cornell.edu (David Friedman)
Newsgroups: rec.org.sca
Subject: Re: 15th cen. Irish and Hungarian recipies
Date: 14 Nov 1993 19:02:15 GMT
Organization: Cornell Law School

In article <1993Nov12.143209.4637 at martha.utcc.utk.edu>,
swhite at utkvx.utk.edu (White, Steven Carter) wrote:

> Greetings Good Gentles, from Tiarna Samildanach MacMathghamhain the Giant of
> 	Thor's Mountain.
> 
> 	I am looking for Fifteenth century Irish and Hungarian recipies.  Does
> anyone out there know of some good sources?  I hope to base a feast on four
> removes, two of traditional Irish dishes and two on traditional Hungarian
> dishes.

Good luck.

I saw a reference in a modern book on Hungarian cooking to the existence of
a manuscript of recipes from, I think, 1400. I have no reason to think that
it has ever been published, let alone translated. I have a copy of an
(untranslated) Hungarian 17th century cookbook. I do not know of the
existence of any period Irish cookbooks.

Note that "traditional" and "period" are not synonyms. Traditional
Hungarian cooking uses paprika--a New World spice that could not have been
used in fifteenth century Hungarian recipes (at least prior to the
1490's--and realistically not until the mid sixteenth century or later).
Potatoes are a central ingredient of traditional Irish cooking--and are
also from the New World.

David/Cariadoc
DDF2 at Cornell.Edu


From: jtn at nutter.cs.vt.edu (Terry Nutter)
Newsgroups: rec.org.sca
Subject: Re: Feast formats
Date: 22 Nov 1993 19:49:24 GMT
Organization: The Rialto

Greetings, all, from Angharad ver' Rhuawn.

Henry Troup writes,

>There are turnips, which are small (or large) and white fleshed,
>and there are rutabagas or swedes (not an ethnic slur!) which are
>yellow to orange fleshed.
>
>But there is some evidence that these were not regarded as "people food"
>in the SCA period.

Say what?  At least for 14th and 15th C England, where turnips were
called rapes, this is not so.  There are surviving recipes for them,
in cookbooks intended for noble kitchens.  Cariadoc posted one such
recipe not long ago.

Or do you mean rutabagas and swedes were not regarded as fit for human
consumption, though turnips were? 

When and where do you mean?

OTOH, I have never seen a single recipe for anything in period that
looked like a modern stew, with turnips in place of potatos.

Cheers,

-- Angharad/Terry


From: jtn at nutter.cs.vt.edu (Terry Nutter)
Newsgroups: rec.org.sca
Subject: Re: Rhubarb
Date: 22 Nov 1993 19:53:24 GMT
Organization: The Rialto

Greetings, all, from Angharad ver' Rhuawn.

Henry Troup writes,

>Rhubarb needs *lots* of sugar for most people's taste. Sugar was very
>expensive.

But sugar is also one of the top ten ingredients in 14th C cooking.  For
that matter, number two (number one being salt) is _saffron_.

Beef and lamb are both expensive in the contemporary US.  It would be
rather misleading to say that they aren't eaten.  Given the actual distribution
of ingredients that I find in recipes, I find arguments from "They didn't
do it, 'cause it was expensive" profounding unconvincing.

The more convincing argument about rutabagas is that they don't show up
in any of the 14th C collections I have access to, and I have yet to come
across them in a 15th C one.

Cheers,

-- Angharad/Terry


From: CMCCRAW at saturn.uark.EDU (Cassandra McCraw)
Newsgroups: rec.org.sca
Subject: Everyday food
Date: 3 Dec 1993 12:40:07 -0500
Organization: University of Arkansas

I found this in ALL MANNERS OF FOOD by Stephen Mennell (NY NY:Basil
Blackwell 1985). This information is tailored more to the peasants
than the rich, but sheds some light on everyday food.
p. 47 Mennell tells us that since we lack an abundance of surviving
manuscripts to describe food preparation, we can look to kitchen
equipment for clues. Almost every peasant owned a brass cooking pot
or pan and a ceramic pot. (I assume this is also true of upper
classes.)Baking ovens were rarer and often communal.
p. 48 From the above we can extrapolate that cereals in the form of
porridges and broths and soups were staples of the diet. Mennell says
that until the 20th century soup was a staple dish at every meal and
was perhaps the only meal for the poor. It is thought that onions,
cabbages, beans and parsley were frequent ingredients.

I wonder if I should alert Campbells (per bend gules and argent?) that
they are ignoring the historically correct "soup for breakfast"
market? (Though I would personally rather have a cup of coffee than a
bowl of cabbages & beans!)

Gastronomically yours,
Fionna nic Alisdair

    Cassandra McCraw   Internet: CMCCRAW at SATURN.UARK.EDU
    Serials Department, University of Arkansas Libraries
    Fayetteville  AR   72701


From: DDF2 at cornell.edu (David Friedman)
Newsgroups: rec.org.sca
Subject: Re: period edible plants
Date: 7 Jan 1994 03:58:15 GMT
Organization: Cornell Law School

Honur Horne-Jaruk  (Alizaunde, Demoiselle de Bregeuf) wrote:

> 	For period fruit: Miller nurseries advertise in every gardening
> publication. They sell, along with many other marvelous antique varieties,
> a genuine, no joke, documented pre-1600 apple tree-- the Gillyflower.

Miller is one source, but Southmeadow Fruit Gardens, 2363 Tilbury Place,
Birmingham, Michigan 48009, has a much larger selection of period fruit
trees, as well as a very informative catalog. My memory from the last time
I went through it is that there are a dozen or so period apples, as well as
one or two plums, a "maybe" cherry, ...  . 

> 	They also sell at least one period rose, called by some nursuries
> the `Robin Hood' rose- Rosa Rugosa. 

Roses of Yesterday and Today, in California, has a bunch of period
varieties; I am afraid I do not have their address ready to hand.

> 	 An example of why I belive this, and a perpetual sore point
> with me: Favas are the ONLY old world bean, cran- and blue- berries the 
> ONLY new world bush fruits.

This is a little misleading. Lentils and garbanzo beans (aka chickpeas) are
also period. So are soybeans, although I have never seen evidence of their
use in Europe in period. The European bilberry is a member of the same
genus as the New World blueberry; I am not sure how similar it is in taste.
There are both old world and new world cranberries, although the current
commercial varieties are new world. My source for much of this information
is the book by McGee on the history of food--I have a copy around somewhere
if anyone wants more detailed cites.
-- 
David/Cariadoc (who will be in Chicago for the next two weeks, and probably
not reading the Rialto).
DDF2 at Cornell.Edu


Newsgroups: rec.org.sca
Subject: Re: period edible plants
From: una at bregeuf.stonemarche.org (Honur Horne-Jaruk)
Date: Fri, 07 Jan 94 11:38:48 EST
Organization: MORE! Some? ...any?
Summary: further clarification on old/new world beans and berries

DDF2 at cornell.edu (David Friedman) writes:

> Honur Horne-Jaruk  (Alizaunde, Demoiselle de Bregeuf) wrote:
> 
> > 	 An example of why I belive this, and a perpetual sore point
> > with me: Favas are the ONLY old world bean, cran- and blue- berries the 
> > ONLY new world bush fruits.
> 
> This is a little misleading. Lentils and garbanzo beans (aka chickpeas) are
> also period. So are soybeans, although I have never seen evidence of their
> use in Europe in period. The European bilberry is a member of the same
> genus as the New World blueberry; I am not sure how similar it is in taste.
> There are both old world and new world cranberries, although the current
> commercial varieties are new world. My source for much of this information
> is the book by McGee on the history of food--I have a copy around somewhere
> if anyone wants more detailed cites.
> -- 
> David/Cariadoc (who will be in Chicago for the next two weeks, and probably
> not reading the Rialto).
> DDF2 at Cornell.Edu
God give you good grace, friend Cariadoc!
	Your Grace, I fear that your post is as unclear as mine. BOTANICALLY
Favas are the only old word bean. Lentils, chickpeas/garbanzos, and soybeans
are old world (though I also know of no european cultivation of soybeans.)
But they are not in the same class (family? genus? I'm a lot of things, but
not a botanist) as beans like pinto, red, soldier, and black beans. (In fact, 
if I'm remembering correctly, the nearest botanical relative of the soybean 
is the new world peanut!) 
	Also, bilberries, while a close relative of blueberries, don't really 
taste particularly like our wild blueberries, and bear no discernable 
relationship to our cultivated blueberries at all. Same problem with old
world cranberries (bogberries)- Although I've seen conflicting reports in
print, one claiming bogberries much sweeter, the others much less sweet
and more bitter, than the American/Canadian kind.
	Would some nice European SCAdian with access to new world crans
and blues please do a taste comparison with bils and bogs, and share the 
results? Anachronistic Minds Want To Know...
	And just to prove I'm not any flavor of Nazi, authentic or otherwise-
"Bean soup, milady?"
"Yes, please. I believe I recognise the spicing; is this soup not sometimes
made with favas, instead of chickpeas?"
"Oh, yes, milady, often- but I have lost cousins to eating favas, and thus
I use them not, for fear of a like fate."
"Excellently made and excellently thought. Your collapse in our midst would
have no peasant effect upon our merriment."
(We both collapse with laughter, and continue trying to swap recipes in
forsoothly)
I was younger then...


From: David Schroeder <ds4p+ at andrew.cmu.edu>
Newsgroups: rec.org.sca
Subject: Re: period edible plants
Date: Fri,  7 Jan 1994 08:21:34 -0500
Organization: Doctoral student, Industrial Administration, Carnegie Mellon, Pittsburgh, PA

Hi folks!

Cariadoc wrote about period fruits and closed with:

> My source for much of this information is the book by McGee 
> on the history of food--I have a copy around somewhere
> if anyone wants more detailed cites.

I enjoyed reading about the history of various edibles in
McGee as well, but grew less trusting when I noted that he
repeats the old tale about people in the Middle Ages eating
highly spiced meats to cover up the taste of spoilage.
I don't think his scholarship is all that great.

But happy cooking, friends -- my best -- Bertram


From: djheydt at uclink.berkeley.edu (Dorothy J Heydt)
Newsgroups: rec.org.sca
Subject: Re: Feast formats
Date: 6 Dec 1993 17:33:20 GMT
Organization: University of California, Berkeley

In article <754838219.AA03278 at therose.fidonet.org>,
Suze Hammond <Suze.Hammond at f56.n105.z1.fidonet.org> wrote:
>
>As an antidote to that "wisdom" have someone give you the recipe for
>"Armored Turnips", a period dish rather like turnips au gratin. (Methinks
>yclept "armored" because they are baked laid in a scale-armor pattern...)

So do you have the recipe?  Could you post it?

I found a recipe for "Armoured Chicken" in a late-period Spanish cookbook
that I want to try someday; but you have to have a spit turned by a dog,
slavey, or electric motor and I don't have any at present.  In essence,
you dredge the chicken in a spicy batter and baste it as it turns, and
you end up with a savory crust of which the author says "and the cuirass
will be worth more than the chicken."

Dorothea of Caer-Myrddin		Dorothy J. Heydt
Mists/Mists/West			UC Berkeley
Argent, a cross forme'e sable		djheydt at uclink.berkeley.edu


From: sbloch at ms.uky.edu (Stephen Bloch)
Newsgroups: rec.org.sca,rec.food.historic
Subject: Re: REQUEST: "medieval" references to hummus, tabbouli, etc.
Date: 10 Mar 1994 09:19:19 -0500
Organization: University Of Kentucky, Dept. of Math Sciences

David Friedman <DDF2 at cornell.edu> quoted:
>> Specific items I would like information about include: hummus (chickpea dip), tabbouleh (parsley/mint/wheat mix), and kibbeh. Now, if these items were not found in period, help me with some alternative items.

and replied:
>"Hummus" means "chickpea," and is a common period ingredient. I have never
>seen a period recipe for "Hummus bi Tahini," which is the familiar dip. Nor
>do I think I know of period examples of the other things you mention.

I'll second that.  I've seen all the major INGREDIENTS of hummus,
tabbouleh, and kibbeh in medieval Arabic sources, but those particular
dishes are conspicuously absent.

>Counterfeit (Vegetarian) Isfriy of Garbanzos is a little like felafel It
>is in Manuscrito Anonimo, and will be in the next edition of the
>Miscellany--but that will be a few years yet, I expect.

Yes, I've made this once or twice.  I haven't worked out the proportions
and seasonings to my liking yet, but it formed beautiful pancakes.

You might also check my article in TI about four years ago, "Some Receipts
of al-Andalus".  I don't remember the issue number, but the cover
illustration is a woman bending down to gather herbs, silhouetted against
a large blue circle.  All the recipes in that article are from the 13th-
century Manuscrito Anonimo that David mentioned, and include both my
translations (Charles Perry hadn't done his yet) and my redactions.

-- 
					Stephen Bloch
				     sbloch at s.ms.uky.edu


From: DDF2 at cornell.edu (David Friedman)
Newsgroups: rec.org.sca
Subject: Re: REQUEST: "medieval" references to hummus, tabbouli, etc.
Date: 6 Mar 1994 00:22:31 GMT
Organization: Cornell Law School

> I'm currently working on a multiple-dish cooking entry involving an assortment of Arabic foods. What I'm looking for are references to what types of foods are included in a mezze (hors d'ouevres, finger foods), not main dishes. 
> 
> Specific items I would like information about include: hummus (chickpea dip), tabbouleh (parsley/mint/wheat mix), and kibbeh. Now, if these items were not found in period, help me with some alternative items.

"Hummus" means "chickpea," and is a common period ingredient. I have never
seen a period recipe for "Hummus bi Tahini," which is the familiar dip. Nor
do I think I know of period examples of the other things you mention.

Badinjan Muhassa (in the Miscellany, 6th edition--it sounds as though you
have the 5th, and I do not know if it includes it) is a good dip. It has
eggplant, but I have not gotten any complaint about that. Isfanakh Mutajjan
isn't bad. Barmakiya is good cold.

If you are not limiting yourself to cold things, Eggplant pancakes are
pretty good. Zabarbada of Fresh Cheese is a sort of melted cheese dip. 

There are lots of good Islamic sweets, but that does not sound like what
you are looking for.

What you should really do is get one of the major sources--either
al-Baghdadi (which is in volume I of my cookbook collection) or, even
better, Charles Perry's new translation of Manuscrito Anonimo (in volume
II). They are both 13th c, one eastern, one western. A huge number of
period islamic recipes, and you can go through looking for the sorts of
things you want. That gives you a much bigger selection than looking at
secondary sources, and it is also much more fun working the recipes out
yourself. 

Counterfeit (Vegetarian) Isfîriyâ of Garbanzos is a little like felafel It
is in Manuscrito Anonimo, and will be in the next edition of the
Miscellany--but that will be a few years yet, I expect.

> I have a copy of Cariadoc's _Miscellany_ up through 1991, and Roden's _Book of Middle Eastern Food_, 

Claudia Roden ordered Perry's translation of Manuscrito Anonimo from me.
She is one of my heros, since I discovered my first islamic primary source
(al Baghdadi) through the reference to it in her book.
-- 
David/Cariadoc
DDF2 at Cornell.Edu


From: DDF2 at cornell.edu (David Friedman)
Newsgroups: rec.org.sca
Subject: Re: Source for Mastic
Date: 8 Mar 1994 15:41:24 GMT
Organization: Cornell Law School

In article <CMC118.HBz at world.std.com>, ghita at world.std.com (Susan Earley)
wrote:

> Anyone got one?  Our Head Cook is looking for it and can't find anyone who
> carries it.

Check Indian or Middle eastern grocery stores. Chicago has a bunch of them
on Devon. Or try the grocery store attached to Moti Mahal, on Belmont a few
blocks west of Clark.

Use with care--it is strong stuff. 
-- 
David/Cariadoc
DDF2 at Cornell.Edu


Newsgroups: rec.org.sca
From: marian at world.std.com (marian walke)
Subject: Re: hot chocolate
Organization: The World Public Access UNIX, Brookline, MA
Date: Sun, 10 Apr 1994 01:46:01 GMT

Phyllis_Gilmore at rand.org (Phyllis Gilmore) writes:

>In Article <2o3ns4$kut at usenet.rpi.edu>, habura at vccnorth08.its.rpi.edu
>(Andrea Marie Habura) wrote:

>>Yes, mole sauce is made with unsweetened chocolate. I am not particularly
>>fond of it, but my husband thinks it's dynamite with chicken, so I make
>>it occasionally. I think it tastes better the more chili peppers you 
>>put in. I very much doubt it's period. 
>>
>Actually, Alison, I too doubt it's period.  I was really only hoping to
>confirm that this sauce is an example of a combination of chocolate and
>chili peppers--which you and others have done. 

Actually, Phyllis and Alison, it appears to be just barely in period, if you 
think period goes to 1650, and if you're refering to the Iberian penisula.  
The following is a quote from _Food_in_History_ by Reay Tannahill (New York: 
Stein and Day, 1973), pp 287-289:

    "In Spain by 1631, the preparation of a cup of chocoalate had
  become a major operation. 'For every hundred cocoa beans, mix 
  two pods of chili or Mexican pepper...or, failing those, two
  Indian peppercorns, a handful of aniseed, two of those flowers
  known as "little ears" or *vinacaxtlides,* and two of those known
  as *mesasuchil*...Instead of the latter one could include the 
  powder of the six roses of Alexaundria [an apothecaries' formula]...
  a little pod of logwood [a dye], two drachmas of cinnamon, a
  dozen almonds and as many hazelnuts, half a pound of sugar, and
  enought arnotto [a dye] to give color to the whole.'"

This is footnoted as "Antonio Colmenero, quoted in Franklin, Vol XIII, 
pp. 161-162." By Franklin, she means Alfred Franklin, 
_Vie_privee_d'autrefois,..._12e_au_18e_siecles. (27 vol. Paris, 1887-1902).
Vol XIII is titled: "Le cafe, le the, et le chocolat." [Francophiles, 
forgive me, I don't know how to make the accents correctly without my 
ASCII cheatsheet handy.]  Antonio Colmenero wrote a book on "On 
chocolate" which was first published in Madrid (in Spanish) in 1631.  By 
the end of the 17th century it had been translated and 
published in French, Italian, and English.  I don't remember the exact 
dates and titles of the translations, but I can look them up if anyone 
really cares.

Tannahill goes on to say that "by the early seventeenth century, a 
considerable amount of chocolate paste was being exported to Italy and 
Flanders, but it was not until 1659 that the new drink became widely 
known in France."

This may be more than anyone *really* wants to know about drinking hot 
chocolate in period...but you *did* ask...

--Old Marian
(marian at world.std.com) 


From: RCMANN at delphi.com
Newsgroups: rec.org.sca
Subject: Period tableware and dishes
Date: 2 Apr 1995 06:08:22 GMT
Organization: Delphi Internet Services Corporation


Quoting jtn from a message in rec.org.sca
   [snip]
   > Chocolate and potatos are both New World foods.  There was some very
   > restricted use of chocolate (almost exclusively in drinks without sugar
   > or milk, primarily in Spain) in the 16th C, but it didn't become
   > popular until after period.  I'm not sure that potatos were eaten by
   > humans at all in Europe in period, although they were definitely fed
   > to livestock.  I have yet to see evidence of their being eaten by the
   > upper classes even close to period.  Then again, my primary interest
   > is in 13th-15th C cookery, and I admit to being weak on 16th.

   I know of at one period recipe calling for potatoes, but even in the 
   *17th* century cookbooks, it doesn't seem to be a commonly used food.  
   The period recipe is in pt. 1 of _The Good Huswifes Jewell_ by Thomas 
   Dawson (1596).  The recipe is "To make a tarte that is a courage to a
   man or woman".  It calls for a "potaton", among other ingredients.
   According to Karen Hess in her annotations to _Martha Washington's Booke
   of Cookery_, the word "courage" in the recipe title refers to the
   alleged aphrodisiacal properties of the "potaton".  The same recipe also
   calls for the "braynes of three or foure cocke Sparrowes".  According to
   a 1584 book on health, sparrows "are very hotte, and stirre up Venus,
   especially the cocke sparowes."

   > Cheers,
   > -- Angharad
   > .

Robin Carroll-Mann ** rcmann at delphi.com
SCA: Brighid ni Chiarain, Settmour Swamp, East


From: aka at amelie.mit.edu (Alia  Atlas)
Newsgroups: rec.org.sca
Subject: Re: A Question concerning cooking
Date: 12 Apr 1995 15:08:56 GMT
Organization: Massachvsetts Institvte of Technology

In article <3me92q$ogu at lester.appstate.edu> MS7539 at CONRAD.APPSTATE.EDU  
(Stewart, Marie Alston         ) writes:
> 		the ubiquitous,  Rice and Peas  
...  
> 	When and how did rice enter the diet of the areas of Bologne,
> 	Padua, and Venice... ?  I would think Marco Polo would have 
> 	contributed... please, educate me... and point me towards your
> 	sources... 
> 	
> 	Many thanks, 
> 		Bridgette Kelly MacLean 
> 		The MacLean of Atlantia

I do not have any Italian sources near me, but I can definately state that  
rice was part of the southern German diet, as evidenced by a number of  
recipes in Das Buch von guter Spise.  Similiarly, there are a couple pea  
recipes, though none which include rice.

Caterina Sichling


From: HNHN15A at prodigy.com (Jana Russ)
Newsgroups: rec.org.sca
Subject: Re: A Question concerning cooking
Date: 12 Apr 1995 16:22:22 GMT
Organization: Prodigy Services Company  1-800-PRODIGY

According to the book  "Food and Drink in Britian from the Stone Age to 
the 19th Century" by C. Anne Wilson, rice was brought back to England in 
crusade times.  One reference is to  the Countess of Leicester and her 
family who used 110 pounds of rice between Xmas and Easter ( was popular 
in Leenten dishes) in 1265.  The usual recipe is a pottage (think rice 
pudding, not very sweet, but very custardy, add hard-boiled eggs  and/or  
peas or beans) and rice was also cooked with almond milk to serve with 
fish (that's the lenten part!
  
  Gwynhyvar
  Gwyntarian, Middle
  (Jana Russ  hnhn15A at prodigy.com)


From: jtn at cse.uconn.EDU (J. Terry Nutter)
Newsgroups: rec.org.sca
Subject: A Question concerning cooking
Date: 12 Apr 1995 15:07:27 -0400
Organization: The Internet

Greetings, all, from Angharad ver' Rhuawn.

Bridgette Kelly MacLean asks,

        In Atlantia I have noticed that one dish seems to be present
        at nearly every feast...
                the ubiquitous,  Rice and Peas
        Now I do know that this is a traditional Italian dish,
        especially in the springtime, when the peas are fresh, and
        in areas in the north of modern Italy.  My question is this...
        is it period?
        When and how did rice enter the diet of the areas of Bologne,
        Padua, and Venice... ?  I would think Marco Polo would have
        contributed... please, educate me... and point me towards your
        sources...

Apparently this is a new habit; I don't recall ever being served rice
and peas, and I haven't been out of kingdom _that_ long....  Anyhow,
rice appears in English cookbook collections beginning in the late
13th C (i.e. as far back as we have surviving collections).  However,
I don't recall seeing a dish that combines rice and peas in any English
or French collection from the 13th through 15th C.  (I don't know the
Italian corpus nearly so well.)  There are rice dishes.  There are pea
dishes.  I have not seen any rice-and-peas dishes.

Cheers,
-- Angharad/Terry


Newsgroups: rec.org.sca
From: ddfr at quads.uchicago.edu (david director friedman)
Subject: Re: Cooking for 50 at Pennsic (was YKYITSCAW)
Organization: The University of Chicago
Date: Sun, 23 Apr 1995 17:43:44 GMT

"Would folk in period have stewed meat and barley (or other grain)
together?" (Landi)

Yes. Harisa is one of the very standard dishes in medieval Islamic
cooking, and consists basically of wheat and meat cooked together.
Tharid, the Prophet's favorite dish, is stewed meat thickened with
bread crumbs. There are other medieval islamic dishes which use
stewed meat with rice cooked with it.

Landi also suggests that "chili peppers were fairly quickly accepted
in Europe, making them "period" for the last century or so of SCA
period." If so, I would be interested to see the evidence. I have
seen a reference to vegetable peppers being grown by someone in
Hungary at the end of the sixteenth century, but I cannot remember
having seen any recipe using them in any period cookbook. 

David/Cariadoc


From: greg at bronze.lcs.mit.edu (Greg Rose)
Newsgroups: rec.org.sca
Subject: Re: Cooking for 50 at Pennsic (was YKYITSCAW)
Date: 23 Apr 1995 15:02:06 -0400
Organization: Guest of MIT AI and LCS labs

Greetings, all, from Angharad ver' Rhuawn, posting from her lord's
account.

Cariadoc responds to a question of Landi's:

>"Would folk in period have stewed meat and barley (or other grain)
>together?" (Landi)
>
>Yes. Harisa is one of the very standard dishes in medieval Islamic
>cooking, and consists basically of wheat and meat cooked together.
>Tharid, the Prophet's favorite dish, is stewed meat thickened with
>bread crumbs. There are other medieval islamic dishes which use
>stewed meat with rice cooked with it.

Cariadoc correctly reminds me that I all too often give answers from
the non-Islamic cuisine, where there is also a rich surviving Islamic
cuisine (both European and Asiatic, as it happens) to consult.  Medieval
Islamic cookery frequently combines meat with grains, and for that matter 
meat with vegetables (especially, but not exclusively, eggplant, if my
memory serves me).

The answer for European cookery is, it depends what you mean.  Bread
crumbs are frequently used to thicken sauces, including for what we
would now classify as stews.  So is rice flour.  If you include that, 
yes.  If you count boiling grain in a meat or poultry broth, yes.  But 
otherwise, it is rare.  

To give you an idea how rare: for recipes in the 13th and 14th C English 
corpus, I looked for what grains were used, and came up with two: rice 
and wheat.  (I explicitly did _not_ include rice flour, wheat flour, or 
bread crumbs, since I was looking for boiled grain, not for thickened 
sauces.)  I then checked how many recipes included one or the other of 
these, and some variety of meat or poultry.  The answer is, of 447 
recipes, six contain at least one of each.  All six are recipes for 
Blaumange (essentially chicken and rice).

Blaumange is common, all right.  But apart from Blaumange, cooking meat
(or poultry) with grain is rare, at least in the cookbook corpus.  _Serving_
meat with boiled grain is common, though, at least with regard to frumenty,
which was very common with venison (and also served with other meats,
and sometimes fish, usually porpoise).

Cheers,
-- Angharad/Terry


Newsgroups: rec.org.sca
From: DDFr at Midway.UChicago.edu (David Friedman)
Subject: Re: Cooking for 50 at Pennsic (was YKYITSCAW)
Organization: University of Chicago Law School
Date: Tue, 2 May 1995 04:53:48 GMT

> Caterina, is there any cabbage recipes that are period, to your knowledge?

I am not Caterina, but the answer is yes. One of my earliest favorites is
Caboges from _Two Fifteenth Century Cookbooks_.
-- 
David/Cariadoc
DDFr at Midway.UChicago.Edu


From: jtn at cse.uconn.EDU (J. Terry Nutter)
Newsgroups: rec.org.sca
Subject: Cooking for 50 at Pennsic (was YKYITSCAW)
Date: 26 Apr 1995 23:47:17 -0400
Organization: The Internet

Ive Annor writes:

> Regarding Maize, it's been said that it is eaten by humans in Europe, 
> notably England.  I'm not sure this was true before 1600, and I'm 
> reasonably sure that it is not true outside of England. The maize grown
> in France, for instance, is excellent fodder, but not palatable for 
> humans.  And I have yet to see a European recipe of any kind, ancient or
> modern, that utilizes it.  This is a pity, as it is one of my favorite
> foods.

That was me, sort of.  What I actually said, is that maize was eaten in
Europe in period, and in England in 1960.  (BTW, my husband, who has spent
an aggregate, spread out, of about two years in England, some as a teenager,
some as an adult, also ate maize in restaurants there.)

Concerning Europe in period:  There is a book by Colette Abegg-Mengold
titled _Die Bezeichnungsgeschichte von Mais, Kartoffel und Ananas im
Italienischen: Probleme der Wortadoption und -adaption_.  It's a 
philological study of the word "mais"/"maiz"/other spellings in Italian,
and it is a gold mine of early references to the stuff.  There are 
literally twelve pages of quotes from various Italian sources discussing
maize in period (and of course lots and lots and lots more later).
The following is one of the quotations, taken from _Di Gonzalo Fernando
de Oviedo, la historia generale et naturale delle Indie occidentale..._
(1556) ["`" following a letter indicates an accent over it; "'" is
an apostrophe, not an accent]:

        E` il vero, che io ho veduto nel mio paese in Madrid
        il _Mahiz_, che e` il pane di questi luoghi, assai
        buono: et si pose, et nacque in un podere del Commendatore
        Hernando Ramires Galindo, presso a` quel devoto Heremo
        di nostro signor di Atoccia.  Ma in Andalusia in molte
        parti s'e` fatto ancho il _Mahiz_.

My Italian is -- well, I have some Latin, a lot of French, I know how
languages change, and I've got a Latin dictionary and grammar.  I daresay
someone else can do a better job of translation than I can, but here's
my best:

        It is true that I have seen Maize there in my district in
        Madrid, and that the bread of these places is quite good:
        and it is found and originates in [i.e. it is grown at] a
        farm belonging to Commendatore Hernando Ramires Galindo,
        near to that devotee of our lord of Attocia, Heremo.  But
        in Andalusia in many places Maize is also made [i.e. grown].

So there it is.  Bread made from maize (the primary form in which the
letters talking about Indians describe eating it, BTW) was made and
eaten in Madrid and Andalusia by 1556, and at least one author thought
it was great.

Which isn't to say that it was universally admired.  Here's another
rather delightful quote, from 1591, _Relatione del reame di Congo
et delle circonvicine contrade.  Tratta dalli scritti et rationamenti
di Odoardo Lopez Portoghese per Filippo Pigafetta_.

        Vi e` miglio bianco nominato Mazza di Congo, cioe` grano
        di Congo, et il _Maiz_, che e` il piu` vile de tutti, che
        dessi a` porci, et cosi anco il riso e` in poco prezzo,
        et al _Maiz_ dicono _Mazza Manuputo_, cioe` grano di
        Portogallo.

In my best English rendition:

        There is the white millet called Mazza of Congo, namely
        grain of the Congo, and maize, which is the most vile 
        of all, which is eaten by pigs, and thus is even less 
        costly than rice, and maize is called Mazza Manputo,
        namely grain of Portugal.

(Notice, BTW, the implication that rice is dirt cheap.)

The bottom line is that some people ate corn in Europe in period, and
some do today.  Others thought it was only fit to be fed to pigs, and
others today agree.

Beware absolutes.

Concerning modern Europe, let me show you a few recipes.  I only own one
European cookbook (a Larousse), and sadly, it is in Blacksburg, and I am
not.  But the library at school had two, one French, and one Italian.
Here's what I found in the _The Art of French Cooking.  Sumptuous recipes
and menus from the heart of the incomparable French cuisine_, translated
by Joseph Faulkner, p. 497 [":" in the middle of a word represents an 
umlaut over the preceding vowel; "'" likewise represents an acute accent]:

                              Mai:s en E'pis

        Corn on the cob is an american import now highly esteemed
        in France.  Cook some milky ears of corn 20 min. in salted
        boiling water.  Shuck the leaves from the ears and serve
        on a napkin with melted butter.  Corn on the cob may also
        be grilled.

(They're boiling it before they shuck it!  Well, to each his own....)
From _Luigi Carnacina's Great Italian Cooking: La Grande Cucina
Internazionale_, p. 219:

                                 Polenta

        Polenta is best cooked in a copper pan.  Italian cooks
        use a "paiolo," which is a kind of cauldron with a rounded
        bottom and, unlike most copper pots, it is not lined with
        tin.  Polenta meal is usually maize flour (comparable to
        the American cornmeal) but it may also be made of chest-
        nuts.  The following is the traditional Italian method of
        preparing polenta:

                4 cups polenta
                2 1/2 teasponns salt
                3 quarts boiling water (or more, as needed)

        Bring 2 quarts of water to a boil with the salt in a large
        copper pot.  Bring another quart of water to a boil in a
        saucepan; this will be needed as the cooking proceeds.  As
        soon as the water boils, add 2 1/2 cups of polenta, stir-
        ring constantly with a wooden spoon.  Traditionally, the
        stirring is clockwise only.  Reduce the heat.  As the
        polenta thickens, add a little more boiling water.  After
        15 minutes, add the remaining polenta and continue
        stirring and cooking, adding boiling water when it becomes
        too thick.  The polenta should cook for about 1 hour; it
        will be more digestible and lose any underlying bitterish
        taste if the cooking can be extended that long.  However,
        it is cooked when it comes easily away from the sides of 
        the pan.  The polenta may then be enjoyed soft and very
        hot, accompanied by any one of a number of sauces and
        garnishes; or it may be allowed to cool and harden, cut
        into various shapes, sprinkled with fresh butter and
        grated Parmesan cheese, arranged in layers with various
        fillings between, and baked, etc.  The sliced, hardened 
        polenta may be substituted for bread, especially when it
        is accompanied by a good graby or a dish of braised meat.

The next two pages give a variety of polentas, all based on corn
meal.  There is also a recipe for chicken sauted with corn fritters.

As a matter of fact, maize is very widely eaten in northern Italy (mostly
in the form of polenta), Romania, and throughout Eastern Europe.  It is,
in general, far less popular in Western Europe, but it is not unheard of.
My primary point, in the posting to which Ive Annor refers, is that one
should beware of absolutes.  I repeat it now.  Maize is, generally, unpopular
in much of Europe today; but it is _not_ exclusively used for fodder, in
France or anywhere else, and there are places where it is very popular.
(Indeed, according to Stanley Brandes's article on maize in _Ethnology_,
as of 1992, canned corn kernels sprinled on top of lettuce was all the
rage in restaurants in France, under the name "salade exotique".)

A final note.  I wasn't born knowing this stuff.  I didn't even know
most of it this morning, although I was familiar with the general outline.
I spent two hours at the library this afternoon, and this is the outcome.
My point, is that we have a choice.  We can insist on our opinions, or
we can research them.  The advantage of the latter procedure is that even
if your opinion was right to begin with, you will probably enrich your
understanding; and if you are wrong, you will find out, and you will not
insist on promulgating error.

One should be as skeptical, in the end, of one's opinions, as of absolutes.
-- Angharad/Terry


From: jtn at cse.uconn.EDU (J. Terry Nutter)
Newsgroups: rec.org.sca
Subject: Apple/Tinker cakes & Martha Washington (WAS: Breakfast poll)
Date: 26 Apr 1995 01:07:18 -0400
Organization: The Internet

Greetings, all, from Angharad ver' Rhuawn.

In the course of describing a recipe for apple cakes, Mistress Chimene 
says:

> The recipe as my lord and I classically make it is white flour and white sugar
> so that's not period*.  Exchanging honey would change the fluid balance
> drastically I would think; we've never tried it.  *I have some very general
> evicence that sugar as we know it was available by ca. 1250 but was 
> exceedingly
> rare, used in medicines and priced and considered practically a spice--nothing
> like as a replacement for honey until much later.  

I have heard this claimed elsewhere, but have not been able to find evidence
for it, and the surviving cookbook corpus seems to contradict it.  

In particular, out of 447 recipes from the 13th and 14th C in England, sugar 
appears in 155 (31%), while honey appears in only 31 (7%).  Likewise, out of 
205 recipes from the 15th C, sugar appears in 86 (42%), whereas honey appears 
in 14 (7%).  (The sample from the 13th and 14th C is very nearly all the 
recipes available; the sample from the 15th is much smaller relative to its 
population, as well as in absolute numbers, but seems to be reasonably
representative.)

In other words, sugar appears to be one of the most common ingredients in the
cookbook corpus, while honey is relatively rare.  Given the extreme frequency 
of saffron in English cuisine despite its cost (it is the second most common 
ingredient in the 13th and 14th C, after only salt; sugar, BTW, is third), I
find the argument from expense unconvincing, at least for upper class cuisine.

It is difficult to know how much sugar was used in individual recipes, as
opposed to overall; but we do know that they made candy of the stuff, that 
they candied ginger and orange peels, and that they made honest-to-gosh 
sweets, even as early as the 14th C.  (We also know that many dishes that
called for sugar were _not_ meant to be overall sweet; there are often
indications of that in the recipes themselves, such as suggestions to
add sugar "to abate the strength", or to sprinkle with sugar before serving.
But in a genuinely sweet dish, there is little reason to suppose that
sugar would be used sparingly.

BTW, I would argue from recipes for cakes if we had many of them; but
I don't think that their absence can necessarily be taken as indicating
that they didn't eat them.  We have no recipes for bread in the major
cookery collections -- for the excellent reason that those cookery 
collections originate from cooks, that is, heads of _kitchens_; and
the kitchen was a separate establishment from the _bakery_, which was
responsible for the bread.  I would not be surprised if cakes, were they
widely eaten, also fell under the bakery's purview.  I am weak in the
peripheral literature of such things as household accounts and contemporary
literary accounts of meals and the like, which may be the best place to 
look for evidence as to whether such things were eaten or not.

Cheers,
-- Angharad/Terry


From: rlovisol at candelo.dpie.gov.au (Ruth)
Newsgroups: rec.org.sca
Subject: Re: Cooking for 50 at Pennsic (was YKYITSCAW)
Date: 4 May 1995 12:23:04 +1000
Organization: Department of Primary Industry and Energy

derek.broughton at onlinesys.com (DEREK BROUGHTON) writes:

>In message <3n9i2f$kt0#news1.delphi.com>, IVANOR at delphi.com wrote:

>IR>By human beings?  It's fodder in Europe to this day.  And I believe the
>IR>rules pretty specifically state that we cannot consider New World foods in
>IR>preparing period menus.

>1) Yes, Corn is _mostly_ fodder in Europe today.  But if you look at the
>fields around here, that's what it's mostly for too.  It is eaten
>occasionally in Europe now, I don't know about in period.

>But what on Earth is this about "the rules".  What rules?  I certainly have
>never encountered an SCA rule that says we can't use new world foods.  And
>if we're talking A&S, the rules are simply that you have to document the use
>in period.

>Too many people creating too many "rules"...

I will agree with that one, too many people.  If you are interested, I have a period herbal which describes corn, and has pictures of corn, and lists all the uses of corn as an "herbal" cure.  It was obviously used for more than just fodder, and although this reference does say that there were not really many 
uses for it, it definitely quashes any ideas that they were not used at all!

Kiriel du Papillon 

>Coryn llith Rheged                 |  Canton of Wessex Mere
>mka Derek Broughton                |  Barony of Ramshaven
>derek.broughton at onlinesys.com      |  Principality of Ealdormere
>                                   |  Middle Kingdom


From: ddfr at best.com (David Friedman)
Newsgroups: rec.org.sca
Subject: Re: Food sources needed...Please help
Date: 14 Sep 1995 15:21:09 GMT
Organization: Best Internet Communications

In article <438vc6$o4o at access4.digex.net>, corun at access4.digex.net (Corun
MacAnndra) wrote:

> A Lady friend of mine has a late 16th c. recipe that uses tomatos in a
> sauce.

I want it. Or at least the source. I have seen references to tomatoes
being used in Italy in the 16th century, but no recipes.

> As for eggplant, I believe they were used in the middle east
> during the Abassyd Dynasty.

Eggplant comes into Islamic cooking from India c. 1000 (my memory of a
talk by Charles Perry). By the time of the cookbooks I am familiar with
(13th-15th c.), it is probably the most common vegetable in Islamic
recipes.

David/Cariadoc


From: djheydt at uclink.berkeley.edu (Dorothy J Heydt)
Newsgroups: rec.org.sca
Subject: Re: Corn (was: SCA and Renn. Faires)
Date: 26 Feb 1996 16:30:21 GMT
Organization: University of California at Berkeley

In article <9602261426.AA19166 at remora>,  <hamilton at adi.COM> wrote:
>Tom Gibson <masters at nwlink.com> writes:
>
>>The bible story of Joe & his two brothers who sold him for 30 pieces of
>>silver uses the term "corn" for grain, and in egypt that mean wheat.....

OK, some basic historical linguistics here.

The English word "corn" is cognate with Latin "granum" (from
which we get "grain") and with lots of other words in other
Indo-European languages.  Maybe I better define a term.  "Cognate"
means that corresponding words in different languages can be
shown to be related via a regular system of sound-changes, so
that you can reconstruct a hypothetical earlier form, in a
language that no longer exists, from which they all descended.

Now the kicker about corn/granum/etc. is that it doesn't mean any
particular species of grain.  It means whatever grain is most
commonly grown in your area.  In England, it means wheat.  In
parts of Europe, it means spelt (a grain related to wheat but
noticeably different).  

Now, wheat is a fussy grain--it won't grow just anywhere, it
likes certain conditions.  When the first English settlers came
to the New World, they discovered that the strains of wheat they
had wouldn't grow, or grew badly, in New England.  Rye would
still grow--it's a lot more tolerant of bad conditions--and the
local people provided maize, which had been growing in the
neighborhood for millenia.

The English settlers called the maize "Indian corn," on an old
English-language principle of using "{name of other ethnicity} {noun}"
to mean "not a real {noun}," as "Indian summer," "Indian giver,"
"Dutch courage," "French leave." "Welsh rabbit."

But over a few generations, during which maize was their primary
crop, they followed the old Indo-European pattern and started
calling their primary crop just "corn."

Your Bible translation, probably the King James, was done in England
and used "corn" to mean wheat.  They didn't *know* that the
primary grain crop in the Middle East was also wheat--in the
fashion of people everywhere and in every time, they assumed that
things elsewhere were just like what they had at home.

Dorothea of Caer-Myrddin		Dorothy J. Heydt
(I was a linguistics major, once upon a time)
Mists/Mists/West			UC Berkeley
Argent, a cross forme'e sable		djheydt at uclink.berkeley.edu
PRO DEO ET REGE


From: ddfr at best.com (David Friedman)
Newsgroups: rec.org.sca
Subject: Re: Chocolate (was Re: bu
Date: 25 Apr 1996 05:31:11 GMT
Organization: Best Internet Communications

> I had heard Mistress Alys Katherine from the Middle Kingdom say that she had
>  a recipie for chocolate marzipan that was done in period.
> 
> Mistress Alys are you out there???
> 
> Juelda
> Calontir

I'm not Alys Katherine, but in case she doesn't pick up on this ...  .

I suspect what you are remembering is a reference by her to one of the
recipes in the modern Italian secondary source that I mentioned earlier in
the thread. I think (my Italian is not very good) that it is claiming its
chocolate recipes are fifteenth century, which is pretty nearly
impossible. My own guess is that the recipes are either badly misdated
(they are said to be from the archives of one of the Italian cities, and,
as I remember, there are no exact dates given) or mistranslated, with some
other term converted into the modern Italian for chocolate. But I could be
wrong.

David/Cariadoc
-- 
ddfr at best.com


From: alysk at ix.netcom.com(Elise Fleming )
Newsgroups: rec.org.sca
Subject: Re: Chocolate (was Re: bu
Date: 25 Apr 1996 22:12:34 GMT
Organization: Netcom

You wrote:
>I had heard Mistress Alys Katherine from the Middle Kingdom say that
>she had  a recipie for chocolate marzipan that was done in period.
>
>Mistress Alys are you out there???
>
>Juelda
>Calontir

Yes, I'm here, and I thought I was doing a nice job of staying out of
this thread!  :-)  I have three purportedly period recipes using
chocolate mixed with sugar.  One is chocolate mixed with sugar,
marzipan, and cinnamon into something like a cookie.  (Delicious!) 
Another is a chocolate and pear tart, if I recall correctly.  The third
mixes chocolate, sugar, cinnamon and boils it before using it with a
(cookie?) dough.  These were printed in a modern Italian book on
Renaissance cooking, and were implied to be from the early 1500s.  
David Friedman referred to this book in an earlier post.  The source is
the "Carta (sp?) Bardi II" in the archives in Florence, Italy.  The
finder of the source is an Australian baroness who was a PhD candidate
in Italy a few years ago.  While we began a brief correspondence, she
stopped early on and never answered any information about the dates of
the Carte Bardi manuscripts.  In the modern book all of the other
manuscripts have dates except this one.  

I posted two, I believe, of the recipes when a similar thread ran about
9 months ago.  I have the material in a "text only" file so I can send
the marzipan one, at least, to anyone interested.  I also have a file
for the "Mayan" recipe which should probably read "Aztec."  It works
out to something like a gingerbread.  Baroness Annejke, the Compleat
Anachronist editor, gave me a copy of the recipe.  If interested,
e-mail me and I will send it/them.

I am _really_ interested to see what "justin at dsd.camb.inme" has!

Alys Katharine


<the end>
Edited by Mark S. Harris	food2-msg	 of 43