[Sca-cooks] BAD sources for historical cooks

Johnna Holloway johnna at sitka.engin.umich.edu
Wed Mar 12 17:19:21 PDT 2008


Daniel Myers wrote:
> While they're not recipe books, there are two titles on my personal  
> hit-list.  What makes them particularly insidious is that they're  
> both written for the general reader, and therefore are just the sort  
> of thing a newbie might pick up first.
>
> The Englishman's Food, J.C. Drummond - Mixed in with all sorts of  
> wonderful information is wild speculation, and over-generalizations.   
> Not to mention that it perpetuates (and may have originated) the  
> moldy-meat myth.
>   
I've always thought actually that the moldy meat goes back to William 
Mead The English Medieval Feast which came out in 1931.
Drummond comes out in a first edition in like 39.
> Food in History, Reay Tannahill - not as bad the above, but the  
> speculations and generalizations are joined by hyperbole.
> - Doc
>   
Tannahill did an updated version of Food in History that corrected the 
mistakes of the 1973 edition and updated
the bibliography. Most people have never seen it though.

Johnna



More information about the Sca-cooks mailing list