SC - fennel as "breath sweetener

[Philip W. Troy]

Hi, Katerine again.  Adamantius writes:

>This is refutation of an argument I never made. I mentioned the
>coronation feast of Henry V, an account of which can be found in "A
>Noble Boke of Cookry ffor a Prynce Houssolde". It demonstates my point
>using the opposite approach. There are 21 or more fish dishes and only
>one or two meat dishes. Perhaps this was a way to see that non-abstinent
>kings had something other than fish to eat... the menu also mentions
>brawn, which is spoken of as being "counterfeit" in a way that suggests
>something other than mere artificiality. It appears to refer to a
>non-traditional presentation. I'm not certain, at this point, if the
>swan subtlety is made from actual swans or not, but it is not necessary
>to know this to see that it is not exclusively a fish-day feast,
>regardless of the proportions of fish to meat served.

Okay, I've looked over the menu.  What I find is the following: there
are 34 dishes plus three subtleties.  It's not clear that the subtleties
are edible at all (the third is an eagle of gold); what is clear, is that
they are not made of the things they represent.  Since we can't even
tell whether they're meant to be eaten, much less what they're made
of, I'm setting them aside.

Looking at the other 34 dishes, only four are even remotely likely
contain meat.  One, a gelly, appears to have transcription problems
(Napier is rife with them).  Fortunately, I know someone with access
to the original, who can check that.  One, flampayne, is a variety
of custard pie which is typically made with pork, but which is named
for the treatment of the crust, and which can be made with fish.  The
third is blank de serre -- but recipes for that dish, like those for
mawmenny, routinely specify alternative fish versions.  The fourth
would be a clear case -- venyson in brothe -- except that venison
dishes are routinely prepared with porpoise for fish days in this 
time frame.  (Recipes for venison and frumenty that explicitly
specify using porpoise are not hard to find.)

So of these, I would say that the blank de serre is *not* a meat dish,
and that the gelly may not be (and there's a way to check), and that
the other two may not be (and there's no way to check).

In other words, this *may* be a case of a meal for a day of abstinence
that contained meat, but I don't think it's clear.

Lots of things aren't, and the closer you look, the less things that
looked clear do so any more, sadly.

The menus from the Menagier, on the other hand, clearly serve fish on
meat days; so we have good evidence that it was done in France.

Cheers,

- -- Katerine/Terry