SC - Lists of Foods Manuscript

[david friedman]

At 10:38 PM -0500 4/24/97, Mark Harris wrote:

>PS: Someone mentioned a period crawfish recipe. That might be interesting,
>too.
>I saw a bag of frozen crawfish tails in the grocery the other day.

Elizabeth points out that there is a crayfish recipe in _Le Menagier de Paris_.

Clare writes:

> But I was looking
>through the current Martha Stewart's Living (a true period source) and
>there is an article about Norwegian Saft or fruit drink.

I'll bite--what is Martha Stewart's Living?

Lord Ras writes:

>And there is no lack of people
>around here who need someone to get those "damn" pidgeons out of the attic.

Elizabeth likes to say that you can tell that not many poor people in
American are literally starving by how tame the pigeons are.

Derdriu writes, re beverages:

>If anyone else has ideas, I'm all ears.

Manuscrito Anonimo (13th c. Andalusian) has a whole chapter of
drinks--flavored syrups that you dilute with hot or cold water to drink.
Three of them, including sekanjabin, are in the _Miscellany_, webbed at:
http://www.pbm.com/~lindahl/cariadoc/miscellany.html

Annejke lists, among her subtleties:

>1980 Peacock in full Pride (real bird)

Master Chiquart (1420) advises his readers to cheat by cooking a goose and
dressing it in a peacock's skin; he says peacock doesn't taste as good. Is
that consistent with your experience?

On the subject of grapefruit, Harold McGee (_On Food and Cooking_) has this
to say:

"The grapefruit was born in the west indies in the 18th century as a cross
between the orange and the pummelo, a large citrus fruit that had been
brought to the New World a few decades earlier."

He says that the members of the citrus family are native to southeast asia.
So it may be that the source that described the grapefruit as asian
actually meant the pummelo. My impression is that McGee is pretty reliable.







David/Cariadoc
http://www.best.com/~ddfr/