SC - Re: sca-cooks V1 #154

[L Herr-Gelatt and J R Gelatt]

Mark Schuldenfrei wrote:
> 
>        I've heard other people say this also.  Why is there such ill will
>        toward it?  Granted, I haven't seen it.  Is it only the poor
>        documentation of the recipes?  Is the rest of the book useless?
> 
> It's a giant button, that you've seen pressed here before.  Don't claim
> something is authentic (like the recipes) if they are not.  Also, I find her
> overall level of documentation not as good as many of the other sources that
> are available.
> 
>         Tibor (Heck, though, I *own* a copy of Take a Buttock of Beefe)

I dunno. "Take a Buttock of Beefe" is indeed a trap for the VERY unwary
indeed. It ostensibly addresses the topic of late (or post) period
cookery. This it does (?) by talking about a reciept book supposedly
belonging to someone whose name escapes me (excuse me while I go and
check the Hall of Shame section on shelves: there, right between
"Fabulous Feasts" and _anything_  by Craig Claiborne) Queen Henriettra
Maria, widow of Charles I.
Recipes from the original text (which, since this is the last we see of
it, makes my use of the word "original" in questionable taste and
accuracy) are followed by modern recipes for foods which may or may not
be vaguely similar in content. It could have been written in an
afternoon, and probably was.

As for FF, I can only point out A) The recipe redactions (if any) are
pretty bad, B) the rest of the book is excellent by comparison, and not
TOO bad on its own, C) at the time it was written, most of the works
superior to it that many of us swear by rather than at, did not exist,
which meant that there were few academic or culinary benchmarks against
which it could be measured before publication. No coincidence that I
mentioned Craig Claiborne, who, although having about 1 percent of the
talent of Bryan Miller, James Beard, and Elisabeth Luard, to name but a
few, deserves some respect for being among the first in uncharted
waters.

Adamantius