SC - _Fabulous Feasts_

[Peggy A. Stonnell]

> So far as availability of other sources at the time is concerned, I am
> reasonably sure that _Two Fifteenth Century Cookery Books_ predates
> _Fabulous Feasts_ by quite a bit.

The EETS edition of _Two Fifteenth Century Cookery Books_ is copyright
1888, reprinted 1964.  _A Fifteenth Century Cookry Boke_, which contains
most or all of the same source, was published in a mass-market form (by
Scribner's) in 1962.  The latter gives most or all of the recipes in the
same source, in Middle English without translation, redaction, or
commentary, but with a moderately-accurate glossary in the back, and
with with hand-drawn illustrations that will make even the average
costume-ignorant SCAdian laugh.

Lorna Sass's _To the King's Taste_ was originally printed in 1975, and
is much better documented than _Fabulous Feasts_.  Sass too makes some
questionable substitutions for hard-to-find ingredients (many of which
are easier to find now), but she documents each recipe individually
and distinguishes clearly among the original recipe, her translation
into modern English, and her redaction.

But I had the same impression on reading _Fabulous Feasts_ as the
original poster: there's a lot of information here, which seems to reach
a low point in the actual recipes.  Could anybody who's familiar with
sumptuary laws, sanitation laws, and the other subjects Cosman touches
on tell us how accurate those parts of the book are?

					mar-Joshua ibn-Eleazar ha-Shalib
                                                 Stephen Bloch
                                           sbloch at panther.adelphi.edu
					 http://www.adelphi.edu/~sbloch/
                                        Math/CS Dept, Adelphi University