SC - Feast Themes/gingerbread

[Nick Sasso (fra niccolo)]

It's that time of the year again, where I make myself a year's worth
of catsup because I make it with our local (No.Cal.) Santa Rosa
plums.

It's incredibly good...is there anything even remotely period that is
even remotely similar?

By the way, I've acquired another cookbook called _The Medieval
Cookbook_ by Maggie Black.  It appears to be a step up from my last
acquisition, _Fabulous Feasts_ !!  This one actually gives you the
orginal recipe, tells you exactly which manuscript it is from, and
which university or library has the ms.  The only problem with her
redactions that I see (& this may only be a problem for me) is her
assumption that her gentle readers require "lite" versions of the
recipes.  There is a lot of "the original calls for frying, but
we'll oven-brown it instead."  Also, in her discussion of bread, she
makes the startling [to me] statement that "we have no medieval 
bread recipes."  Could that really be true?

Juana Teresa de Salamanca