SC - medieval bees and beekeepin

[MS MARTHA L WALLENHORST]

Katerine here.  Lord Ras writes:

>Sugar is also mentioned a lot and is decidedly rare and expensive. As for
>cookbooks would you be able to post a list of such books or give an example
>of one that was not produced for a noble household. Thanks in advance.

I would be interested if you could provide a list of such books from England
that *were*.  To the best of my knowlege, we don't know for whom a single
extant collection was produced.  There is a claim in the introduction of one
concerning *by* whom it was produced; but that claim is held in substantial
doubt in the professional community.  In any case, it is relatively certain
that no extant copy of FoC was produced for a royal kitchen.

On the other hand, we *do* know that collections from very different parts
of England duplicate recipes in each other.  We also know that when the
printing industry geared up, one of the things it produced was cookbooks,
and many of them (by the 16th C) clearly for a mass market that was by no
means noble.

Careful with those assumptions.

Cheers,

- -- Katerine/Terry