SC - Russian cookbooks

[rengraph@ix.netcom.com]

david friedman wrote:
> 
> >So, this appears to be the primary source, more or less. Taillevent's
> >soup is rather different, but appears to have been the inspiration for
> >this original recipe. For those of you who may feel inclined to sneer at
> >the liberties taken with Taillevent, I can only say that it beats the
> >recipes in "Fabulous Feasts" for edible quality, at least, and in 1968
> >there wasn't a heck of a lot else available for those who had no access
> >to the original manuscripts.
> 
> That would be pretty close to when I started trying medieval cooking,
> perhaps a year or two before. _Two Fifteenth Century Cookery Books_ was
> available--it was published in 1888 and reprinted in 1964. There was also a
> small book with recipes from either there or one of the similar sources,
> and with illustrations by, I think, Pauline Baynes (the lady who
> illustrated the Narnia books, or someone with a very similar style). And,
> of course, al-Baghdadi had been translated by Arberry thirty years or so
> earlier.

As I say, not a heck of a lot. Some, yes, and not all of it easily
available to the casual researcher. Casual, of course, being a relative
term. I know that when I started out at this hobby, at which time you
had presumably been at it for fifteen years or more, my library included
no original period sources, and while I was faily quick to correct this,
I didn't stop bothering to buy books containing other people's
redactions until three or four years later. You'll note that I have a
copy of The Delectable Past in my possession, albeit I haven't looked at
it in years. I just think it is designed for a different audience than
many of us, now, in the SCA. I daresay Baron Salaamallah doesn't use it
anymore, either, except when he makes this particular mustard soup,
probably more from tradition and a sense of obligation, and because it's
good, than because he believes it to be a good recreation of a period
dish. That, of course, could be made to be equally good, but what the
hey.   

As for the small book with illustrations, I can only say, AAARRGGGHH! I
believe I used to own that book. I recall it was perhaps 50 Middle
English recipes, with notes, but no adaptations made for modern kitchens
(hurrah!), with illustrations, generally of specific dishes or
techniques involved in their production, which was eminently cool. I
remember in detail the illustration of how a cockentryce is constructed,
and one of an arm and hand, dripping cryspe batter off the figertips
into a pot of oil.

I wish I had that book today, although I suspect it might have been one
of the Two Fifteenth-Century Cookery Books, or, if my recollections of
the illustrations provide a clue, a selection of recipes from The Forme
of Cury.  
> 
> In any case, we now know the answer. Salaamalah's mustard soup is the
> result of a modern secondary source taking extreme liberties with
> Taillevent's recipe.

Which, in an attempt to respond to two birds with one stone, I will
include, coutrtesy of Terence Scully's translation. For simplicity I
have reversed the order of the recipes as they appear in the text.

"84. Egg Stew. Poach eggs in oil, fry sliced onions in oil, and set them
both to boil with wine, verjuice and vinegar; and when you serve your
bouillon, set it out poured over your meat. it should not be thick. Then
make Mustard Sops as above." 

"83. Mustard Sops. Take the oil in which you fried or poached your eggs
without shells, with wine and water and chopped onions fried in oil, and
boil everything in an iron pan; then take crusts of bread, toast them on
the grill, cut them into square pieces and add them to boil with the
other; then strain your bouillon, and drain your sops and drop them on a
plate (var. bowl); then put a little very thick mustard into your
bouillon pan and boil everything and pour it on top of the sops."

>From The Viandier of Taillevent, ed. Terence Scully, copyright 1988
University of Ottawa Press, ISBN 0-7766-0174-1

Adamantius
______________________________________
Phil & Susan Troy
troy at asan.com
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