SC - SC Redactions...

[DUNHAM Patricia R]

Since I haven't seen anyone else respond to this bit, here's a partial
answer, hopefully not too wrong-headed 8-)

I don't know about the literacy rate, but what I've gathered is that
most of the period cookery sources we have were not for learning to
cook, but were reminders for people who had huge repertoires, too much
to keep in one's head, literate or not...  people who regularly cooked
for kings and dukes, and in amazing quantities, for sometimes VERY large
numbers...

That's why the "recipes" are so sketchy... lots of understood technique
was just left out; and I bet quantities were left out partly because
what was written might be a template that you could vary infinitely for
size, partly because "how much of what" would be part of the individual
master's "art", or possibly because the template might also adjustable
according to the humours... (Scully on the medicinal aspects/
responsibilities of fine cookery is fascinating... I don't know enough
to tell how accurate, but it certainly matches what I think I know about
it)

And not "vanity publishing" in the modern sense of self-aggrandisement,
but in some cases definitely supposed to reflect favorably on the patron
of the cook... "Part of why Duke X is such a splendid fellow is that he
has this really GREAT cook, you can tell how good the cook is from this
collection of his recipes."  Like collecting a illuminated manuscripts,
or famous knights for your household, having a famous cook working for
you meant the EMPLOYER was hot stuff.

Chimene
patricia.r.dunham at ci.eugene.or.us
http://members.aol.com/gerekr/medieval.html (home)
 ----------
| Does anyone know what the literacy rate of medieval cooks was? There
are
| some fundamental questions that arise if there were illiterate cooks.
| There is also the great unanswerable -why were cookbooks written?
| Was it to provide a written source for people to learn to cook, or was
it
| to describe a new style of cookery coming into vogue, or was it an
| exercise in vanity publishing or was it...
|
| Charles
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