SC - (LONG) Cuskynoles II: The Terror Returns!

[Philip & Susan Troy]

Once again, Adamantius takes up his weary pen, to treat of cuskynoles.

First off, a few points to clarify, if possible. It's been suggested
that His Grace, Duke Sir Cariadoc, and I, are engaged in a form of
culinary and logistical combat. Truly, I have often been accused,
generally by female cooks, of cooking like  a man. What with one thing
and another, that's understandable. For all that cookery can be regarded
as a healing, nurturing art form, the fact is, I'm told, that I
sometimes approach it with the attitude of an alpha male gorilla.
Anyway, before I wander too far from my point, I'll simply say that the
cuskynoles recipe has been perplexing me for years, and I've approached
it from more angles than I can count, and to me, it has never quite
added up. Any discussion and debate I have become involved in in
connection with the recipe has been in pursuit of the Real Deal, or for
the sentimental, The Truth. I am quite sure that His Grace feels the
same way. This is not about winning, but about testing our respective
theories, both against one another, against practical circumstance, and
against other theories, which is where many of you have been kind enough
to come into this.

Okay, enough philosophy. After having the cuskynoles recipe tattoed in
phosphorescent ink on the insides of my eyelids, so I can read it simply
by closing my eyes, I began a concerted effort to get information from
other sources (with my eyes open, of course). Here's what I found:

First, since my source for the cuskynoles recipe has been Diversa
Cibaria, the first book of Curye On Inglysch, I examined all the little
footnotes about variations of the text between different copies of the
original source, MS He. Little or no help there, as regards the Big
Question of whether the diagram supplied illustrates one portion, or
fifteen. Movin' on...to the glossary and index. The entry for
cuskynoles, which I won't quote in full here, essentially says that
cuskynoles are small, fruit-filled pastries, and that the name is
probably one of the several Old French spelling variations on the word
"rissoles". Wow. Some variation! Hieatt and Butler go on to say that the
diagram, which also appears in MS A1 (although divided into only nine
parts), under the entry titled "Kuskynole", "indicates how to cut the
pastry into cakes, not how to fold it, as the wording suggests." They
further go on to say that the version in MS L can be found in the Two
Fifteenth-Century Cookery Books, pp. 112-113, under the editorially
added title of 'Ryschewys close'. The entry closes with various
reference citations for other sources such as Le Menagier de Paris and
the Two Fifteenth-Century Cookery Books.

Now the problem is this. While I firmly believe this to be a correct
assessment of The Deal, the fact is that I have spotted a couple of
flaws in this idea. The reference citations at the end of the glossary
entry in Curye On Inglysche are to passages on fruit rissoles. In other
words, we can't tell why Hieatt and Butler decided that cuskynoles are
fruit ravioli, since the support for that claim is in the form of
citations for dishes other than cuskynoles. A simple analogy would be if
I decided that the Latin American dish of Ropa Vieja, which is a
shredded food, was a dish of spaghetti, and quoted from spaghetti
recipes to support my claim, and didn't mention that Ropa Vieja is made
from shredded, braised meat. I'm sure you see the difficulties of
circular logic. It's possible that misleading references are being
supplied in support of an erroneous claim, or they may have been the
reason for making an erroneous claim in the first place. It isn't clear
how it happened, if it happened at all. They may be correct, but the
information they supply doesn't seem to prove it conclusively.

For what it is worth, let's look at one of the references cited that I
am actually able to lay hands on: the version of MS L to be found in the
Two Fifteenth-Century Cookery Books, pp. 112-113:

"Ryschewys close -- nym flour and eyren, and kned to-gedere / nym figus,
resyns, & dates, & do out ye stonys, & blanchid almaunds, & good pouder,
& bray to-gedere / make coffyns of ye lengthe of a spanne / do thy
farsour therynne, in euerych cake his porcioun / plie hem & boille hem
in water / & suththe roste hem on a gridel & gif forth."

>From The Two Fifteenth-Century Cookery Books, page 97, and from what I
believe to be a different manuscript source, but offhand I don't know
which:

"Risschewes de frute. Take ffigges, and grinde hem in a morter al smal
with a litell oyle, and grynde with hem, clowes, and maces; and then
take hem uppe in-to a dissh, and caste thereto pynes. saundres, reisons
of coraunce, myced dates, pouder of Peper, Canell, Saffron, and salt;
And then make fyne paast of floure, water, sugar, saffron, and salt, And
make there-of faire kakes; and then rolle the stuff in thi honde, and
couche hit in the [ye] kakes; kutte hem, and so folde hem togedrys as
risschewes, And fry hem in good Oyle, And serue hem forthe hote."

Now, both of these sound quite astonishingly close to the recipe we've
been dealing with, except for the name, and the order in which the
instructions are given. Note that the first seems to be a pretty
straightforward fruit ravioli, there being no diagram to muck up the
instructions ;  ). The second recipe _appears_ to suggest that somehow
the dough is stuffed before cutting and sealing. I suspect the idea is
to lay balls of filling out on a sheet of dough, top with another sheet,
and then cut the sheets apart into sandwiches, sealing the edges of each
as you go. Now, if I had to illustrate this process, using only one
frame, I think I would use something very like the illustration we all
have come to know, and most us, hate. While, as his Grace suggests, that
figure would never exist at the same time, since you would have no
reason to put each filled rectangle back into the grid after you have
sealed it, it would at least show how they are filled, sealed, and cut,
although not necessarily in that order. As I have suggested, it wouldn't
be the first medieval manuscript illustration that was meant to be taken
with a grain of salt.

I should explain that I have included these recipes for rissoles of
fruit not as direct support that cuskynoles were made in the same way.
As I indicated, it would be illogical to use recipes whose relation to
cuskynoles has yet to be established, in support of any interpretation
of the cuskynoles recipe. I have copied them out primarily because they
appear to have some relation to the dish at hand, even if the recipes
themselves appear to me to have little or no linguistic or etymological
relation to cuskynoles. I have no real reason to believe that Hieatt and
Butler actually did intend to use these recipes as misleading supprt for
their interpretation of the cuskynoles recipe. They may simply have
looked at all the recipes they could find that seemed to be similar, and
used them as a guide in their interpretation. That may or may not be a
correct assumption.

Bearing in mind that it was never my aim to prove that Cariadoc's
interpretation of cuskynoles as filled pastries subdivided into
bite-size squares was an invalid interpretation, but rather that my
interpretation as fruit ravioli was viable as an alternate view, I don't
see what more I can do. What His Grace has said is true: we can't both
be right. Either the dish called cuskynoles, as conceived by the author
of the manuscript that is the basis for Diversa Cibaria, is for
fruit-filled pastries shaped like small rectangles about 3 inches by 6,
resembling ravioli or pierogen, OR they were small pastries, roughly 3
by 6 inches, divided up into little squares, connected at their edges.
It appears that the author intended one or the other, but I don't see
how he could have intended both. What other authors of other manuscript
sources, for other dishes, have to add to this isn't demonstrably
relevant.

So, having established, at least to my own satisfaction, that we can't
both be correct in this, I'll simply say that I seem to have failed to
prove, to His Grace's satisfaction, that it is possible that my version
could be what the author intended, and that His Grace has failed to
prove to me, beyond question, that his interpretation is what _was_
intended. It doesn't appear that we will getting anywhere by rehashing
points we've already mentioned. We didn't get all that much further this
time, than we did the LAST time we discussed cuskynoles on the list ;  )
, about six months ago.

Anybody have anything new to add to this?

I do. Just as a kind of throw-away line, I'll say that while digging
through some of these recipes, I ran across the following, also from
Diversa Cibaria. It is a recipe for cresteroles, which seems to me to be
linguistically closer to cuskynoles, even if the dish itself isn't
apparently all that similar:

"34. Another mete that hatte cresterole. Nim flour of corne and ayren
and make past, icoloured wyth saffron the halue dole the past, & the
halue dole qwytt; & sotthe rolle on a board ase thunne ase parchemin, &
rolle rounde al aboutee as a kake; & make ase wel in leynteen ase in
othur tyme, with alemauns in oile ifried."

I just thought this was interesting, in view of the suggestion that was
made that cuskynoles might be intended to be multi-colored. I'm still
not so sure I buy the idea, but it was interesting, and this seemed
relevant to that idea.

I'm gonna stop for breath, and hand over the floor to anyone else who
wants it.

Adamantius

P.S.: I REALLY want to thank the gentleman who posted the French
"kuskynole" recipe. It does seem to settle the question about the
meaning of the word "hew" in the English version. On the other hand,
being, as it is, the text that the English recipe is a direct
translation of, it seems to possess the same logistical weaknesses, too.
It does say to cut the dough into rectangles before filling them, and it
does then include a diagram very much like the one in the English text.
Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to get us any further than the English
version, either, at least, not on its own.

Adamantius    
______________________________________
Phil & Susan Troy
troy at asan.com
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