SC - Cookbooks

[Mark Schuldenfrei]

Most of the cookbooks you mention are reviewed in back issues of Serve It
Forth (http://oldcolo.com/~memorman/sif_home.html).

	Tibor

Here is my review of Fast and Feast:

Fast and Feast: Food in Medieval Society, by Bridget Ann Henisch.  Published
by Pennsylvania State University Press, Copyright 1976, fifth printing. ISBN
0-271-01230-7 (hardcover)  0-271-00424-X (paperback, reviewed).

A book review by Mark Schuldenfrei (Tibor of Rock Valley)

<Text Begins>
So, should a Society cook read a book that doesn't have recipes?  Yes, it
seems we should.  "Fast and Feast" is well researched and indexed book
covering everything about food and foodways customs from late period, except
the details of redactions.  It is also fun to read (I laughed out loud
several times), well indexed and copiously footnoted, and reasonably
priced (I paid $14.95)

It covers everything about food, except the actual recipes.  It covers feast
service, entertainment, the role of food in daily life and the ecumenical
calendar, the role and popular opinion of the professional cook and the
housewife, and their everyday tasks.  It covers timing of meals, quantities,
beverages, the commercial infrastructure of the time.  It even covers the
tools of cooking, and eating.  There are many reproductions of period
illustrations, and the illustrations are well used by the supporting text.
The text is heavily footnoted, with 930 notes in 236 pages of text.

The book does lack a glossary, and it does occasionally use terms that a
truly novice cook might not know.  However, the index is good enough to
compensate.  The bibliography is totally insufficient.  Again, however,
the footnotes provide a wealth of sources.  Some of Henisch's citations
are in original languages, and are only lightly modernized or translated:
but that doesn't prevent the reader from understanding her points.  A
readersknowledge of some of the generalities of history are quite useful.
(For example, page 38 covers the impact of the Reformation on Lenten
practices, without an explanation of the Reformation.)

Ms. Henisch organizational ability is formidable: I was particularly
impressed with her ability to discuss trends in foodways based upon the
corpus of surviving recipes.  I found myself wondering why I hadn't seen
those trends myself.  Do be warned: on a purely academic level, she can be
slightly suspect.  Many is the time I found her drawing broad conclusions on
slender evidence, or worse, supporting narrow conclusions with references
that span the centuries and nations.  Read her footnotes more carefully than
you read the text.  (I can't say I know enough to doubt her conclusions: I
quite agree with them.  But the academic rigor is spotty.)  She also
sometimes compromises by glossing details, in order to keep the flow of her
text.  (For example, oversimplifying the definitions of caudle or hypocris).

Certainly, she has done an admirable degree of homework.  Foodways-related
quotations come from plays, household manifests, wills, period manuscripts
and receipt books, and more besides.  She has also obviously studied
hundreds of period illustrations, and makes many useful deductions based
upon them.

She speaks well on Society shibboleths: are forks period, who sits at high
table, should feast halls be lit or dark.  She is an evocative writer:
consider the pain this poor man felt:

  "For the Hoccleves of this world, their heads throbbing after the
  reresopers of the night before, such aggressive, all-around virtue was
  far out of reach.  Pale on his pillow, the reveler would murmur instead
  'I may noght faste, ne do penauns, ne go to cherch, ne bydde my beddys,
  for I have a badde heued ... I shal noght ben wel at ese tyl I have
  drunkyn agen.'  Straightaway, an affable devil settled himself on the
  bed, coaxing the sufferer to eat a morsel just to keep his strength up
  to serve God all the more vigorously later in the day: [...]"

This is the sort of book that begs to be shared.  I want to loan it to my
friend who does period mumming, another who brews and is interested in
viniculture, my wife who makes sotelties, my friends who study period table
service.  And I want to revisit some old recipes with new eyes.

The early student of foodways will find much to benefit them in this book,
although they may not spot some of the places where enthusiasm papers over
lack of evidence.  The experienced Society cook will love how this book
completes your knowledge of everything except how many onions to chop.  I
would recommend this volume heavily, even at twice the price.
<Text Ends>
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