SC - Parchment, Hungarian, Titles, A Quest, and a Reminder
Elise Fleming
alysk at ix.netcom.com
Sun Jan 18 06:48:57 PST 1998
Greetings! Here's a mixed bag of stuff, so to speak.
Parchment: Bear wrote, "I think the recipe calls for baking the
"fine cakes" (cookies) on paper. I think it will help the cookie
retain its thickness during baking."
The purpose of parchment paper (baking paper) is to prevent disastrous
sticking. I am not sure of the date when cooks began using them but
have seen (as Bear notes) references to them in cookery books from
1600+.
Titles for feastocrat: In one of the books about medieval foods and
feasts the author listed "magister coquus" as a title for the person in
charge of the whole shebang. If we used it, we'd need to provide a
pronunciation guide for Americans-who-know-no-Latin! :-)
Hungarian: Barbara Wheaton, _Savoring the Past_, gave a hint about
Hungarian cooking when she wrote, "...a capon stew 'in the Hungarian
manner'..." on page 33. Now, she doesn't describe the recipe but she
is referring to one found in _Ovverture de cvisine_ by Lancelot de
Casteau, 1604. It would be an interesting research project to look
through European cookery books for recipes "in the XXX manner" and see
what one could hypothesize. I think, from this recipe title, one can
deduce that in late period, at least, Hungarian food had a
distinctivenesss, in at least one preparation method, that someone
recognized and took into another cooking style.
A Quest: Of _Ovverture de Cvisine_ she writes, (p. 31) "It is the
first cookbook in French that is not a reworking of medieval recipes;
it contains an international collection of recipes both for cookery and
for confectionary. What is, to the best of my knowledge, the only
extant copy, was acquired in 1958 by the Bibliotheque Royale Albert Ier
in Brussels. The only other recorded copy was destroyed in a fire
during the Napoleonic wars. Its owner had published a partial and
faulty description of the volume before its destruction." She goes on
to say that Marx Rumpolt's _Ein new Kochbuch_, Frankfurt, 1581, is more
comprehensive. A quest??? Would anyone want to find out if
_Ovverture_ has been printed? Translated? Webbed? Still at the
Bibliotheque??
A Reminder: I re-read portions of some of the old standby books last
night and was reminded just how good they are and how much I no longer
retain once I read something! Wheaton's _Savoring the Past_ was a gold
mine of things we've been discussing as was Henisch's _Fast and Feast_.
If you have these books...or any other reputable secondary-source
books, put them in the bathroom for quiet reading time!
Alys Katharine
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