SC - Parchment, Hungarian, Titles, A Quest, and a Reminder

[Elise Fleming]

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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