SC - Figs!

[LrdRas@aol.com]

> << You need to consider whether the cookbooks of which you are speaking
> are
>  actually books published at the time or are manuscript cookbooks.  Many
> of
>  the "cookbooks" we reference are actually reprints of a cook's personal
>  notebook, found, footnoted, and published long after they were originally
>  written.  According to my notes, published cookbooks are few and far
> between
>  before 1450, when the numbers published start to grow exponentially,
>  probably due to moveable type and cheap paper and a growing number of
>  wealthy literates.
>  
>  Bear >>
> 
> I was refering to manuscript sources.  It seems to me that there are very
> few
> manuscript cookery books before 1400, but (comparatively) a whole slew of
> them
> shortly thereafter, indicating a sizable market for these.  At that time
> manuscript books of popular titles were produced by workshops of
> professional
> scribes for a growing, literate, middle class.  I suspect some of the
> surviving mid- to late-fifteenth cent. cookery manuscripts may have come
> from
> such sources.
> 
> If this is true, it in no way diminishes the "upper class" nature of the
> recipes themselves.
> 
> Rudd Rayfield  
> 
There are more manuscript cookbooks from the 19th Century than there are
from the 15th Century, and none of them are by professional scribes.  In
fact, I'll bet 95 per cent of the people on this list have manuscript
cookbooks, most of which will never see publication.

The period manuscript sources we use (eight on my list of primary sources)
were mostly written between 1350 and 1450.  They are almost evenly divided
on either side of 1400.  As these works are represented by single existing
copies, they can not be demonstrated to be "mass market" copies or cherished
family heirlooms.  I tend to favor the latter.

Bear

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