SC - Kazy, Shuzhuk, & Karta

[marilyn traber]

David Friedman responds:

<< RuddR at aol.com wrote:
 
 >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.
 
 1. Are you thinking specifically of England, or more generally?
 
 2. Are there any of the fifteenth century manuscripts that show internal
 evidence of having been produced in multiple copies for sale?
  >>

Key words in my statement above are "suspect", "some" and "may".

1.  I was thinking primarily of England; I am not as familiar with Continental
sources, but the market for the producers of Continental cookery books may
have been similar to England.

2.  What comes to mind is Hieatt and Butler's "Family Tree" of the several
surviving manuscripts of _Forme of Cury_, in the introduction to _Curye on
Inglysch_; copies of copies, borrowing from each other.  There were possibly
more copies that haven't survived.  So for F. of C. at least we have multiple
copies, all made within a few years of each other.  True, these copies are not
all from the same scriptorum (as far as I know), but there was certainly a
demand for this book that was being met.  And it is quite possible that at
least some of these copies were originally for sale to whoever had the
wherewithal to buy them.  

I understand there are at least three more-or-less similar manuscripts of the
_Viandier_.  Harleian MSS 279 and 4016 also share a great deal of common
material, perhaps both drawing on earlier sources, neither work being original
to the scribe who produced them.  Drawing on earlier sources is not the same
as "mass production", but in England at least, these sources seem to be
widespread and widely used, indicating broad popularity of the material.

A scenario might go like this:  Somebody who could afford it wanted a new
cookery book.  A professional scribe (or bookseller's staff of scribes), could
do a cut-and-paste of available material, and a "new" cookery book is born, to
come down to us as a primary source.  I suggest that a bookseller, seeing a
demand for such books, might have had a couple of extra copies made up to keep
on hand.  "Mass market production" in the Middle Ages is not to be confused
with what we now understand by that term.

There are certainly other scenarios that are also as likely.  

I'm not saying there was ONLY  "mass market production" of 15th century
cookery books, I'm just raising the possibility that that might have accounted
for SOME of the manufacture of such books.  It certainly was NOT the case for
Chiquart's fine work, for example, or perhaps for the very first copy of
_Forme of Cury_, from which all subsequent copies were made.

I'm glad to have the opportunity to speculate and discuss with pepole who know
what I'm talking about. 

Rudd Rayfield


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