SC - Re: sources of sources.

[RuddR at 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  
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