SC - Peasants and Nobility--starting to get OT

[Philippa Alderton]

At 2:35 PM -0500 10/31/98, Seton1355 at AOL.COM wrote:
>I am putting together a Tudor feast fot my household.  I am having trouble
>finding enough suitable late 16 th C &  17th C recipes.  Admittedly I only own
>1 book, the library is no help and I'm trying to get what I need off-
>line....anyway...
>Would King Henry have eaten 15th C food?  Or was that simply not done?
>Thanks for your help!
>Phillipa

I'm probably not the best person to answer this, but since nobody else has...

There is a substantial change in English food between the 13th-15th c.
cookbooks and the late16th-early 17th c. ones.  It is not a complete
change--you get at least some recipes in common--but the later cuisine has
less use of spices, more use of butter, use of citrus fruits, more use of
sugar; I don't really know the later cuisine well, so maybe someone who
does can expand on this. Sources include _A Proper Newe Booke of Cokerye_
(16th c., if my memory serves mid to late century), Hugh Platt's _Delights
for Ladies_ (1609), and _The Closet of Sir Kenelm Digby, Opened_ (published
posthumously in 1669), all of which are in volume 1 of Cariadoc's Cookbook
Collection.  Then there are a bunch of Falconwood Press editions from
around then including Gervase Markham's _The English Housewife_ and Thomas
Dawson's _The Good Huswife's Jewel_ (1596) and _The Second Part of the Good
Huswife's Jewel_ (1597), and I think some others from around then as well.
There is also Elinor Fettiplace's Cookbook--commercially published, I think
originally early 17th c.  If no one in your area has any of these books,
you get  Cariadoc's collection from us, and I don't know where you get the
Falconwood reprints.  If you have access to a good university library, you
might also try that--just see what they have under Cookery-historical or
whatever.  A few recipes from these sources are in the Miscellany.

Elizabeth of Dendermonde/Betty Cook


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