SC - Foods in season and Norman recipes

[david friedman]

At 1:36 PM +0000 8/26/98, Claricia Nyetgale wrote:
>Ok, I'm cooking a feast for 200ish on November 4th and I'd like to
>make it as period as possible.  My big question is, how do I know
>what would have been in season at this point in the year?  We can get
>apples, oranges and eggs (to name a few items) year round, so I don't
>really have a very good sense as to what is available when.

Fall fruits such as apples and pears, yes; spring fruits such as
strawberries, no.  Normandy or England probably wouldn't have had oranges
until late period.  Try looking at Menagier de Paris (available on
Cariadoc's web page if you don't have it); I think he discusses what is in
season when a fair amount.
>
>Also, our soon-to-be King and Queen (Coronation is 2 weeks before my
>feast) are both Norman.  Do we even have any Norman cookbooks or
>should I just go with what I've got (cookbook wise, that is)?
>
There are a couple of short Anglo-Norman cookbooks, published in a
scholarly journal a few years ago with both the Norman French and a modern
English translation.  The full reference is: Constance B. Hieatt and Robin
F. Jones, _Two Anglo-Norman Culinary Collections Edited from British
Library Manuscripts Additional 32085 amd Royal 12.C.xii_, Speculum v. 61 n.
4, pp. 859-882, 1986.  They are a little earlier than the earliest ones in
_Curye on Inglisch_ and overlap with them a lot:  one of them contains the
dreaded cuskenoles, for example.

Also, consider the following descrition of 12th-c. cookery, by an
Englishman who had spent time in Paris:

"A roast of pork is prepared diligently on a grid, frequently basted, and
laid on the grid just as the hot coals cease to smoke.  Let condiments be
avoided other than pure salt or a simple garlic sauce.  It does not hurt to
sprinkle a cut-up capon with pepper.  A domestic fowl may be quite tender,
having been turned on a long spit, but it needs a strong garlic sauce,
diluted with wine or verjuice.  Flavor a hen which has been cleaned and cut
up into pieces, with cumin, if it is well boiled; but if it has been
roasted, let it be treated with frequent drippings of fat, nor does it
refuse garlic sauce; it will be most tasty with simple sauce.  Let fish
that have been cleaned be cooked in a mixture of wine and water; afterwards
they should be taken with green "savory" which is made from sage, parsley,
dittany, thyme, costus, garlic, and pepper; do not omit salt." (from De
nominibus utenslium by Alexander Neckam (1157-1217), quoted (and translated
from the Latin) in Daily Living in the Twelfth Century by Urban Tigner
Holmes, Jr.).

If I compare this with the 13th-15th c. English and French cookbooks it
sounds very similar, suggesting that that cuisine goes at least as far back
as Neckham, even if we have no cookbooks from that early.

Elizabeth/Betty Cook


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