SC - Did medieval cooks read Apicus?

[david friedman]

At 11:39 AM -0500 1/22/99, Philip & Susan Troy wrote:
>
>I think it's pretty likely that most cooks knew, to some extent by
>heart, the dishes taught them by whoever taught them the craft, and not
>much else in the area of cookbooks. There may even have been the
>rationale that one wouldn't need cookbooks if one had cooks to figure
>out all that stuff.
>
>Adamantius

Master Chiquart, who was the chief cook of the Duke of Savoy in the early
15th c., says explicitly that he has never read a cookbook--and given how
different in style his book is from all others, I believe it. However, many
of his dishes are the same that you see elsewhere--he just takes five times
as many words to describe them.

Elizabeth/Betty Cook


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