SC - Nobles and cooking?

[david friedman]

At 1:43 PM -0800 2/13/99, Laura C Minnick wrote:

>('Sides that- I can think of no reason why I, an heiress and poet and
>companion of Christine de Pisan, would even be near the kitchens, so I'm
>breaking form anyway.)

Which raises an interesting question--was cooking seen as something that
noblewomen wouldn't dirty their hand with in period? Or was it assumed that
since part of their job was running a household, they ought to know how it
was done from the ground up?

So far as al-Islam is concerned, I think it is clear that high ranking men
did take an interest in cooking, whether or not they did it themselves. At
least, there are surviving recipes attributed to Ibrahim ibn al Mahdi, who
was a close relative of several caliphs and himself an unsuccessful
claimant to the caliphate at one point. And I believe one of the cookbooks
in the 10th c. collection is attributed to one of the Barmakids, the family
that served as viziers for al-Rashid until he turned on them.

David/Cariadoc
http://www.best.com/~ddfr/


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