SC - Just to introduce myself

[Decker, Terry D.]

The life of Francesco di Marco Datini (1335-1410) is noteworthy for
culinary history in several respects:

(1) He was, among other things, a merchant of spices;
(2) around 1870, a lot of material was found: over 500 of his business
and merchant books, about 300 business documents, over 100.000 letters,
among them 1/10th of private nature (e.g. correspondence with his wife,
with his physician, with his friends; on eating, meals, dietary advice,
wines, etc.);
(3) there is a short portrait of his culinary life in Iris Origo's 'The
merchant of Prato: Francesco di Marco Datini' (1957; rev. 1963).

The bibliography of Origo's book contains a useful reference to a book,
from which spice manuals and other useful things are quoted:
- -- Ciasca, R. (ed.): L'Arte dei Medici e Speziali nella storia e nel
commercio fiorentino dal secolo XII al XV. Firenze 1927. [roughly: The
profession and the knowledge of the physicians and the
apothecaries/spicers in the history of the Florentine trade from the
12th to the 15th centuries. Florence 1927.)

Thomas
BTW: Did anyone answer the "tatar herb"-question? The indices of some
herbals (Matthiolus, Tabernaemontanus) are of no help. To which language
belongs "tatar (herb)"? To the English of the article or to the Italian
or Polish of the sources?


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