SC - cookery books

[Stefan li Rous]

Phillipa said:
> PS  How can you tell if a book is any good? For example, the booklet:
> _Pilgrim Recipes_ says to put a roasted meat dish on a bed of lettuce.  They
> had lettuce?  Elsewhere in the book they mention brown sugar.  Brown sugar
> was invented??

I don't know of any sure way to tell if a book is any good. However, I have
come to use the comments by those in this group and others when selecting
a cookbook. If I don't have a review on a particular book or author, I now
look 
for the inclusion of the original recipes and then do a random check through
the book to see if I think the redactions are reasonable. I usually don't
have time in the bookstore to do an extensive check so I will likely be
wrong sometimes and check it off to experience gained.

Take a look at the cookbook-msg and cookbook-bib files in the FOOD-BOOKS
section of my Florilegium for some good reviews and comments.

Yes, some types of lettuce were period. The common Iceburg lettuce used
today was not however. We had an discussion earlier on this when I raised
a similar question. You can find some info on this in this file in the
FOOD section:
salads-msg        (94K) 11/30/98    Period salads. lettuce, greens.

There are many types of sugar. More than I even dreamed of before various
discussions in this group. Check this file in the FOOD-SWEET-DECORATED
section:
sugar-msg        (107K)  4/ 2/99    Sugar and other medieval sweeteners.

Basically brown sugar has molasses mixed in. Sugar is a processed item.
The methods used to process it over the years have changed and evolved,
so I guess you could say brown sugar was invented, although I think it
would be more accurate to say the process to create it was invented.

- -- 
Lord Stefan li Rous    Barony of Bryn Gwlad    Kingdom of Ansteorra
Mark S. Harris             Austin, Texas           stefan at texas.net
**** See Stefan's Florilegium files at:
         http://lg_photo.home.texas.net/florilegium/index.html ****
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