SC - New World Feast - references
Ann Sasahara
ariann at nmia.com
Sat Sep 11 08:45:25 PDT 1999
Forwarded by request.
Christianna
- --------- Forwarded message ----------
From: "Terri Spencer" <tspencer at revest.com>
To: 'Christy' <mermayde at juno.com>
Date: Fri, 10 Sep 1999 17:26:13 -0400
Subject: Fooles and Fricassees: Food in Shakespeare's England
Message-ID: <01BEFBB1.95220350.tspencer at revest.com>
So just how far a drive/train ride is DC? How about a field trip?
PS - please post to the Cooks List if someone hasn't already brought it
up.
If they have - what did they say? I'm still modem-challenged so I'm not
subscribed.
Terri
WASHINGTON (AP) _ The Shakespeare Theater and the Folger Shakespeare
Library have come up with a new way of looking at the Bard, via the
stomach.
``Fooles and Fricassees: Food in Shakespeare's England,'' is
the
exhibit opening Friday at the library. Cooks of Shakespeare's time made a
``foole'' of fruit, mace and cream. It resembled what today's Britons
call
trifle, and Italians call ``English soup.''
Meanwhile, the theater's modern-dress production of ``King
Lear,'' which opened last week, begins with a chorus of ``Happy
Birthday''
as two maids in caps and short skirts bring in a huge white cake with
candles _ director Michael Kahn's new version of the play's beginning.
Two
characters _ brothers Edgar and Edmund _ are seen eating a piece of the
cake.
It's fun, but purists may complain that the play Shakespeare
wrote includes none of this. The text gives no indication that the king,
who is 80 or more, is celebrating a birthday.
``People in those days didn't celebrate birthdays much,'' said
Rachel Doggett, the library's curator of books. ``It was more
name-days.'' They did bake big cakes, though.
The library exhibit includes a manuscript from about 1610 _
two
years after the first printing of ``King Lear'' _ is entitled, ``Mrs.
Sarah
Longe Her Receipt Book.'' In it, she instructs her staff on how ``To make
a
Cake.''
``Take halfe a bushell of flower, 8 pound of Currence
(currants), and 5 pound of butter, and boyle it by it selfe, and skim it,
3
pints of Creame, and boyle it, 3 quarters of a pound of sugar....''
Little is known of Mrs. Longe, but she must have been a cook
of
some reputation. `King James and his Queene have eaten with much
liking,''
she boasts of her biscuit recipe.
The exhibit also includes examples of kitchenware and cutlery
of
the period _ round spoons and big knives but no forks. Forks came into
use
from Italy only some years after Shakespeare. A reconstructed place
setting
for a family table includes a trencher, the round or square wooden plate
used by people no longer so poor as to eat their food off a slice of dry
bread, but not wealthy enough for porcelain plates.
There's part of a rare set of watercolors depicting life in
King
James' court. One shows five elaborately dressed gentlemen wearing hats
and
seated at a table loaded with food. They are devoting more attention,
though, to large glasses of wine being poured by a young man in a bright
red jacket.
On the wall, a printed proclamation by the king forbids anyone
to import pepper except from the recently formed East India Company.
Website: http://www.folger.edu
Here's what the website had (under upcoming exhibits - looks like they
haven't updated it yet.) :
Fooles and Fricassees: Food in Shakespeare's England
September 10, through December 30, 1999
In her "Receipt Booke," compiled about 1610, Mrs. Sarah Longe recorded
recipes for a variety of foods and medicines: everything from "A
Goosebery
Foole" and a "Bisket of Almons" to "Plague Water," a "Limon Sallett," and
a
"White Frigasy." The recipes that she and numerous other women recorded
for
their household use provide a fascinating glimpse into the everyday diet
of
Shakespeare and his contemporaries. Household accounts, probate
inventories, diaries, and commonplace books, not to mention printed
cookery
books, discourses on trade, ordinances, and pamphlets such as The Women's
Petition Against Coffee (1674) document shifting fashions in food and its
preparation. Drawings, woodcuts, and engravings of the period illustrate
not only the planting, harvesting, and marketing of food but also such
niceties as the proper way to cut pie vents or carve an artichoke.
Fooles and Fricassees will explore the changes in diet that occurred in
England between 1550 and 1700. Transformations in agriculture and food
production and consumption were central to the constitution of British
culture in the early modern period. Dietary changes were prompted by
population growth, new farming techniques, and increased access to
overseas
goods and ideas. Elaborate rituals and manners evolved with the
introduction of new foods and drinks such as coffee and chocolate, and
information about continental cooking techniques contributed to changes
in
traditional cooking methods.
___________________________________________________________________
Get the Internet just the way you want it.
Free software, free e-mail, and free Internet access for a month!
Try Juno Web: http://dl.www.juno.com/dynoget/tagj.
============================================================================
To be removed from the SCA-Cooks mailing list, please send a message to
Majordomo at Ansteorra.ORG with the message body of "unsubscribe SCA-Cooks".
============================================================================
More information about the Sca-cooks
mailing list