SC - Re: Books on the sheilf
RuddR at aol.com
RuddR at aol.com
Fri Apr 28 06:27:17 PDT 2000
Terry Decker writes:
> Pretty good selection of books for a beginner. Forget the recipes in
> Fabulous Feasts, read it for other information.
Pelner-Cosman's sources for some of the recipes seem to have been Forme of
Cury (Warner's edition, similar to Pegge's), and Two Fifteenth-Century
Cookery-Books. A fun research project/game is to go through F. F. with her
sources to hand, and try to find the source for each redaction, and determine
how close or far off it is. I have figured out that about half the recipes
in F. F. are completely invented by Pelner-Cosman, her students or caterers,
the remaining half are actually from the sources named, half of those are
altered a lot (mostly because she doen't know what almond milk is!), and the
remaining one quarter are pretty close to the originals (a very few are right
on the mark). True, it is a lot of work, but a great way to get familiar
with a couple of basic primary sources.
As for reading her for the historical information in the rest of the book . .
. well, how can you trust the research of a medieval food scholar who doesn't
know what almond milk is, and declares that the instructions were never
written down, and the process lost to time? (She obviously didn't read Two
Fifteenth-Century Cookery-Books very closely, and should have read Joy of
Cooking.)
The pictures are great.
Rudd Rayfield
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