SC - Taillevent, Viandier (Vatican Manuscript) online

[Jeff Brainard]

At 9:59 AM -0500 8/24/00, Michael F. Gunter wrote, in the thread "Re: 
SC - Harry Potter":

>Now onto other subjects, Duke Cariadoc were you still wanting to
>bring up that topic we discussed at the Cook's potluck?

Implying that he assumed I was reading a thread devoted to Harry 
Potter. As it happens, I wasn't--the list has gotten too big for me 
to read all of it--but Elizabeth was.

The topic we were discussing was the possibility of adding to the 
food court a cookshop serving period food. Such an institution 
existed long ago (before there was a food court)--The Sated Tyger, 
which not only provided period food but cooked it over a fire and in 
period ovens, built on site. But in recent years the closest was 
Marion of Edwinstowe's cookshop (she was also one of people behind 
the Sated Tyger), which sold period and periodoid baked goods--and 
has also now disappeared.

I am assuming, for the moment, a more modest project than the 
Tyger--a cookshop using modern cooking equipment to produce period 
food for sale.Some obvious questions are:

Is there a market for it--are there a substantial number of people 
who would eat period food if it were available? My guess is that the 
answer is "yes," provided that a reasonable fraction of the dishes 
were chosen to appeal to mass tastes, but I don't really know.

How hard would it be to do, and is there anyone on the list 
interested in doing it?

How should such a project be run? Should it limit itself to one 
cuisine (presumably the Anglo-French 13th-15th c, which is the 
closest we have to "generic medieval") or serve a selection of 
dishes, or perhaps have different centuries or different cuisines on 
different days? What are dishes that would be easy and not too 
expensive to make and would appeal to a lotof people? Some of my 
suggestions include:

Caboges (Two Fifteenth Century)
Ember Day Tart
Potage of Meat (Platina)
Tabahaja (I'm thinking of the one that's fried meat in a sauce of 
murri and honey)
Bourbelier de Sanglier (for the meat lovers)
Crispes

One possibility would be a cookshop that was open to the general 
public most of the time, but could also be hired to do a specific 
meal for a group.

Comments? Suggestions?

David/Cariadoc
http://www.daviddfriedman.com/