SC - Period cookshop at Pennsic?

[Jenne Heise]

> Perhaps salads were listed for a Lenten menu because the greens are more
> plentiful during that time and unavailable the rest of the year.  Off hand
> fall greens such as mustard and kale are best cooked.  Cabbages are best
> pickled in case the next years spring greens fail.  The spring in northern
> Europe isn't very long even for wild greens.

I would suspect, yes, that raw (or wilted rather than cooked) greens were
served primarily in spring and early summer, thought they might be served
in a small household in tems when the menu needed a quick stretch.

Cariadoc's point was that he believed salads to be rarely served at
feasts, bolstered by the evidence that the first 5 menus in Le Menagier
didn't mention them. Looking at all 24 menus, I find three that mention
greens in such a way as to indicate that they might not be cooked, all of
them Lenten fast-day meals. 

(I wonder if fresh greens were associated with cheapness? Also, would they
be more likely to be served at everyday, rather than 'feast', meals?)

Jadwiga Zajaczkowa, mka Jennifer Heise	      jenne at tulgey.browser.net
disclaimer: i speak for no-one and no-one speaks for me.

" Oh, Adam was a gardener, and God who made him sees 
That half a proper gardener's work is done upon his knees, 
So when your work is finished, you can wash your hands and pray
For the Glory of the Garden, that it may not pass away!" -- Kipling