SC - Welser's gravy

[Philip & Susan Troy]

LrdRas at aol.com wrote:
> 
> In a message dated 2/2/00 11:58:27 AM Eastern Standard Time, troy at asan.com
> writes:
> 
> <<  Sabina Welserin's cookbook is
>  from 1553, some hundred years earlier, putting it arguably in the late
>  Middle Ages but definitely in the SCA period.  >>
> 
> Agreed but does this allow us to use such a technique for pre-1450s cuisine?

Sorry, I didn't know that was a consideration. I just thought the
question was, is it period,  which I interpreted as above. No, I don't
think this indicates that it was used throughout period and throughout
Europe. Just that it was used in Europe and in period. Now how that
information is used is another matter.

> It is my understanding through personal research that cookery took a drastic
> change after that date with regard to both techniques and seasoning. With
> each successive rebellious generation destroying the royally and nobility
> plus the added influence of New World foods, more and more elements of
> 'common' or 'peasant' cookery crept into what is now considered classical
> cuisine. Such a course resulted in the almost complete eradication of
> medieval cookery other than rare instances such as the retention of forcemeat.

I think they have medications for that now. Seriously, though, while,
say, Ein Buoch Von Guter Speis is more demonstrably medieval that Sabina
Welserin's book, I think the shift you refer to occurs at different
times in different places. In England, for example, I'd say the
breakaway point from medieval-type cookery probably occurs around 1550
or so. Sources prior to that date (the 2 Fifteenth-century cookbooks,
Andrew Boorde, etc.,seem to describe something pretty close to medieval,
while after that you have things like the Neue Proper Boke of Cokery,
sometime in the 1590's, I think, which still has some recognizable
medieval elements in addition to the modern stuff. I'd call that one of
the landmarks for the transition in England.

An added part of the puzzle might be that in England this also come near
to marking the time of the first printed English cookbooks: they may
reflect middle-class cookery because they may have been written for the
growing middle classes book market. I'm sure printed books were still
pretty expensive at the time, but certainly the overhead is lower when
you start using machines. I think there may have been pockets of
medieval-food resistance, if you will, until much later. I read recently
somewhere that the rather blankmanger-ish dish called dillegrout had
been traditionally served at English Coronation feasts until at least
the mid-seventeenth century. Apparently it was noted that Charles II
refused to taste it...

It's possible that the sources that have survived, which, in the middle
ages, seem to reflect the cusine of the nobs, may reflect the cuisine of
the middle classes in the renaissance and beyond.  
     
Adamantius
- -- 
Phil & Susan Troy

troy at asan.com