SC -

[david friedman]

At 2:02 AM +1100 3/25/00, Gwynydd of Culloden wrote:
>Unto the Gathered Cooks does Gwynydd of Culloden send the following:

>I am not ready to "re-invent the wheel" - or discover the joy of 
>original scholarship - just yet.  I want a book from which I can 
>cook as soon as I have done the shopping.  I want to be fairly sure 
>that if I follow the recipe I will end up with something at least 
>mostly edible.  I do not feel that I can "read the language" of a 
>period cookbook just yet; I simply do not have the knowlege-base. 
>Although I am a fairly good cook, I am entirely self-taught in this 
>area (out of cookbooks).  I now have enough knowlege and experience 
>to look at a non-period recipe and say "yes" or "no", and to know 
>what needs to be changed to get it right next time if it was less 
>than successful.  I do not have that knowlege or experience with 
>period cooking.

1. I suspect you are underestimating your own abilities. If you have 
taught yourself to cook out of cookbooks, you shouldn't find it that 
difficult to work out period recipes.

2. If what you want are worked out period recipes, quite a lot of 
them are available online. If you go to my page and follow the 
medieval link, you should find some of our worked out recipes, a link 
to the Miscellany which has lots (several hundred) of our worked out 
recipes, and some period cookbooks (translated) if you want to try 
working from them.

Hope that helps.

David/Cariadoc
http://www.best.com/~ddfr/