SC - re: cotignac

[Kappler, MMC Richard A]

<< I'd have multiple sources and look for the defining elements or 
 what seems to be the best examples explaining the different steps and
use 
 this information to create something that is within the category, rather

 than recreate any particular recipe exactly. >>

Understandable but, in my experience the sources I am familiar with were 
written years apart. Comparing the documents may well produce a good
generic 
dish but not one which would have been served in any of the times from
which 
each of the manuscripts were written.


That's true, Ras, if the only sources you have were written far apart,
but there are multiples.  Some of the 15th C. German sources have recipes
that are much alike.  Thomas and I compare those when we are working on
an accurate translation.

You can begin to trace some things--am just beginning and don't have all
the sources--from the Catalan, through the Neapolitan Collection to de
Nola and to Martino, then on to Platina.  Epulario is pretty much a copy
of Platina.  They all copied each other--I am saying 'sharing' here, not
our attitudes to plagerism--and find some other similar things that
Santich translater, and Redon et al translated.  These are all what I
refer to as the 'Mediterranean corpus'.

>From France, the Menagier is rather different than anything else, but
there are multiple copies, some from different years, of the Viandier of 
Taillevent, as well as The Vivendier, and there's Chiquart, cooking in
the time of Taillevent and for the same type of nobility.  

The Two Fifteenth C. Cookbooks have some time between them and the
various versions of Forme of Curye, although not hundreds of years, but
you can often trace a recipe's 'progress' through these.  i.e., Blanc
Mange.

When you get to the 16th C. there's a lot available in English.

Regards,
Allison,     allilyn at juno.com


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