SC - Emeril on medieval cooking

[Bethany Public Library]

Morgan wrote:
<<snip>>
>The www.FoodTV.com webpage has three of the recipes he used listed.  The
>Pottage comes from Platina (he uses a redaction) while the bread and tarte
>are not credited to period sources.  In fact, aren't "Maids of Honor" tarts
>at least 17th or 18th Century, possibly Victorian?

Actually, probably not. As the story goes, the original was whipped up by
Henry the eigth's cooks to serve Ann Boleyn and Friends, when she was a
"Maid of Honor" (lady-in-waiting) in the court of his current wife. The
tarts purportedly got their name when lecherous Henry wandered through the
gardens and noticed the pretty  young things munching on fruited almond
cheese tartes. Apparently he sampled both the young things AND the tarts, as
Ann Boleyn became his wife shortly thereafter. The tartes were as nice as
the babes, and so retained the nick-name of the ladies who ate them. The
original chef, named Richmond, IIRC, emigrated to another spot in England,
with a more genial class of aristocracy to serve, and his family held onto
the Richmond Maids of Honor recipe for centuries. All others are, according
to the family, poor substitutes.

I can't document a drop of all this. It could all be pure Richmond family
hype. But you can find a recipe for Richmond Maids of Honor (apparently a
great upspringing of similar recipes with the same name happened shortly
after the craze started) and the above drivel  can also be found in a
cookbook called farmhouse Cookery, Recipes from the Country Kitchen
(actually a pseudo-historic cookbook with some nifty woodcuts and
descriptions of historic kitchens from Medieval, Renaissance and Victorian
England ), by Reader's Digest London.

Cheers,

Aoife