SC - Charlemagne

[Peggy A. Stonnell]

At 09:03 PM 21/05/00 -0400, you wrote:
<snip>

>Ooh, hard questions... there's not a huge amount of written material
>directly related to food from this time, AFAIK...
>
>You might look at Anthimus, who wrote a letter on food to a previous
>King of the Franks some 275 years prior. I hear that the Mark Grant
>translation from Prospect Books is currently out of print, but I'd be
>surprised if you couldn't find a copy from someplace. I have a

No problem there, I have a copy of that.

>secondary-source book on medieval food by Richard Barber someplace that
>has some dark ages descriptions of foods from various ecclesiastical
>writers that are roughly contemporary to Charlemagne; I'll see if I can
>find it.
>

Thanks you.

>There's also a fair amount of semi-substantiated culinary-ish anecdotes
>concerning Charlemagne (for example, his getting yelled at by his
>doctors for eating too much roast meat and avoiding the boiled, so you
>might want to serve a roast with a simple black pepper or mustard or
>garlic sauce, which seem reasonably likely candidates, or serve
>something made with whichever of the cheeses -- I forget which -- is
>supposed to have been discovered by Charlemagne while visiting a certain
>bishop and later demanded in taxes by the Emperor: I think it was
>probably a blue-rinded variant of Brie).

Yes, lots of simply prepared meats, cheese that is not cheddar, that is
what I want to do.  

>Then, of course, I'm pretty sure we have access to which herbs were
>grown in Charlemagne's gardens. Lord Bear should be able to hook you up
>with this information; he'll probably see this note in the morning.

Yes, I keep coming across references to this list of things he wanted grown
on his estates, but I can't find the whole list.  I am hoping someone here
can point me in the right direction.

>
>Hope this helps.
>

Thank you very much. 

Hopefully, I should know on Wednesday wiether or not I am doing this, so if
I get it I will back with lots of questions.

Isobel fitz Gilbert
Lions Gate, An Tir