SC - Written recipes (was: interesting URL - food shopping!)

[Jenne Heise]

> Chiquart was chief cook to the duke of Savoy and dictated a cookbook 
> dated 1420; he says he has never read a cookbook and given how 
> different his is from all the others, I believe him. He says he is 
> writing his at the insistance of the duke. So a top professioal cook 
> did not think of cookbooks as one of the necessary tools of his 
> trade. I am not sure who used the manuscripts we have.

A number of commentators, including Maria Dembinska and someone (?!) who
wrote about the library of Mathias Corvinas have suggested that Italian
cookbooks, including Platina, were used by cooks working for royalty in
Hungary and Poland. (Dembinska comments on the unusually high almond use
for the kitchen of St. Queen Jadwiga of Wawel, attributing it to a liking
for Italian foods and an imported chef. -- I immediately envisioned
Polish kitchen workers saying, "MORE Almond milk?! Doesn't he ever cook
anything without almond milk?! I make any more almond milk this week and 
I'll turn INTO an almond...")

Jadwiga Zajaczkowa, mka Jennifer Heise	      jenne at tulgey.browser.net
disclaimer: i speak for no-one and no-one speaks for me.

" Oh, Adam was a gardener, and God who made him sees 
That half a proper gardener's work is done upon his knees, 
So when your work is finished, you can wash your hands and pray
For the Glory of the Garden, that it may not pass away!" -- Kipling