[Sca-cooks] Scappi's Aromatic Spinach

[rcmann4 at earthlink.net]

On 2 Jul 01,, Terri Spencer wrote:

> I'll serve it anyway, but I'd really like to see the original pre-1600
> recipe.  Platina suggests spinach with sweet spices, and recommends
> pine nuts with raisins, but doesn't put them all together.  No luck
> with Scully's Neopolitan Collection either.  Has Scappi's _Opera
> dell'Arte del Cucinare_ been published in English?  Has it been
> re-published in a modern edition at all?  I can translate one recipe -
> how hard can it be?  Is this dish in any of the various Catalan
> collections that folks are working on?  Arabian collections?  Anything
> like it that might have evolved/fused into this version?

Nola has a recipe for Chopped Spinach (#86 -- Espinacas Picadas).  The
spinach is fried in bacon fat, then cooked with broth or milk.  Various things
can be added to it -- raisins are one of them.

Granado has a recipe for a similar dish -- spinach fried in oil or butter or
poultry fat, then cooked with broth and prunes.  My translation of the recipe,
and a redaction, are in the Florilegium in this file:
http://www.florilegium.org/files/FOOD-BY-REGION/fd-Spain-msg.html
It may be worth noting that many of the recipes in Granado are plagiarized
from Scappi.  I do not know if this is one of them.


Brighid ni Chiarain
Barony of Settmour Swamp, East Kingdom
mka Robin Carroll-Mann  ***  rcmann4 at earthlink.net