[Sca-cooks] Need Reference info

[rcmann4 at earthlink.net]

On 25 Jun 01,, Mastercahankyle at cs.com wrote:

> I am currently
> looking for a good source for Spanish Cooking from 15th to the early 17th
> century.
>
> The idea behind the feast is a ship's voyage. The 1st remove will be tasty
> food on the day of departure, 2nd remove will be food after being at sea the
> first week of the voyage (fresh ship's biscuits, boiled pork, cabbage, etc.),
> 3rd remove will be food served during the last week of the voyage (stored
> ships biscuits, chickpea, dried fish and possibly beef jerky), and then the
> 4th remove will be food upon arrival in port which will be East Indian or
> Oriental Food.

While poking around the web, I found an interesting database.  The
database in general may be of interest to many researchers on this list, and
one specific item may be of interest to you.

The database is Histline, produced by the National Library of Medicine.  It
indexes materials on the history of medicine.  One can limit the search by
time period, region of the world, and language of the articles.  I did a few
sample searches, and found that there were many interesting citations for
articles relating to food and nutrition.  The articles themselves are not there.
 Some of them can be ordered from the National Library of Medicine, or you
can go though the usual ILL procedures.
http://wwwihm.nlm.nih.gov/

The article that seemed of use to you was:

TITLE: Spanish diet in the Atlantic crossing, the 1570s.
AUTHORS: Super JC
HOLDING STATUS: THIS ITEM IS NOT IN THE NLM
COLLECTION.
 SOURCE:  Terr Incogn. 1984;16:57-70.

If you'd like more details about what they ate on board those Spanish ships,
this seems a good place to start.

A few more random titles, to give folks an idea of what's out there:

The measure of the meat: monastic diet in medieval England.

Keeping hospitality and board wages: servants' feeding arrangements from
the Middle Ages to the nineteenth century.

Honey revisited: a reappraisal of honey in pre-industrial diets.

The sickdish in early French recipe collections (by Terence Scully)

The size and weight of cattle and sheep in early modern Scotland.

The English plant names in The Grete Herball (1526): a contribution to the
historical study of English plant-name usage.

Botany in the Levant; sixteenth century style.

Dietetics in 16th-century cookbooks [article in Dutch]

El Romero: una de las panaceas del passado [Spanish article on the
medicinal use of rosemary]

Etc., etc.  One still has to go out and find the articles, but often the hardest
part of research is learning what sources deal with the particular obscure
subject that is your current passion.


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