[Sca-cooks] No Sugar in 10th Century??

[david friedman]

Kiri writes:

>Just a thought...I can't help but wonder...I know that some recipes seem
>to call for very large quantities of spices proportionate to the amount of
>other ingredients.

Can you give me an example of one such recipe? I don't think I know any.

>I think I finally figured out that, by the time most
>of the spices got used, they had been around for a while, counting their
>transportation from where they originated, and had probably lost a fair
>amount of their strength.

This is a common suggestion, but it is an explanation for a puzzle
that, so far as I know, doesn't exist. You are assuming that medieval
recipes often specify large amounts of spices. But most medieval
recipes don't have quantities in them. And where you can deduce
quantities, they don't seem to support the idea that there were
unreasonably large amounts of spices.
--
David/Cariadoc
http://www.daviddfriedman.com/