[Sca-cooks] No sugar - too much spice.

[Stefan li Rous]

Ruth Freebourne commented:
> 	One thing I recall reading (I believe in a "cookbook"
> printed from a website many years ago -- so I have to say I can't
> quote the source) is that some measures have changed between
> Medieval times and now.  The cook whose account I was writing
> told of making a dish to the exact specifications of a Period
> recipe, only to have the thing turn out almost inedible because
> of extreme spiciness/sweetness.  Unhappily, they put together a
> new, more palatable, and, s/he thought, less accurate redaction.
> Later on, however, talking to a scholarly friend, s/he found out
> about the change in weights and measures, and when s/he worked
> out the "corrected" spicing from the original recipe . . . it was
> almost identical to the "modernized" version!  The author then
> concluded that Medieval folks were not spice-crazed maniacs, we
> just aren't familiar with their measurements.

Master Cariadoc has related a story very similar to this, on this
list. I would not be surprised if these weren't two versions of the
same event. If I remember correctly, the confusion was over a "Paris"
quart and another quart and I think two wieght measures.

His message(s) can be found in this file in the COMMERCE section of
the Florilegium:
measures-msg      (74K)  6/ 7/99    Period measures and cautions for recipes.

There are also a number of conversions and referances to more resources in
this file and the following one:
measures-art      (21K)  1/ 5/98    Definitions of many medieval
measurements
                                       by Marc Carlson (Diarmaid)
--
THLord  Stefan li Rous    Barony of Bryn Gwlad    Kingdom of Ansteorra
Mark S. Harris             Austin, Texas         stefan at texas.net
**** See Stefan's Florilegium files at:  http://www.florilegium.org ****