[Sca-cooks] Question to the gang.

[lilinah at earthlink.net]

Glenn Crawford <gacrwfrd at hotmail.com> wrote:
>  What are, in your opinion, the top five (5) medieval cookbooks (in english, I
>  can't read anything else)?

Well, depends on whether or not you prefer the foods of specific
times and places. Also whether or not you want books that only have
original recipes or books that include worked-up recipes.

That said...

1.) If you can't afford a library, i highly recommend Cariadoc's
2-volume Medieval and Renaissance Cookbook Collection - for around
$20 you get close to 2 dozen cookbooks including English, French,
German, Andalusian,and Southwest Asian. Of course, there aren't any
worked up recipes in it, just originals, in English.
Ordering info on his webpage
http://www.daviddfriedman.com
Among them are:
Daz Buoch von Guoter Spise, mid-14th c. German
The Forme of Cury, c. 1390. English
Two Fifteenth Century Cookery Books, English
A Proper New Book of Cookery, 16th c. English
Sir Hugh Plat's Delights for Ladies, 1609, English
The Closet of Sir Kenelm Digby, Open'd, 1669, English
Le Menagier de Paris - c. 1395, French
Du Fait de Cuisine, by Master Chiquart, 1420, French
Three Near Eastern Cookbooks
Fragments from cookbooks from a number of places,
and more...

Also, I have a cultural bias and prefer the food of cultures around
the Mediterranean, therefore among my favorites is:

2.) The Original Mediterranean Cuisine by Barbara Santich
This is a small reasonably priced paperback with recipes from France,
Italy, and Spain, that includes
-- original recipes in their original languages
-- translations of the original recipes into English
-- worked-up versions of the recipes that are pretty good - although
i generally make up my own version based on the English translation

3.) As a person with a Near Eastern persona i couldn't survive
without the recently published "Medieval Arab Cookery" - besides
interesting essays, it includes several complete cookbooks.

>And where are the best places to find them?
I generally search
http://www.bookfinder.com

This search engine searches
-- NEW booksellers, like A1, AddAll, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, etc.;
-- Large used-book clearing houses like A Libris - who really mark things up;
-- and listers of small used-book dealers like ABE books - a great source

And a number of the vendors are in Europe, which is how i found a
second-hand copy of the 1523 facsimile of de Nola's book for $6 in
Spain. Can't read it very well, but it's cool and i hope to learn to
read it better

Anahita