[Sca-cooks] Re: culinary standards was RE: Tomato evidence

[johnna holloway]

Karen Hess and Elizabeth David have over the years addressed the various
issues of lag times between when recipes appear in manuscripts and when
they appear in print. Something that is published today in the newspaper
may be up to the minute and current, but recipes five centuries ago
might have been a generation or two old by the time that they appeared
in print.
Manuscripts are interesting also for the method of collection.
Were they collected over time or at one time for a special occasion,
like a book of recipes for a woman upon her marriage?

As to if or when the recipes were used, there is some evidence that
certain ones couldn't be cooked from because parts of the text were left
out when the works were typeset. It's always interesting to see what
corrections are made with the later editions.

Johnna Holloway   Johnnae llyn Lewis

jenne at fiedlerfamily.net wrote:
Snipped
> BTW, does anyone else have any concerns about some of our old standards
> such as Markham, Digby and Plat in terms of whether they are descriptive
> of what  actually happened, or Martha-Stewartish proscriptive of what
> people could do if they were willing to go to the trouble (but probably
> didn't)?>
> -- Jadwiga Zajaczkowa