[Sca-cooks] Re: (Period cookery questions)

[El Hermoso Dormido]

On Wednesday 08 May 2002 04:44 pm, johnna holloway wrote:
> Would you like a reading list on the
> history of cookery or would you like to share
> your sources first and then perhaps receive
> a reading list for other things to read on
> the subject that you haven't already read.
> How much was "your recent bit of studying"?
> I can suggest a dozen or twenty books to start.
>
> Johnnae llyn Lewis  Johnna Holloway

What I am attempting to do at this point is either confirm or
disabuse myself of "prejudices" I've picked up regarding
period cookery - preferably confirm, at least my first two
questions:  They are precisely what interest me so much in
Medieval cooking.

The most recent "concrete" example of what gives me the impression
that "period" cookery was more a "personal art" than a science or
"recipe-following" are the "Cook and Kitchen" and "Methods and Menus"
chapters in "Fast and Feast", which has multiple statements and quotes
implying that cooks were constantly coming up with new dishes (and
were expected to), and attributes the frequent lack of measurements
of cooking times or amounts of ingredients to the notion that cooks
were expected to be able to decide how much to add or how long to
cook on their own...which is a notion that suits my cooking style anyway...

I'm far less confident about the notion that cooks may have been
"minimally literate", I was just wondering whether or not, if that
were the case, that had any bearing on how often cooks used
recipes.

I do know that while I've seen a few illustrations showing people
in kitchen-type places writing, I don't recall ever running into
an illustration showing someone cooking and reading at the same
time or something of a similar nature (i.e. the "modern" habit of cooking
from a recipe)...

I AM quite interested in references to books on medieval cookery (though
less interested in "cookbooks" [i.e. books of recipes] than I am in
books about cooking styles, habits, and equipment), though, so I
certainly wouldn't turn down a reading list...