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

[Philippa Alderton]

--- El Hermoso Dormido
<ElHermosoDormido at dogphilosophy.net> wrote:

> 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...

Well, what you're asking for, essentially, is a list
of secondary sources- Medieval folk, as a general
rule, didn't have our habit of analyzing the analyses
;-0

The trouble with working with secondary sources is
that you're working with someone else's interpretation
of what people did, and they might, because of their
research, think that flambeed toads feet were commonly
used as a garnish for dinosaur pottage, whereas
they've found the only three references, and it
happens that reference A taught references B and C,
and no one else anywhere used flambeed toads feet as
anything but a cure for warts. The only real way, in
my opinion, to find out what they did is to read the
recipes, and let the people themselves tell you what
they did- that way, you might find out that mastic was
very commonly used in Middle Eastern cooking, but
rarely in European cooking, for example.

I'm even very careful about accepting someone elses
translations, because I've found instances of a
translator translating a common word as something,
when it doesn't always mean quite that- if I can work
through the original language with the help of a
dictionary and sheer stubborness, I will. I usually
have things set up so I have the original language and
the translation face to face, so I can check for
myself, if there's a question.

Now, if you're satisfied working with secondary
sources, more power to you, but I suspect that you'll
find down the road, that you've been perpetuating
someone else's mistake, in all innocence, and that
it's lots harder to unlearn and relearn the right
things, once you have yourself in a particular
mindset.

Up to you....

Phlip

=====
Never a horse that cain't be rode,
And never a rider who cain't be throwed....

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