[Sca-cooks] Am I at least minimally clueful? (Period cookery questions)

[Philip & Susan Troy]

Also sprach Terry Decker:
>In general, head cooks were highly paid, highly skilled technicians who
>planned and prepared menus to please their patrons and maintain their
>health.  They may have been illiterate or semi-literate, but they were not
>fools or incompetents, as they had to command an army of kitchen staff,
>handle large purchases, and often provide for 40 to several hundred people
>at every meal.
>
>I would suggest reading Rumpolt's comments on cooks and the ordering of a
>kitchen.

I second that. Chiquart, too (he appears to have been semi-literate,
but to have dictated his magnum opus, Du Fait de Cuisine, to a
scribe).

Adamantius