[Sca-cooks] period millet referances

[Stefan li Rous]

Vicente asked:

> Now, I've read the Florilegium articles on grains and found the references
> to Taillevent, Platina, and Granado, but can anyone come up with more?
> Specifically, was millet considered animal fodder and famine food, or an
> acceptable part of the diet?  The references already mentioned seem to
> indicate that millet was acceptable, although not necessarily popular.


Go back to the Florilegium and use the search engine and search on 'millet'.

Here is one mention I found in the fd-Normans-msg file:
 >>>>>>

Here is what Neckham wrote (quoted and translated in _Daily Life in
the 12th Century_); he doesn't give recipes, unfortunately.

"In a kitchen there should be a small table on which cabbage may be
minced, and also lentils, peas, shelled beans, beans in the pod,
millet, onions, and other vegetables of the kind that can be cut up.
There should be also pots, tripods, a mortar, a hatchet, a pestle, a
stirring stick, a hook, a cauldron, a bronze vessel, a small pan, a
baking pan, a meathook, a griddle, small pitchers, a trencher, a
bowl, a platter, a pickling vat, and knives for cleaning fish." <<<<<

Millet also seems to be popular in Eastern Europe and Russia, but you may have
more trouble documenting it there, at least with cookbooks, since few survived.

Stefan
--
THLord Stefan li Rous    Barony of Bryn Gwlad    Kingdom of Ansteorra
    Mark S. Harris            Austin, Texas         StefanliRous at austin.rr.com
**** See Stefan's Florilegium files at:  http://www.florilegium.org ****