[Sca-cooks] 1604 French cookbook - Request for co-authors

[James Prescott]

Greetings,

I have, with the assistance of Jeremy Fletcher, completed the
second draft of a translation into English of the 1604 French
cookbook "Ouverture de Cuisine" by Lancelot de Casteau.

It is in French, but is actually a Belgian cookbook, from the
city of Liege.  It is primarily a cookbook in the French
tradition, plus there are Dutch and Italian influences.

There will be one more draft before it is ready for publication,
whether that is to be in print (not yet investigated) or on the
web (the project is currently in web readable form).

I'm looking for volunteers with the time and inclination to
assist with this project in any of a variety of significant ways,
each with a different focus.

The reward is in the joy of working on the project, your name as
a co-author, and in the unlikely event of a print publication
that earns royalties, a proportionate share in those royalties.

- For those with little or no French, there is reading the English
translation for style, for readability, for grammar, for good
culinary sense, for English words or cooking terms which are not
well known and which need to be in the glossary, for hard-to-use
or ugly web design, and for broken web links.

- For those with good knowledge of European Renaissance and other
cuisines, there is an open-ended chance to add comparisons with
similar recipes from other cuisines, to question assumptions that
have been made, to add discussions of ingredients and cooking
techniques, and otherwise to enrich the translation in whatever
way they wish.

- For those interested in cooking, there is an opportunity to create
modern redactions for whichever of the recipes catch your fancy
(there are already at least eight redactions from this cookbook on
the web).

- For those with a knowledge of French and access to university
libraries that may have reference works that are not in my
university library, there is research into the meaning of some
15 words which are not yet adequately explained.

- For those with a good knowledge of French, there is comparing
the French and the English looking for stupid translation mistakes
that may have escaped the eyes of both myself and Jeremy.

- For anyone with connections to print publishers, leads on who
might be interested in publishing this translation.


Master Thorvald Grimsson (James Prescott)
Coordinator, Ouverture translation project