[Sca-cooks] MEDIEVAL Near Eastern Food, was The Priest Fainted

[lilinah at earthlink.net]

Selene pondered:
>OK then.  What I want to find is some good solid sources from the eastern
>Mediterranean between the 14th and 17th Centuries, for from Greece from
>after Roman times to the 17th.  Are there any such things?  Did the Greeks
>just send out for pizza for 1000 years?  What did they all do for food
>=before= the relative homogeneity of modern Middle Eastern food?

Here's a book that might have some of what you're looking for... I've
only glanced at it, so i don't really recall how much detail there is
for the post-SCA, but pre-modern, period.

Siren Feasts: A History of Food and Gastronomy in Greece
by Andrew Dalby
Routledge
ISBN: 0415156572

Here's a bit of the blurb:
In Siren Feasts, Andrew Dalby provides the first serious social
history of Greek food. He begins with the tunny fishers of the
neolithic age, and traces the story through the repertoire of
classical Greece, the reputations of Lydia for luxury and of Sicily
and South Italy for sybaritism, to the Imperial synthesis of varying
traditions, with a look forward to the Byzantine cuisine and the
development of the modern Greek menu. The apples of the Hesperides
turn out to be lemons, and great favour attaches to Byzantine
biscuits.

Also since Byzantium still existed until the mid-15th century, a look
at a recent work on Byzantine food might have something useful...
"Byzantine Cuisine"
by Henry Marks
Available from Poison Pen Press
http://www.poisonpenpress.com/cookery.html

Anahita