[Sca-cooks] Re: recipe format was Questions about de Nola

[johnna holloway]

I like the later ones that start out with a title like "fruit in honey" 
and by the end of they are saying, "well it'd be better if you quit 
using honey and use sugar instead. Sugar is better."

I have often thought that part of this mixing up in the printed books 
was a result of the printer taking a manuscript and giving it to someone 
to set the type without ever reading the actual text or doing any 
editing. The original recipes in a number of instances could in fact 
contain notes
or additional sentences added to the end of the recipes at another time.
Those manuscripts that were being dictated or copied could well have the 
additional notes added in as after-thoughts just like the 3 by 5 recipe 
cards in grandma's recipe box may have additional sidenotes or 
annotations. Today we edit everything and go back and read everything 
numerous times before publication. There is also the case of saving 
paper or room in the manuscript book when one was copying out.
What we find in terms of recipes set in a typeface in a sixteenth or 
seventeenth century cookbook could have been written over time, but what 
we see is a jumbled mess of a recipe that is not sorted out in (what we 
would consider to be) a proper fashion. [Remember that Gourmet magazine 
not so long ago used to print all their recipes without listing the 
ingredients first.]  There is also the aspect that as time went on, text 
and having books in text readily available changed the way that 
information was communicated. By the 17th century there is some evidence 
already that people are copying printed recipes back into handwritten 
household manuscripts. What we don't have in most cases is the actual 
printer's text copy for any cookbooks that shows how the text was set. 
We don't have the annotated copies that show what changes if any were 
made between the manuscript and the printed text.


Johnnae llyn Lewis


Robin Carroll-Mann wrote:
> Don't you just *love* all these recipes that give directions out of sequence?  
> "Add this and this and this and that, and boil it well... [two paragraphs later] 
> But before you boil it, the onions should be chopped and fried."
> 
> I'm also amused by recipes that tell you how to make a dish, and then end 
> with something like, "But in truth it's better if you leave [ingredient] out and 
> put in [other ingredient] instead.
  Brighid ni Chiarain