[Sca-cooks] Book - The Medieval Kitchen

[jenne at fiedlerfamily.net]

> While I agree with you on the Redon book, I am
> wondering whether you are mixing up Pleyn Delit
> with some other book, like Fabulous Feasts?

No, I don't think Pleyn Delit is _bad_ (unlike the recipes in Fabulous
Feasts), except for the reference to allspice [not a period spice...]. I
just don't care for it and don't find it inspiring.

> Pleyn Delit does give the original, some
> commentary and then their redaction.  It does
> have a few flaws, but then so does almost every
> other book too.

I don't find Pleyn Delit's commentary helpful, and I don't like their
redactions. The authors are also concentrating on English sources so their
originals are not translations, which makes them harder to work with for
the beginner.

Tastes may vary but I've found that when I hand people _The Medieval
Kitchen_ they get much more excited about medieval cooking than when I
hand them _Pleyn Delit_.

For my money, it's better to start with Redon's Medieval Kitchen (there's
another _Medieval Kitchen_ by Maggie Black and while that volume is better
than Fabulous Feasts for the recipes, some of her material is wrong and
her arrangement of recipes gives a false idea of what recipes were cooked
when). After you've gotten Medieval Kitchen, skip right to Take 1000 Eggs,
and then start working on the hard stuff from the originals, such as
Platina. But that's only my opinion.

-- Pani Jadwiga Zajaczkowa, Knowledge Pika jenne at fiedlerfamily.net
"Somedays the struggle just gets tired..." -- Renee Senolges