[Sca-cooks] Book - The Medieval Kitchen

[lilinah at earthlink.net]

Here's the whole review from Epicurious
http://eat.epicurious.com/eat/cookbooks/index.ssf/?/eat/cookbooks/1998/medieval.html

Anahita

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Middle Age Spreads
Medieval cookery for modern times

The Medieval Kitchen: Recipes from France and Italy by Odile Redon, 
François Sabban, and Silvano Serventi

AUDIENCE:
Food-history buffs.

NUMBER OF RECIPES:
155

PERCENTAGE YOU'LL REALLY USE:
5%. Maybe. But you'll read them all.

PRACTICALITY:
Although the authors did all they could to translate the recipes into 
usable form, this is the antithesis of quick-and-easy cooking.

REQUIRED COOKING:
Nucato, or Spiced Honey Nut Crunch
Extemporaneous Soup
Chicken with Orange Sauce
Everyday Torta
Cherry Pudding

ADDED ATTRACTION:
You'll never again think of Medieval times as the dark ages.

PUBLISHER AND PRICE:
University of Chicago Press; $32.50

BUY ONLINE:
Purchase Medieval Kitchen from our partner BarnesandNoble.com

Larks tongues and stuffed swans. Rotting meat disguised with spices. 
If this is your idea of cuisine in the Middle Ages, you are both 
right and wrong. According to a fascinating book called The Medieval 
Kitchen: Recipes from France and Italy,  cooking in the fourteenth 
and fifteenth centuries was more varied and sophisticated than we 
suppose. And much of what we think we know - that spices were used to 
hide spoilage, for example - just isn't true.

How do we know this? Authors Odile Redon, François Sabban, and 
Silvano Serventi studied about 20 of the roughly 100 cookbook 
manuscripts from the period, mainly those from France and Northern 
Italy - though for desserts they were forced to go to England, where 
people were, then as now, mad for sweets. The result is a historical 
cookbook that works in today's kitchen.

For every recipe, there is first the original text (translated into 
English), followed by the authors' modern rendering of the recipe, 
which takes care to be both authentic and good tasting. Some of the 
dishes (marrow fritters, roast kid with sauce of gold) may be exotic 
to twentieth-century citizens, but a good many fall into the realm of 
what we cook today, such as chicken with fennel or pumpkin soup.

Clearly, the cuisine of the Middle Ages was much more than mutton and 
mead. In many cases, we see the precursors of the modern meal, but 
with a centuries-old twist, which makes it all that more interesting. 
French toast, for instance, sprinkled with saffron-colored rose 
water. Or poached tuna in a fat-free sauce made of grilled bread, 
cabbage cooking liquid, vinegar, ginger, and a pinch of saffron 
(saffron, apparently, was quite popular). The authors left out 
unwieldly [sic] dishes, such as those that call for a half of cow. 
But this is not revisionist history; rather it's history we can use 
in our own homes.

- Reviewed and tested by Irene Sax, August 17, 1998

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sheesh - should have said "unwieldy" - there's only one "l" - even my 
pathetic spell checker noticed...