[Sca-cooks] To the King's Taste (was Pennsic Potluck, revisited)

[Robin Carroll-Mann]

On 28 Aug 2004, at 11:07, Daniel Myers wrote:

> 
> On Aug 28, 2004, at 9:43 AM, Robin Carroll-Mann wrote:
> 
> > You don't see much citrus in English cooking until the late
> > 16th century.
> 
> This statement kind of caught me off guard, so I had to do some 
> checking.
> 
> While oranges don't show up in English cooking texts until the late 
> 16th century, they do show up in French texts in the late 14th century 
> (see below).  I'd be surprised if it took 200 years for oranges to make 
> their way across the English channel.  More likely, the oranges were 
> known, but didn't show up in kitchens often enough to override the 
> natural tendency towards plagiarism of early English cookery book 
> authors.

I'm sure that's so, which is why I qualified my statement with "much".  But 
it's rare enough to be a red flag when orange peel pops up in in a redaction of 
a late 15th-century English recipe.


Brighid ni Chiarain *** mka Robin Carroll-Mann
Barony of Settmour Swamp, East Kingdom
rcmann4 at earthlink.net