[Sca-cooks] Le Menagier Fine Powder

[Johnna Holloway]

> I have another annoying question. Does Barbara Wheaton in Savoring the 
> Past give the original French by any chance for:
>
> Spice Mixture from Livre fort excellent de cuisine 1555.
> Wheaton. Savoring the Past . p.247.

She gives it as:

> Menues espices

Prenez z iiij de Gingembre z iiii de canelle z ii de poyure rond z i de 
poyure long
ij de noix de muscade z i de cloux de Giroffle z i de Graine de paradis 
z i de muscade
z i de Garingal et i le tout mis en pouldre et passes par lesset.

She includes in a note that Long pepper was unobtainable and that grains 
of paradise
almost as rare. I have substituted cardamon.
Keep in mind that the work was done on this volume in the early 
1980'sand first appeared
in 1983 when such spices were harder to obtain.

> Also, i'm now curious about the Thresor de sante recipe in Wheaton. 
> The recipe Thorvald/James Prescott sent which is on p. 395 of this 
> work, says, in the original French:
> "Gingembre, quatre onces; canelle,  trois onces et demie; poivre rond, 
> une once et demie; poivre long, une once; muscade, deux onces; clous 
> de girofle, une once; graine de paradis, garingal, de chacun une once. 
> snipped---Whereas Wheaton has:
> Another Spice Mixture from the 1607 Thresor de Sante. snipped
> Again, does she give the original French? It looks to me like she is 
> using the recipe James sent, but is substituting cardamom for grains 
> of paradise. And in my experience, since i have access to both grains 
> and cardamom, they are not all that similar. 

Yes she gives the original French as taken from the Pichon edition of Le 
Viandier---where
they cited the 17th century recipe apparently. It reads the same as 
given by James earlier.

Again there is a footnote that explains her reasoning--- stating again 
that Long Pepper was
unavailable, and that here the question was how much more black pepper 
might be added
or if one should add any at all as she already found it peppery enough. 
Again she substituted
cardamon for the grains of paradise--- probably for those reasons that 
Bear mentioned as regards
the true and false cardamon. Davidson has a long article about the 
confusion in the Oxford Companion.

Again, my thanks to you, both for you information and for the intriguing 
web page. And for all the other help you've sent me in messages now lost 
in the death of my hard drive.

Anahita

Glad to be of help---

Johnnae llyn Lewis