[Sca-cooks] Arte Cisoria

[Robin Carroll-Mann]

-----Original Message-----

Has anyone done an English translation of the _Arte Cisoria_ by
Enrique de Villena?  It's apparently another carving-and-serving
manual, roughly contemporary with Wynkyn de Worde but from Spain
rather than England.  I've found bib-cites on the Web for a couple of
scholarly editions in Spanish, but no English translations.  I guess
I could translate the thing myself (volunteers?  Brighid?  Alys
Katherine?), but I'd rather not waste the time if somebody's already
done it.
-- 
                                     John Elys
          (the artist formerly known as mar-Joshua ibn-Eleazar ha-Shalib)
                                 mka Stephen Bloch
                                 sbloch at adelphi.edu
_______________________________________________

AFAIK, this has not been translated into English.  (Johanna?  Jadwiga?  Can you do the voodoo that you do so well and confirm this?)  I have a photocopy of one of the modern Spanish editions (1923), and have translated small snippets of it, such as the section which documents raw carrot sticks.  It was written in 1423, but not published until the 18th century.  I have some familiarity with the book, though I have not read much in the first few chapters, which discuss the importance of this skill for young men of noble families.  As a cook, the sections that have interested me are the middle chapters, which describe how to carve a wide variety of foods, including fruits and vegetables.  It also gives some information on how foods were prepared.  For example, the section on carrots says, if the carrots are to be served raw, cut them this way, but if they are roasted in the coals, cut them in another way.    The section on chicken says to carve it one way for certain kinds of dishes, but another way for other kinds of dishes.   It details how to carve chicken for capirotada -- a dish in which roast fowl is served on bread with a covering of garlic-cheese sauce.  De Nola has a recipe for capirotada made with roast partridge.  De Villena lets me know I could make it with the more affordable bird.  And if the capirotada is being served to royalty, one should remove the bones, so that the King doesn't get his hands greasy.

De Villena was a courtier and a scholar, and his Spanish is somewhat flowery, not to mention more archaic than de Nola's, being written a century earlier.  I had once considered translating it, but decided it was too much for me.  I would be willing to act as a consultant.

There's an online facsimile of the 1766 printing at the Fons Grewe website.  It's hosted by the University of Barcelona, and the buttons are in Catalan, but you should have no problem with that.



Lady Brighid ni Chiarain
Barony of Settmour Swamp, East Kingdom
rcmann4 at earthlink.net