[Sca-cooks] New In Print

[Elise Fleming]

Greetings!  The November 2004 issue of Discover Magazine has an article
about Harold McGee ("legendary food scholar" and "America's premier food
wonk").  There's a brief extract from his newly revised book, but the
article's main thrust is "The Chemistry of Fish".  It explains how to look
for fresh fish and what begins to happen, chemically, as the fish ages.

The new PPC (Petits Propos Culinaires) issue #76, has a number of articles
of interest.  First, there's the article by the SCA's own Eden Rain and
David Walddon entitled "Drunkards, Belly-Gods & Servants of the Paunch:
Food References in Florio's Translation of _The Decameron_".  The
introduction says that this is "a summary of a project cataloguing food
references from Florio's seventeenth-century translation..." and notes that
there are some 1,632 food references in the translation.  The database can
be found at http://www.vastrepast.com/decameron.html.  

There is also an article, slightly OOP entitled "English Portable Soup
Receipts, ca. 1600-1750".  These were meat broths cooked down, cooled and
solidified to form something like what we use as bouillon cubes.  There's
even a photo of a slab of portable soup in the front of the journal.

Next is the article "William Lawson, A Covert Hermetic".  Lawson lived from
1583-1635 and designed a garden which his friends asked that he describe in
print.  It appeared in _A New Orchard and Garden with The Country
Housewifes Garden of 1618_.  The article delves into whether his designs
reflected some type of mysticism or not.

Then there is "An Inventory from the Abbey of Coggeshall, 1295" which lists
the equipment found in this Lancastrian Cistercian abbey.  The items are
listed by the room in which they were stored, giving some idea of what
items were needed for the abbey's food preparation.

The book review section has the following which might be of interest to the
SCA: 

1.  _Culinary History_, edited by A. Lynn Martin and Barbara Santich which
is the proceedings from an Australian conference in 2001, 155 pages, $40
Australian.  There are several articles dealing near the SCA time period -
17th century travelers to Paris, 17th century medicinal drinks, and the
expenses of a 4th century trip from Egypt to Antioch and back.
2. _Food and Drink in Anglo-Saxon England_ by Debby Banham, 96 pages, 14.99
pounds.  Much of the source is from monastic sign-language.  PPC said  "all
round this is a most helpful work."
3. _The Oldest Cuisine in the Word.  Cooking in Mesopotamia_ by Jean
Bottero, 134 pages, 16 pounds.  "An essential starting-line for any
contemplation of the history of cookery in the West," says PPC.
4.  _Charlemagne's Tablecloth_ by Nichola Fletcher which was already
reviewed on the Cooks' List.
5. _The Cardinal's Hat.  Money, ambition and housekeeping in a Renaissance
court_ by Mary Hollingsworth, 308 pages, 18.99 pounds.  I will quote their
review since in trying to summarize it, I would be saying the same stuff! 
"This is based on the MSS and financial accounts of Cardinal Ippolito
d'Este, the second son of Lucretia Borgia and the brother of the Duke of 
Ferrara, mostly during the years 1530-40.  You will get a true idea from
its pages of the importance of salad to the Renaissance way of catering,
and you will have the most immense fun reading a book that extracts the
maximum from dry details of finance as you can imagine.  My second-best
Christmas present."

Alys Katharine
Elise Fleming
alysk at ix.netcom.com