[Sca-cooks] About Cassie

[David Friedman]

Cassie writes:

...

>  My husband wants to try the artichoke recipie for feast out of the 
>Fabulous Feasts by Madelaieine Pelner Cosman ........but i have 
>recently been warned off that book.Is there a good recipie for 
>artichokes?

Interesting question.

Part of the difficulty in answering it is the problem of 
distinguishing artichokes from cardoons--two very similar plants, of 
which different parts are eaten. I have some 13th c. Andalusian 
cardoon recipes. I've seen various assertions that artichokes were 
known by about the 14th or 15th c., but I don't think I have come 
across any recipes and I don't know what the evidence for the dating 
and identification is. Something of the sort  existed in antiquity, 
but it may have been the cardoon.

_Fabulous Feasts_ is often offered by SCA cooks as an example of an 
unreliable source--not only does the author not give, or cite, the 
originals of the recipes, she is supposed to have admitted to 
inventing at least one of them. A good general rule is not to trust 
any secondary source that doesn't include the original, since if you 
haven't seen the original recipe you have no way of knowing how close 
the version in the secondary source is.
-- 
David/Cariadoc
www.daviddfriedman.com