[Sca-cooks] Re: Chocolate

[Elise Fleming]

Greetings!  Urtatim asked about the Italian chocolate references that I had
noted in the mid-90s.   There are some chocolate recipes in the Carte Bardi
II material which was written about in a modern book which used "medieval"
and "renaissance" in the title.  In the 1980s, an Australian SCAdian (Vian
Lawson?) found the book while doing research in Italy, copied the chocolate
recipes, and that's where the "rumor" of period chocolate recipes started,
I believe.  From some lucky clues, I was able to contact the SCAdian and
get the material.  Duke Cariadoc then questioned whether the material was
truly "period" and questioned when the Carte Bardi II was written.  The
book, while dating much of the other material, didn't provide the dates for
the Carte Bardi.  A year or two ago, Mistress Helewyse (Midrealm) mentioned
about going to Italy and I asked if she could check on the information. 
She wrote to the Florence Archives where the Carte Bardi material is stored
and reported back on the response she received.  Helewyse wrote: "While the
Bardi archives do indeed start in the 15th century the section she took
those recipes from appears to be some time in the 18th century.  At the
earliest the recipes may have been used in the 17th .  So no chocolate in
Italy in the 16th."

So, unless someone else can point to more definite recipes in _period_
material, I would agree with Helewyse.  That doesn't mean that chocolate
wasn't drunk in Italy or possibly Spain.  There is the report that the
Church decreed that drinking chocolate wasn't eating food, so priests could
drink chocolate before celebrating Mass and not violate the strictures. 
Drinking chocolate would seem to be in period if one used the period
spicings.

Alys Katharine

Elise Fleming
alysk at ix.netcom.com
http://home.netcom.com/~alysk/