[Sca-cooks] 14th c Italian cookbook (long)

[Ariane Helou]

Hello, fellow medieval culinary adventurers. :-)  I was on this list a 
while ago, then vanished 'cause life (read: school) got too busy, and have 
just signed back on because of a particular project.  I translated a 
cookbook, but I've run into a couple of stumbling blocks, 
interpretation-wise, and I figured if there was help to be found, it would 
be on this list!

The book is the anonymous Tuscan "Libro della cocina," dated late 
14th/early 15th century (more or less).  The original is on the web: 
http://staff-www.uni-marburg.de/~gloning/an-tosc.htm  I don't know if any 
of you are familiar with this text; there are just under 200 recipes for 
vegetables, meat, fish, various pies and tarts, sauces, fritters, the usual 
suspects...  I latched on to this particular book because I'm going to be 
cooking dinner for some friends of mine at an event in the West this 
summer, and they "do" that time period.  (Plus it coincides nicely, 
geographically and chronologically, with the entertainments another friend 
and I are planning for this same meal.)  I work from the original text 
anyway, but for speedy and convenient reference, I translated it.  Didn't 
take long -- the language is pretty straightforward -- but there are a 
couple of interpretive tangles, and I'd love some help in unraveling them, 
since they both appear in recipes I'd consider making for this dinner.

1) There are a handful of recipes for some kind of vegetables called 
"senacioni" (singular, "senacione").  I have checked multiple variations of 
this spelling in three or four dictionaries, and cannot for the life of me 
figure out what they are.  Any ideas?  Has anyone encountered this before?

2) There are two recipes -- one for chicken in lemon sauce, one for chicken 
in pomegranate sauce (which I can post here in case anyone is interested) 
-- that both call for something called "amido non mondato" to be ground in 
a mortar.  In modern Italian (and in its most frequent usage), "amido" is 
starch.  During this period and for some time after, it could also refer to 
a whole grain: rice, or wheat, or other cereals.  (Florio's Italian-English 
dictionary of 1611 defines it as "a kinde of graine or rise."  A 19th-c. 
essay on these texts, dated as it is, gives support for the same 
interpretation.)

If that's the case, what kind of grain might "amido" refer to?  (The only 
other grain names that crop up in this book are "riso" [rice] and "farro," 
usually translated as "spelt" although it's often sold under its Italian 
name too.)  Could be anything -- wheat, barley?  Maybe it's a generic term 
for cereals?

3) What is "mondato" doing here?  It can mean either "cleaned" (as in 
washed), or "peeled" (or skinned, or hulled, etc) depending on its 
context.  If it's referring to a cereal, what could it mean?  Is there are 
process of removing layers of a grain?  That's a weird question, I realize, 
and describes an action that's awkward if not impossible, but I really have 
no clue in this case.  So what is "amido non mondato" -- a grain that 
perhaps hasn't been threshed or something?  But then why cook with it?

4) In both of these recipes, you're supposed to grind the "amido non 
mondato" before cooking with it.  So, would something as fine as flour be 
acceptable?  In the past, I've also given whole wheat or spelt grains a 
whirl in a food processor, before cooking, to cut them coarsely.  I have no 
idea what degree of coarseness is used for grain that goes, essentially, in 
a sauce.  The lemon chicken recipe says to use egg yolks in place of the 
"amido" as a thickening agent.  When I tested the pomegranate chicken 
recipe, I used rice flour in place of this mystery ingredient, since that 
was what I had on hand, and seemed like the least far-fetched substitution 
I could make.

Sorry this is so long and a little confusing, but I'd really appreciate 
some input on this...especially the "amido" business, since I'd very much 
like to serve one of the recipes that uses it.  I'm wondering if this is 
really a textual problem, or if it's common knowledge and I'm just stumped 
by it 'cause I haven't encountered it yet. :-)  In any case, thanks in 
advance for any help (and if you've read all the way to this point in the 
email, thanks for your patience as well)!


Vittoria