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

[David Friedman]

...

>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?

It's a wild guess, but could they be recipes for dealing with 
vegetables that are too old--i.e. past the proper date for picking?

>
>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.)

In medieval English cookbooks, "amidoun" is wheat starch.
-- 
David/Cariadoc
www.daviddfriedman.com