[Sca-cooks] Guinea Fowl

[Stefan li Rous]

Adamantius commented:
> I don't have the info at my fingertips, but I vaguely recall reading
> that some of the earliest references to turkey in period Europe were,
> in fact, references to what we'd now call guinea fowl.

Well, how about this one. From the taverns-msg file in the Florilegium:

> Date: Tue, 21 Nov 2000 08:57:54 -0800
> From: "Laura C. Minnick" <lcm at efn.org>
> Subject: SC - Back to the Cookhouse!
>
> Remember a couple of months ago when we were discussing having a booth
> at Pennsic, and how part of our wanders included the plaint 'but we
> can't find info on period food booths!' Well, I found some last night!
>
> _Norman London_ by William FitzStephen, trans. Frank Stenton (full cite
> at the end of the post).
>
> pg. 52-
>
> "...Moreover there is in London upon the river's bank, amid the wine
> that is sold from ships and wine-cellars, a public cookshop. There
> daily, according to the season, you may find viands, dishes roast,
> fried, and boiled, fish great and small, the coarser flesh for the 
> poor,
> the more delicate for the rich, such as venison and birds both big and
> little. If friends, weary with travel, should of a sudden come to any 
> of
> the citizens, and it is not thier pleasure to wait fasting till fresh
> food is bought and cooked and "till servants bring water for hands and
> bread" they hasten to the river bank, and there all things desirable 
> are
> ready to their hand. However great the infinitude of knights or
> foreigners that enter the city or about to leave it, at whatever hour 
> of
> night or day, that the former may not last too long nor the latter
> depart without their dinner, they turn aside thither, if it so please
> them, and refresh themselves, each after his own manner. Those who
> dseire to fare delicately, need not search to find sturgeon or
> "Guinea-fowl" or "Ionian francolin", since all the dainties that are
> found there are set forth before their eyes. Now this is a public
> cookshop, appropriate to a city and pertaining to the art of civic 
> life.
> Hence that saying which we read in the _Gorgias_ of Plato, to wit, that
> the art of cookery is a counterfeit of medicine and a flattery of the
> fourth part of the art of civic life."
>
>
> Now I want to know what is 'Ionian francolin' and can we cook it in a
> Coleman!
>
> 'Lainie
>
> Citation:
>
> *CALL #       DA680 .F58 1990.
> TITLE        Descriptio nobilissimae civitatis Londoniae. English.
> TITLE        Norman London / William Fitz Stephen. Norman London : an 
> essay /
>                by Sir Frank Stenton ; introduction by F. Donald Logan.
> AUTHOR       Fitzstephen, William, d. 1190?
> PUBLISHER    New York : Italica Press, 1990.
> DESCRIPTION  xv, 109 p. : ill. ; 22 cm.
> NOTES        Originally published in 1934 as Historical Association 
> leaflets
>                nos. 93, 94.
> NOTES        Includes bibliographical references (p. 91-96) and index.
> ALT AUTHOR   Stenton, F. M. (Frank Merry), 1880-1967. Norman London.
> SUBJECT      London (England) -- History -- To 1500 -- Sources.
> SUBJECT      Great Britain -- History -- Norman period, 1066-1154.
> SUBJECT      Normans -- England -- London -- History -- Sources.

And further messages in this file define this 'Ionian francolin' (which 
is a different bird)

Stefan
--------
THLord Stefan li Rous    Barony of Bryn Gwlad    Kingdom of Ansteorra
    Mark S. Harris           Austin, Texas          
StefanliRous at austin.rr.com
**** See Stefan's Florilegium files at:  http://www.florilegium.org ****