[Sca-cooks] Curye on Inglysch

[Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius]

On Nov 13, 2005, at 4:12 AM, <mollirose at bellsouth.net> wrote:

> I've just received a copy of this as an early birthday gift from  
> (shocker)
> my mundane sister. Curye on Inglysch - English Culinary Manuscripts  
> of he
> Fourteenth Century (Including the Forme of Cury) edited by  
> Constance B.
> Hieatt and Sharon Butler, published for The Early English Text  
> Society by
> the Oxford University Press, 1985
>
> So far this book is very interesting. There is mention about  
> sugared nuts on
> page four! When I read that I felt like I was in familiar  
> territory. LOL
> Please any commentary on this book from those on the list would be  
> welcome.
>
> Much thanks,
>
> Molli Rose

How to put this? I was going to say, "It's the friggin' Bible of  
medieval cookery!"

Perhaps that's a little extreme, though. What I will say is that it  
is the only medieval cookbook edition I own that has necessitated  
replacement through sheer wear, twice, and ready for a third time. I  
don't mean abuse; I'm extremely gentle with my books. On rare  
occasions I'll put them in a bag and take them out of the house, but  
otherwise, use consists of taking them off the shelf, leafing through  
them to find the page I need, reading that page, and putting it back  
on the shelf. It's just that when you do this, on the average, two or  
three times a day for about 20 years, this can happen.

It's _nearly_ perfect, though. It presents a good approximation of  
several medieval texts in easy-to-read form, provides commentary that  
is separate from the text, so you don't mistake the editor's opinion  
from the text itself, and the glossary/index is pretty invaluable,  
even for use with other cookbooks.

The only drawback I've encountered is that Hieatt and Butler are  
medieval manuscript scholars, and not cooks, or if they are cooks,  
their experience of non-European cuisines isn't broad enough to  
include them as tools in understanding medieval European cookery. I  
suppose this represents the flipside of the drawbacks to Vehling's  
Apicius -- he was a cook and not much of a manuscript authority.  Off  
the top of my head, though, I recall only two occasions where that's  
been a problem, and only one of those appears in CoI, I believe (some  
confusion about using "a penne" in a stuffed chicken recipe, which  
they interpret as basting with a feather, when it seems more likely,  
in context, that the penne is a reed being used as an inflation tube  
to separate skin from flesh).

It's pretty much a must-have, though, if your interest is in medieval  
English cookery.

Adamantius


"S'ils n'ont pas de pain, vous fait-on dire, qu'ils  mangent de la  
brioche!" / "If there's no bread to be had, one has to say, let them  
eat cake!"
     -- attributed to an unnamed noblewoman by Jean-Jacques Rousseau,  
"Confessions", 1782

"Why don't they get new jobs if they're unhappy -- or go on Prozac?"
     -- Susan Sheybani, assistant to Bush campaign spokesman Terry  
Holt, 07/29/04