[Sca-cooks] RE: Historical Passover Seder

[elisabetta at klotz.org]

> I received a call from an SCA friend last night with a non-SCA
> historical cooking question.  He is an accomplished professional cook
> mundanely,  recently getting involved in historical cooking through the
> SCA.  It seems  he has volunteered himself to cook a "period seder" for
> his church on next  Maundy Thursday as an example of what the Last
> Supper might have been  like.  He called me asking about books on the
> subject.
> I told him about A Drizzle of Honey, which is one of the few books on
> historical Jewish cooking that I'm aware of.  Can anyone point me to any
> more resources to share with him?  It's not immediately urgent; he has a
> meeting with the pastor sometime in the fall to share research and a
> potential  menu.
>
> Brangwayna

Claudia Roden has a great book called "The Book of Jewish Food : An 
Odyssey from
Samarkand to New York".

Drizzle of Honey is about hidden Jews in Spanish American culture, so 
that would
be late period New World. Roden's book is the best that I have seen.

I have not found any period sources for Jewish food. There is the Adulsian
cookbook, but those recipes seem to about a style of cooking. I contacted the
Medeival Jewish Manuscript program in Israel, and they ran a search for me. At
the time they had close to 6000 Jewish period manuscripts in their archive.
There were 4 hits on foods; none were recipes. 3 were from the same Italian
manuscript.

Historical documentation, like letters, say stuff like this: "I was invited to
eat with the Mayor of the town. They served an unusual fish dish, which was
delicious." Try redacting that one.

There are certain foods that are associated with certain holidays. 
Based on the
where and when, I would suggest Sephardic Passover foods, like leeks. 
I'll have
to do more research on this.

:)
Elisabetta