[Sca-cooks] Liber cure cocorum

[Cindy Renfrow]

Yes, this entire section of Sloane MS 1986 rhymes. As Adamantius points 
out, sections of the Babees Book rhymes too. However, the Boke of 
Curtasye (included in the Babees Book by Furnivall, p. 297-327) is 
actually part of the same manuscript!  Liber Cure Cocorum continues 
*uninterrupted* from the Boke of Curtasye. The scribe writes (my 
translation):
Now speak I will a little more
Of craft, truly, that takes great lore
In court; that men call cookery…

He then goes on to list over 120 recipes in verse. The verse, I 
believe, was intended as a mnemonic device for a professional cook who 
already knew how to make all these standard dishes. The scribe mangles 
a few of them quite badly to force his rhyme scheme, i.e. leaving out 
ingredients & steps. So it's prudent to find the same recipe in another 
collection and compare the two. Many of these recipes, unrhymed, can be 
found in A Noble Book of Cokery for a Prince's Household, Holkham MS. 
674. this can be found in Duke Cariadoc's Miscellany, IIRC.

I've got the new transcription and translation from the original Sloan 
manuscript 1986 finished, BTW. I'm just held up on dotting the i's and 
crossing the t's. It should be available online soon.

HTH,

Cindy Renfrow
www.thousandeggs.com



On Dec 14, 2006, at 6:09 AM, Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius wrote:

>
> On Dec 14, 2006, at 1:02 AM, Stephanie Ross wrote:
>
>> For freture. With egges and floure in batere thou make, Put berme
>> ther to, I undertake. Coloure hit with safrone er thou more do. Take
>> powder of peper and cast ther to, Kerve appuls overtwert and cast
>> therin, Frye hom in grece, no more ne mynne. [Liber cure cocorum]
>>
>>
>> Does this whole manuscript rhyme like this? How bizarre.
>
> Yes, it does. You can find the whole thing here:
>
> http://www.pbm.com/~lindahl/lcc/
>
> I'm not sure how many other recipe collections, if any, are in
> English verse; I seem to recall a version of The Babees Booke in
> verse, which deals rather peripherally with food, but isn't a recipe
> book. I also think there's an al Baghdadi variant in verse.
>
> Adamantius