[Sca-cooks] help for 1250 French/Greek

[lilinah at earthlink.net]

Aislinn wrote:
>I just got a request from a friend, and all I can offer is that maybe Le
>Viandier's recipes came from an earlier book in her time period, and I know
>of no Greek period cookbooks. What do you smart people have to say?

I would not recommend Andrew Dalby's "Siren Feasts" for this person's 
needs - it's a great book, but it's about ancient Greece. However, i 
would recommend Dalby's "Flavours of Byzantium", since it's about, 
well, Byzantium, medieval Greece. Dalby translated all the works 
referenced from their original languages. There are no cookbooks, but 
there's lots of food info.

Additionally, there is "In a Caliph's Kitchen", which includes some 
9th and 10th c. Abbasid recipes which were still popular, and the 
13th century "Kitab al-Tabikh" (Book of Dishes) by al-Baghdadi. Quite 
a few Europeans in the Near East took on aspects of local culture, 
and Europeans often employed local people to do manual labor (and 
cooking is manual labor). I transcribed Waines' translations of the 
early recipes:
http://www.florilegium.org/files/FOOD-BY-REGION/E-Arab-recip-art.html

-- 
Urtatim (that's err-tah-TEEM)
the persona formerly known as Anahita