[Sca-cooks] help for 1250 French/Greek

[Volker Bach]

> >  I was curious if you had any help finding documentation for a potential
>
> Art/Sci project.  My personna is a French women (originally from Troyes)
> who went on the 7th Crusade (1251) with King Louis as a      >retainer to
> the Countess of Champaigne and also to assist Margaret (Louis' wife) who
> was pregnant and delivered in Damietta.  My personna ended up marrying a
> gentle who belonged to the Order of Santiago >de Compostela and we are in
> charge of running a sugar plantation on the island of Cyprus (probably near
> Paphos).  I would love to serve a luncheon/banquet for the next Art/Sci
> judges that would be completely >representative of what I would serve.  I
> have some documentation from Joinville's account that they had wheat,
> barley, rice, cumin and sugar, but not much else.  Any help would be
> greatly appreciated.

This is going to be hard. From what (little) I know of the cuisine of Outremer 
it appears that they adopted many traditions of the Mediterranean, but 
retained a separate culinary identity. So even if we had a Byzantine cookbook 
(Dalby's Flavours of Byzantium contains excerpts from the Goponica and 
dietetic textes that are our closest approaches to that), we can not really 
be sure that this would reflect what a Latin would eat. 

Looking at dietetic texts might help. Several such treatises originated in 
Salerno, the Regimen Sanitatis being the most popular, and IIRC the Tacuinum 
was also in common circulation by then. That could help you get behind the 
idea of what was considered appropriate food, and from there you can look at 
what was available on Cyprus (probably a good place for luxury eating, and 
for seafood) and go from there. 

The closest I can come geographically and temporally is the second half of the 
Liber de Coquina, an early 14th century manuscript from Southern italy 
compiled from two sources, one French, the other South Italian, and probably 
a retranslation from a vernacular original of the 13th century. It shows a 
recognisably European cuisine with noticeable Arab influence. It thus looks 
like the Anglo-Norman Cookery Books and the Enseignements, though more 
northerly, would also make defensible sources for inspiration.  

And whatever you do, don't miss the chance to serve honey-sesame or honey-nut 
brittle. :-)

Giano


		
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