[Sca-cooks] help for 1250 French/Greek

[James Prescott]

A bit of info.  Richard I of England was married on Cyprus in 1192.
The menu is apparently discussed by George Jeffery in the 1973 book
"Cyprus Under an English King".  Bookfinder.com lists 29 new or used
copies available.

Maria Dembinska comments that the menu bore no relation to either
English or French cooking.  Taro was served.  So, while there were
versions of Viandier prior to Taillevent, they might not be good
sources for a Cypriot menu.

Harleian MS 279 (while dated about 1470) apparently lists "Vyaund de
cyprys bastarde" and some other Cyprus-titled recipes -- but that's
a couple of hundred years later, and from England, so any resemblance
may be entirely coincidental.

The Cypriot king Peter de Lusignan visited Cracow in Poland in 1364,
and Maria Dembinska mentions that he might have brought with him
'soumada' (almond milk for drinking) and 'glygo amygdalou' (a
marzipan).  Spices available especially via Cyprus at that time
included greater and lesser galingale, grains of paradise, labdanum
(an aromatic resin), and "monk's pepper".  And of course plenty of
recipes with sugar.  That's about a century later than your target
date.  Cyprus had a well-established culinary tradition of its own,
and I suspect would have been somewhat conservative about change.

Diners may have used two-tined forks in Cyprus by 1251.


Thorvald


At 00:42 -0400 2006-07-04, Stephanie Ross 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 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.
>>
>
>  Thanks in advance,
>  ~Aislinn~