[Sca-cooks] mysterious query

[Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius]

On Jan 24, 2007, at 10:56 AM, Huette von Ahrens wrote:

> So, I would say that Blackmore's use of "parliament" as the name of  
> a kind of gingerbread
> cookie was very anachronistic, since 'Lorna Doone' was set two  
> hundred years earlier.

Can you expand on this thought a little? I mean, there _was_ an  
English Parliament in the late seventeenth century (and it was  
certainly on everybody's mind during and after the English Civil  
War), as well as a Scottish Parliament until 1707 (and some sources  
pretty aggressively suggest a connection to Scotland for the cakes),  
and hadn't England already begun the early prototypes for that whole  
Triangular Trading thing (which made treacle more of a commodity), so  
what, specifically, makes you consider this an anachronism?

I have no idea, myself, one way or the other, apart from the probable  
and comparative lack of recipes for cakes so designated in the time  
period in question. I was just curious as to your reasoning.

Adamantius



"S'ils n'ont pas de pain, vous fait-on dire, qu'ils  mangent de la  
brioche!" / "If there's no bread to be had, one has to say, let them  
eat cake!"
     -- attributed to an unnamed noblewoman by Jean-Jacques Rousseau,  
"Confessions", 1782

"Why don't they get new jobs if they're unhappy -- or go on Prozac?"
     -- Susan Sheybani, assistant to Bush campaign spokesman Terry  
Holt, 07/29/04