[Sca-cooks] Substitutions... how do we know?

[Nick Sasso]

-----Original Message-----
----- The Recipe -----

Fry the chicken with lard and with onions.
Chop unpeeled almonds and temper them with sour and sweet pomegranate
juice and strain them well.
Mix a little water with sugar and spices.
Put this to boil for a little with the said chicken, and mix well
with a wooden spoon, and put mixed spices above.
If you don't have almonds [substitute]
If you don't have pomegranate [substitute] > > > > > > > > > > >

It struck me that the recipe gives no instruction whatsoever for what to do
with the almond/pomegranate mixture.  If we don't add it in the really
confusing and awkward translation of the line about boiling and mixing, then
we let the red, sandy mixture sit on a shelf :o)  These medieval cook type
people who wrote these make life so much more complex for us reading after
them hundreds of years later.

niccolo difrancesco