[Sca-cooks] new book on English food
tudorpot at gmail.com
tudorpot at gmail.com
Sun Sep 14 22:44:20 PDT 2008
A possible new source for SCA cooks- Taste: The Story of Britain
Through Its Cooking by Kate Colquhoun
Here is a brief quote-
"Colquhoun comes into her own when the written record starts to
include recipes. The spices that disappeared from the British diet
when the Romans left returned with the Crusaders - and were used
because of their flavour, not (in the long-discredited shibboleth) to
disguise tainted meat. She says: 'If so much about the European
Middle Ages seems bewilderingly remote, contemporary Moroccan food,
robust and subtle by degrees, broadly unchanged for centuries, offers
a hint of our own culinary past.'
The most fascinating aspect of the first half of her book, though, is
to do with religion and fish. Christianity brought with it fast days
and their number grew and grew - all of Advent and Lent, Fridays (the
Crucifixion), Wednesdays (Judas's payday), Saturdays (Sabbath Eve) -
not so irrational for an island people, but with only salt to
preserve fish, drearily boring. In 1541 Henry VIII allowed eggs and
dairy produce on fast days and cut the number of them by three-
quarters. By the time of Bloody Mary the Friday fast had to be
reinstated to protect the fishing industry."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2007/oct/07/booksonhealth.features
Freda
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