[Sca-cooks] Martha Washington's Booke was Pancakes and Fruitcakes was Happy Shrove/Fat Tuesday

Cat . tgrcat2001 at yahoo.com
Tue Feb 24 10:08:57 PST 2009


Thanks.  So much for trusting Amazon or Google on a quick date check.  Is there any way to know for certainwhich recipes are actually PRE 1600?  Im assuming the person who inqired of me is looking at an A&S entry.

Purr
Gwen Cat


--- On Tue, 2/24/09, Johnna Holloway <johnnae at mac.com> wrote:

> From: Johnna Holloway <johnnae at mac.com>
> Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks]  Martha Washington's Booke was Pancakes and Fruitcakes was Happy Shrove/Fat Tuesday
> To: tgrcat2001 at yahoo.com, "Cooks within the SCA" <sca-cooks at lists.ansteorra.org>
> Date: Tuesday, February 24, 2009, 10:49 AM
> I don't suppose we can say it too often but Martha
> Washington's Booke of Cookery
> was owned by Martha but wasn't written by her.
> 
> What we have here are two culinary manuscripts that are
> Tudor-Jacobean  (recipes dated circa 1580-1625) that were
> passed
> down in the family of Martha Washington's first
> husband. Martha rec'd the manuscripts when
> she married Daniel Custis in 1749. She kept the two
> manuscripts until she gave them to Nelly
> Custis, her granddaughter in 1799.
> The book is titled the way it is because mentioning Martha
> Washington
> draws attention to the volume and she was the most famous
> of the owners.
> 
> Karen Hess transcribed the manuscripts and added helpful
> notes and commentary. One thing Hess did was
> mention contemporary recipes that are similar to the ones
> in the manuscripts.
> So she refers to Markham, Plat, Dawson, etc.
> The manuscripts are
> 'A Booke of Cookery' which has 206 recipes while
> 'A Booke of Sweetmeats' has 326 recipes.
> All in all a great book to own for not only the recipes but
> for the bibliography and all the notes.
> The book was first published in 1981 and remains in print.
> 
> Johnnae
> 
> 
> 


      



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