[Sca-cooks] Sent Sovi and A&S- advice needed

[Terry Decker]

Parsley (Petroselinum crispum) is a single species with about 30 subspecies 
which fall into two main divisions, flat-leafed and curly-leafed.  Prior to 
300 BCE, Theophrastus describes both curley-leafed and flat-leafed parsley 
varieties.  Pliny provides the information that the Roman's were 
particularly fond of parsley as a seasoning.  The two pieces of information 
suggest that both types of parsley would have been available and it would 
have been the choice of the cook as to which was used.

If you need a more precise answer, I would suggest Charles de L'Ecluse 
(Carolus Clusius), Rariorum aliquot stirpium per Hispanias observatarum 
historia, 1576

http://www.knaw.nl/publicaties/pdf/20061066_Clusius_05.pdf


>I have entered several cooking projects from medieval India, but I
> rarely break out of "home base". I fell in lust with The Book of Sent
> Sovi (Vogelzang translation 2008) and have one I have been working on
> and would love to enter into the next A&S faire.
>
> It is expected in this kingdom that each ingredient in a dish be
> separately documented. If the translation lists "parsley", what kind of
> parsley was correct for that time/place, etc. I usually find this
> information by going through the book's bibliography and ordering
> everything possible through ILL, then triaging the books' usefulness,
> pillaging each book's bibliographies, xeroxing everything useful, and
> then start the whole cycle over again. This time, however, the
> bibliography for this translation of Sent Sovi is almost exclusively
> books in Spanish or other languages. The few books I know I can get in
> English are contemporary but foreign cookbooks. I have reviewed those
> books' bibliographies, but haven't yet found anything directly useful to
> what I'm studying.
>
> If Spanish background sources are unavailable in English, would you find
> roughly contemporary French and Italian sources acceptable for
> documenting ingredients in a Spanish book? I don't see much discussion
> of ArtSci entries on this list, but any advice would be sincerely
> appreciated.
>
> Thank you,
> Madhavi of Jaisalmer
> House Herava