[Sca-cooks] Recommend Books

[Stefan li Rous]

Aelina the Saami asked:
<<< I offered to give her two websites for further research. She apparently is one of those people who don't use computers. I knew of Food History immediately as a book.

Does anyone have any recommended books that talks specifically about the use of fresh meat or that can dispel the myth of rotten meat? >>>

Too bad she won't use websites. I don't know if the Florilegium was one of the two websites you had in mind, but there are several files there on the myth of "rotten food being covered by spices":
rotten-meat-msg (50K) 5/19/06 Comments on the "they used spices to cover the taste of rotten meat" myth.
http://www.florilegium.org/files/FOOD/rotten-meat-msg.html

spice-use-art (18K) 6/ 9/97 "The Question of Heavy Spice Use and Rotten Food" by Lord Xaviar the Eccentric.
http://www.florilegium.org/files/FOOD/spice-use-art.html

Although written several years before our discussions here about this topic in depth, the last does give a good overview. Could you print it off and give a copy to her? I think it would be about 6 pages.

If she considers books to be more reputable, then perhaps the extensive bibliography in the back of this article might be of use. I thought I'd simply copy it here, but it is several pages long. Some of which are general books about the Middle Ages. Here are a few I might recommend from this list from my knowledge of them or reviews from this list or from titles that look specifically useful.

Ashtor, Eliyahu; "An Essay on the Diet of the Various Classes in the Medieval Levant."; In Biology of Man in
History, Ed Robert Forster, Trans. Elborg Forster and Patricia M. Ranum. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press. 1975.

Fenton, A. and Kisban; Food in Change: Eating Habits from the Middle Ages to the Present Day; John Donald with the
National Museums of Scotland. 1986.

Hale, William Harlan; The Horizon Cookbook and Illustrated History of Eating and Drinking through the Ages; American
Heritage Pub. Co.Inc.; Doubleday and Co. Inc. NY. 1968.

Hagen, Ann; A Handbook of ANGLO-SAXON FOOD Processing and Consumption; Anglo-Saxon Books, Pinner, Middlesex, England. 1994

Holmes, Urban Tigner; Daily living in the Twelfth Century; Univ. of Wisconsin Press. Madison, Wi. 1952.
   (Hey, the 12th C! *I* may have to look into this book!

Schivelbusch, Wolfgang; Tastes of Paradise, a social history of spices stimulants, and Intoxicants; Tran. David
Jacobson; Pantheon Books. NY. 1992.

Stefan
--------
THLord Stefan li Rous    Barony of Bryn Gwlad    Kingdom of Ansteorra
   Mark S. Harris           Austin, Texas          StefanliRous at austin.rr.com
**** See Stefan's Florilegium files at:  http://www.florilegium.org ****