[Sca-cooks] Magninus Mediolanensis on sauces: Regimen / Latin, Irish

Elise Fleming alysk at ix.netcom.com
Sun Nov 28 18:09:58 PST 2010


Liutgard wrote:

 > But in my
 >readings I found something rather amusing about the great Charles-
 >apparently he had a favorite tablecloth that after dinner, he would
 >gather up and throw into the fire. And pull it out again, as a party
 >trick of sorts. It seems it was asbestos. one would hope that he didn't
 >accidentally grab the wrong cloth on occasion...

Sorry to burst the bubble, but Nichola Fletcher, in her book 
"Charlemagne's Tablecloth", did some extensive research on that fabled 
tablecloth.  At the end of the book she details what was looked at, 
researched, and checked.  Donal Bullough, Emeritus Professor of St 
Andrews University finally confirmed: "Alas! Charlemagne's 'asbestos 
tablecloth' is the purest of pure myths, one of the many that were added 
to the ones inherited from the Middle Ages in the late eithteenth 
century and early nineteenth centuries, particularly in Frnce - 
by-products of the Enlightenment and its Napoleonic reflections, as the 
'scientific' element in this one suggests."

Alys K.
-- 
Elise Fleming
alysk at ix.netcom.com
alyskatharine at gmail.com
http://www.flickr.com/photos/8311418@N08/sets/



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