[Sca-cooks] Nutrition based on the four humors

[Euriol of Lothian]

I would have to disagree and say that the Great Cooks were acutely aware of the 
four humors. Terence Scully mentions in, The Art of Cooking in the Middle Ages, 
the following:

"“In choosing or in elaborating a sauce a cook accepted an enormously serious 
responsibility. At this time an
ignorance of the humoral complexion of any ingredient could easily lead to a 
charge of inadvertently undermining
someone’s health, or even murder. A cook’s job was in many respects an offshoot 
of that of a physician; he had
almost as much responsibility.”

I would also that Martino in Libro de Arte Coquinaria mentions in a number of 
his recipes the suitability/unsuitability of a dish for particular types of 
people. The humoral theory was so ingrained in European cultures, and really 
only was replaced by modern nutrition in the late 19th/early 20th century. 


Herbals that were printed in the 16th & 17th centuries will note the humoral 
quality of most of the plants listed in them. In fact there was a push in the 
16th century to write herbals in the language native to a region (as opposed to 
Latin) so that the apothecaries were sure to have the correct information about 
the humors of the various herbs that were now more available to them.

 Euriol




________________________________
From: Suey <lordhunt at gmail.com>
To: sca-cooks at lists.ansteorra.org
Sent: Wed, November 3, 2010 5:51:54 PM
Subject: [Sca-cooks] Nutrition based on the four humors

Here there is a lot I do not understand. Yes, I have tried to study the 
ancients and of course paid a lot of attention to Maimonides, Averroes 
and Avenzoar. I find I cannot grasp the four humors. When I plan a menu 
I am not thinking: Sanguine, Choleric, Melacholy or Phegmatic and I 
don't think any medieval cook was either unless he was a PhD in nutrition!

I understand Maimonides when he prescribes chicken broth! - Grammy and 
mom did too. Today, we understand Avenzoar with his use of aloe vera but 
I am overwhelmed with medieval menus - to me they are common sense 
prescribed by Ziryab.
Suey






>
> E.
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> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 2
> Date: Tue, 2 Nov 2010 17:08:07 -0400
> From: Elaine Koogler<kiridono at gmail.com>
> To: Cooks within the SCA<sca-cooks at lists.ansteorra.org>
> Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] another spam or hijacked e-mail
> Message-ID:
>     <AANLkTikf-Hq36mXOZr5CD3TJYPPp=JOiPnFVp8Eym+Kp at mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
>
> I do know Mistress Olwen and I have sent her a message regarding this, but
> it's been going on for some time...I've not received a response from her but
> will try again.
>
> Kiri
>
> On Tue, Nov 2, 2010 at 10:15 AM, Susan Lin<susanrlin at gmail.com>  wrote:
>
>> In my spam folder I just found an e-mail from someone called Olwin the Old.
>> The body of the e-mail looked suspect so I just deleted it but it came into
>> the SCA-Cooks group.
>>
>> Don't know if anybody knows this good gentle but they might want to give
>> him
>> a heads-up to check that his e-mail account has not been hacked.
>>
>> Shoshana
>> _______________________________________________
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>> Sca-cooks at lists.ansteorra.org
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