[Sca-cooks] MS Harley 5401 in Modern English

[Sam Wallace]

Hello,

> In the second recipe for chewets, you render "take fayre mary" as "take fair many".  I believe that 'mary' is marrow.  ('mari' is one spelling found in the Middle English Dictionary.)  That would make sense, considering the next part of the text: "When it is perbolid in ?e boynes take it oute & lay it in gobits in a cofyn".  So, you're taking marrowbones, parboiling the marrow inside the bones, then placing gobbets of the cooked marrow in the pie crust.

Yes, I agree. I need to go back through and check for mary/many
through the entire work. I had a similar problem I caught myself with
eels/else which is similar and variable in the original, making for
much fun in editing.

> "To make Chese Nesh at is Ouer Hard."  I would render this as "To soften cheese that is too hard".  You take hard cheese and wrap it in green nettles.  After a few days, it will be soft, presumably having absorbed some of the moisture in the nettles.

I can work with this, too. I got hung up on the word-play and probably
should have gone with the more obvious translation.

> Thanks for sharing your work!

> Brighid ni Chiarain

Where's the fun in doing it if no-one else gets to play with it? I
appreciate your comments and those of anyone else who helps make this
a better resource.

Guillaume