[Sca-cooks] lentils
Johnna Holloway
johnnae at mac.com
Tue Mar 8 11:55:54 PST 2011
Checked Ken Albala's 2007 volume Beans. A History.
"There is really nothing here about contemporary practice, and nowhere
in the recipes taken from Martino are lentils even mentioned. Lentils
really do not appear to be a common food in medieval Europe. It is
only in the sixteenth century that lentils begin to appear in
cookbooks."
He says that there are 6 recipes for lentils in Scappi. 5 of those are
where lentils are mentioned as alternatives to peas, beans, or other
legumes. There is one recipe that is a thick soup of lentils. Alba;a
suggests that lentils were just substituted in, so perhaps specific
recipes weren't necessary.
If you don't own Scully's edition of Scappi, you can view the recipe
on Google Books. Do a search under lentil Scappi recipes. It's recipe
254 page 368. It could be a vegetarian recipe although it ends with
pieces of trench and pike might be eaten with the soup of lentils.
I did find this one OED quote which indicates that they were eaten and
with what...
1649 Bp. J. Taylor Great Exemplar iii. Disc. xiv. 27 He prefers a
dish of red *lentill pottage before a venison.
Most of the other interesting OED material is 19th century.
Johnna
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