[Sca-cooks] 14th c. Cawl recipe?

[Johnna Holloway]

I see where Wikipedia says
"The word cawl in Welsh is first recorded in the 14th century, and is thought to come from the Latin caulis, meaning the stalk of a plant, a cabbage stalk or a cabbage."
The wikipedia entry seems to come from http://www.ifood.tv/network/cawl

However both OED and the Dictionary of Old English only list caul as being either a basket or related to a basket, often a fish basket.
Old English cawl, ceawl, basket. 
c1050   in T. Wright & R. P. Wülcker Anglo-Saxon & Old English Vocab. (1884) I. 365   Coruis, cawel. 

If you dig a bit further in, you can find COLE, noun in the OED and that lists "So also in the Celtic languages, Irish and Gaelic cál , Welsh cawl , Cornish caul , Manx kail , Breton kaol . The frequent Middle English caul n. was perhaps taken afresh from Latin caulis.

The meaning being "A general name for various species of Brassica."
c1450   Cookery Bks. 69   Take Colys, and stripe hem faire fro the stalkes.
a1475   Liber Cocorum (Sloane) (1862) 48   Take cole and strype hom þorowghe þi honde.


The Pocket Modern Welsh Dictionary says "cawl noun masculine, soup; (figurative) a mess; maen nhw wedi gwneud cawl o'r peth 'ma = they've made a mess of this.

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But when all is said and done the question remains "And the pre 1600 Welsh cookbook or recipe would be?"

The earliest cookbook to be published in Wales is 19th century.

And of course the primary ingredient today seems to be potatoes.

I suppose what they are doing is a soup and calling it cawl.
Maybe something like this one:

Fourme of Curye [Rylands MS 7]
(England, 1390)
The original source can be found at MedievalCookery.com

.iiij. Caboches in potage. Take caboches & quarter hem & seeth hem in gode broth with oynouns y mynced & the white of lekes y olyt & y corve smale, & so ther to safroun and salt & force hit with poudour douce. 


Johnnae

On Dec 11, 2012, at 2:25 PM, David Friedman wrote:

> There is now an SCA cooking group on Google+, and someone on it is doing a Celtic feast. One of the dishes he plans is Cawl, a traditional Welsh stew. Googling around, I found the claim online that there are recipes for it back to the 14th c., which struck me as unlikely but not impossible.
> 
> Does anyone here know if it's true?