[Sca-cooks] Cut-Off Date for Cookery Books?

[Johnna Holloway]

I am coming to this conversation somewhat late. [Due to doctor's appointment, etc., I had to hold off posting until after I returned home this evening.] 

Countess Alys asked about cookery books printed after 1600, noting "We're specifically focused on recipes for confections and banqueting items (aka "desserts")."

I think in practical purposes the SCA boundary of 1600 doesn't work very well with confections, especially in terms of English language materials. For a number of languages there are very few recipes at all. A manuscript here, a manuscript there, containing a few items. Alessio of course has a dozen recipes on confections, including the sugar paste recipe and he is printed and reprinted all over Europe in a wide number of languages starting in the 1550s. But we want more recipes for sweets than just those included in Alessio.

One of the problems with confections is that certain sugar items may be listed decades or centuries before we have recipes or working instructions. Culinary historian Laura Mason in the article "William Alexis Jarrin: An Italian Confectioner in London" in Gastronomica went into this aspect. (Spring 2001) Jarrin (1784–1848) was the first person to actually record and publish a number of techniques and methods in gum paste and suagrpaste use. In effect, he divulged guild secrets for the first time. This was in the 1820s. (I happen to own an original early Jarrin for this very reason.)

And culinary or confectionary history doesn't quit at 1600. Elizabeth dies in 1603. (Should our Elizabethan feasts conclude in 1600?) 
We have books like A Closet for Ladies and Gentlewomen which I edited and annotated that are listed as 1602 in the Stationers but are actually printed in 1608. Is that work Elizabethan or Jacobean? Or both? Do we really believe that someone compiled the entire volume post 1600 and before September 1602 when it was entered with the Stationers?  (http://www.medievalcookery.com/notes/1608closet.pdf)

Are we dating the book, the recipes or the knowledge?


Thomas Moffett wrote his book on foods in the mid 1590s. He dies in 1604. The work is published in 1655. So is Moffett acceptable or not?  What about the Ouverture de Cuisine is published 1604, but dates from circa 1585. Where does one place it? 

Countess Alys mentioned such works as Murrell, Gervase Markham (who wrote about banqueting stuffe and the duties of a housewife to know such items), Digby, and Robert May who introduced his 1660 cookbook with a look back at the grand subtleties of another age. Robert May (born 1588) has already been dismissed today as being too late, But I would point out that I was just specifically asked to write an appreciation of May for Tournaments Illuminated. The article just appeared in  2013. As for John Murrell, he is next on the list to be examined, just as as soon as I finish up the GHT of 1588.

More troubling,   I would point that if we use the celebrated Hugh Plat edition of 1609, then that is right out too and that the Fussell 1609 edition is the one we have used for decades. And without Plat, where would we be? 

So Countess Alys asked-- "Would you accept cookery books as "period" up to 1625? What about those after 1650? Would you accept a post-1650 recipe if it was for a dish that was mentioned pre-1600 but the recipe was 1660 and there was no other recipe available?" 

Perhaps not as "period" because for Society purposes we use 1600 as that redline never to be crossed historical abyss! 

But of course I would accept such post 1600 sources in articles and books and pamphlets. I can remember when we accepted up to 1650 for research purposes for A&S activities in the Middle. Again I would ask, "Are we dating the book, the recipes or the knowledge?" As long as the research is done that incorporates the descriptions and history of the dish, include all the recipes that matter. Create and tell the story and use all the available stories to do so. That is what makes culinary history interesting.

Johnnae


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