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

[JIMCHEVAL at aol.com]

Anthimus mentions rice in the sixth century:

"Rice is good well  boiled, for if it is raw it is harmful. Make rice for 
dysenterics, boil it well  and so [have them] eat it. Even boiled in pure 
water, so that when it begins to  be well cooked, drain the water, and so put 
in goat's milk, and set the pot in  the coals, and cook it slowly until it 
becomes solid: eat it warm without salt  or oil, not cold."

It is always possible that he was referencing his own Byzantine background, 
 but typically he notes where a food cannot be found in Theuderic's region.
 
Another possibility is that it was still being imported at Marseilles,  
rather than being grown anywhere in Gaul (I don't know of it's having been  
found in archeaology at all).
 
Otherwise, it is certainly true that these categories represent a  
continuum, which is why I tend to think of most of what is considered "Medieval  
food" as essentially being Renaissance food, taking shape before its time,  
mainly because it is unlike the food of most of the Medieval era in some  
important ways. But the other side to that distinction is the importance of  
looking at specific recipes in specific centuries, rather than treating all  
"period" food as of a piece. (The cameline sauce of the thirteenth century is  
not the cameline sauce of Casteau.)
 
This said, my impression is that SCA willfully blurs all this in the name  
of fun and its "period" should not be confused with any scholarly  concern.


Jim Chevallier
www.chezjim.com

Les Leftovers: sort  of a food history blog
leslefts.blogspot.com

In a message dated  1/30/2014 8:29:46 A.M. Pacific Standard Time, 
t.d.decker at att.net writes:
If  one accepts that 
the "Medieval Period" extended from the 5th to the 15th  Centuries, then 
the 
use of rice is a change in medieval cooking similar to  the introduction of 
the turkey in the 15th Century.