[Sca-cooks] Anything going on ?

[JIMCHEVAL at aol.com]

Indeed. Hagiographies, histories, supply lists, monks' rules, lots of  
archeology. I call it a mosaic myself: a picture assembled from many small  
pieces (as opposed to the more fluid "painting" of cookbooks).
 
We know the Franks liked roasts not only because Charlemagne loved them,  
but because a large spit was found in a Frankish grave. As were some beef 
ribs  in another. Two actual meals were found in a grave in Cologne and 
included a  bird cooked with sage, millet gruel and what appears (from pollen) to 
have been  hydromel.
 
Supply lists show that pepper was by far the most popular spice, followed  
noticeably by... cumin.
 
Of course, the one food found consistently through the whole medieval  
period is the broad bean (or its smaller cousin the horsebean). This was even  
found on upper class tables and to my mind is THE medieval food (sorry,  
peacock). Otherwise, for meats, the "Triad" (beef, pork and either lamb or  
goat), and some barnyard fowl.. Gallo-Roman butchery is actually pretty well  
documented and probably continued for some time in the more Romanized parts of 
 Gaul. But the Franks pretty much cut animals into quarters.
 
Anthimus is particularly useful for documenting some basic cooking  
techniques, like putting leeks in with other foods and a use of vinegar which  
suggests the way verjuice was later used.
 
Luckily, Gregory of Tours mentions soup in one anecdote; virtually no one  
else does for centuries, though it is inconceivable, with so much cooked in  
liquid, that it wasn't eaten.
 
 
For the first year of my blog, this was my main subject. I gathered some of 
 the sources here:

http://leslefts.blogspot.com/2014/07/sources-on-early-medieval-french-food.h
tml

I  also gathered some of my own ideas of how to make early medieval 
(French) food  here:

http://leslefts.blogspot.com/2014/01/making-early-medieval-food.html

Missed  that bit by Alcuin, though. :)
 
 
Jim  Chevallier
_www.chezjim.com_ (http://www.chezjim.com/) 

FRENCH BREAD HISTORY:  Seventeenth century bread
http://leslefts.blogspot.com/2016/02/french-food-history-seventeenth-century
.html






In a message dated 8/30/2016 5:53:47 P.M. Pacific Daylight Time,  
lcm at jeffnet.org writes:

It's  sort of a triangulation between several  
sources.