[Sca-cooks] Your top three books

[Johnna Holloway]

Building on those three and concentrating on England, there's also

A Gathering of Medieval English Recipes by Constance Hieatt. Brepols published it in 2002 in a very very expensive edition. It's still listed as EUR 60,00 excl. tax on the press's page.

"This book is a collection of medieval English culinary recipes which have not been edited before.Some of them come from brief collections which have not been previously published, or are found in isolation or very small groups in manuscripts which do not contain such collections. Others come from collections which have been used, or viewed, primarily for collation, but which contain other recipes which had not yet been noted. It was the author's object to gather together all the recipes which had not been edited and published, or are not currently being edited by others, to make the record of English recipes of this period as complete as possible.The volume concludes with a supplement to the recently published Concordance of English Recipes: Thirteenth Through Fifteenth Centuries, adding all the new recipes to that Concordance, except for a few which are so fragmentary as not to deserve listing."

Another by Hieatt is Cocatrice and Lampray Hay which is an edition of the Corpus Christi College, Oxford MS F 291, which contains 99 recipes written in English (showing signs, the experts claim, of East Anglian provenance). These are late 15th century recipes. 2012. Price varies widely from $60 in USA down to new editions around $30.
https://prospectbooks.co.uk/products-page/current-titles/cocatrice-and-lampray-hay-late-fifteenth-century-recipes-from-corpus-christi-college-oxford/

Peter Brears is always good. Besides the two mentioned below, also consider All The King's Cooks: 
The Tudor Kitchens of King Henry VIII at Hampton Court Palace. It's out in an inexpensive paperback.

My favorite reference book last year was The Oxford Companion to Sugar and Sweets.  Edited by Darra Goldstein. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015. See my review: http://commonplaceboke.blogspot.com/2015/04/subtleties-oxford-companion-to-sugar.html

Last but not least if you want to work with medieval English recipes, you might want a copy of the Concordance of English Recipes: Thirteenth Through Fifteenth Centuries. It's an index and guide as to where medieval English recipes are located.
Book by Constance B Hieatt, Johnna H. Holloway, and Terry Nutter. 2006. [And no I do not get royalties.0

Johnnae

On Sep 22, 2016, at 5:29 PM, The Eloquent Page <books at TheEloquentPage.com> wrote:

> I focus on England.  My cannot-do-without is
> 
> Culinary Recipes of Medieval England by Constance B. Hieatt.  I use it for inspiration when I am putting together a feast - it is organized by type of recipe.
> 
> Curye on Inglysch, also by Hieatt
> 
> Cooking and Dining in Medieval England by Peter Brears.  His Tudor volume is also excellent.
> 
> Katherine Slough
> Mountain Freehold
> 
> 
> 
> On 9/22/2016 4:50 PM, Susan Lin wrote:
>> My library seems to be sorely lacking.  I have plenty of cookbooks and I
>> use the Internet but I do not personally own many historical books,
>> manuscripts or collections that focus on the foods of a particular region.
>> I'm all over the place.  I love Middle Eastern, Indian, Russian, Baltic,
>> Balkan, European, English, just about everything.
>> My family is always asking for ideas for gift giving.  So, here is my
>> question:  what three resources can't you live without or would like to
>> have in your own collection?
>> You don't have to limit yourself as to price.  Both reasonably and
>> unreasonably priced will be appreciated.
>> 
>> Thank you Shoshanah