[Sca-cooks] Nosewis

Alexander Clark alexbclark8 at gmail.com
Wed Jun 13 17:09:43 PDT 2018


As I was looking through Hieatt's Concordance, I spotted something that
seems to fit the bill.  Its name is something like "grossas nuces uiridea",
and it's in the Gonville & Caius manuscript with a few other confectionery
recipes, some of which are like things served for potage in the third
courses of some other fifteenth century menus.  I haven't yet gotten a look
at the recipe, but it's apparently something like pickled and/or candied
green walnuts.

In other news, I was recently shopping in the local Eastern European Market
and saw a bunch of jars of nuts in honey.  Don't ask me what was in those
jars; I'd just give you a smart answer.

Speaking of Gonville & Caius, has anyone here tried making the recipe for
green ginger, or some adaptation thereof?

-- 
Alex/Henry

On Thu, 24 May 2018 10:54:59 -0500, "Terry Decker" <t.d.decker at att.net>
wrote:
> Because I can't find a distinct definition, I believe this is a compound
> word.  Since this is a Court function, the language is probably
Anglo-Norman
> French from the period where Anglo-Norman French and Middle English were
> being replaced by Early Modern English.
>
> "Nose" is a variant Anglo-Norman spelling for the French "nois" derived
from
> the Latin "nux" meaning nut.  "Wis" does not describe any specific nut.
The
> closest possible word that I've been able to locate is "viz" a variant
> spelling of "vie" (life, alive, living) which can be translated as
> sustenance.
>
> Bear
>
>> Does anyone here know what the "Nosewis" in the coronation menu for
Richard
>> III might be?  From the context I would guess that it was supposed to
mean
>> a kind of fruit, such as dates, quinces, or pears.
>>
>> --
>> Alex Clark/Henry of Maldon


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