[Steppes] of interest to period cooking lovers

[Duncan Hepburn]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2008/sep/22/10

Library to share 14th-century royal cookbook online

Collection of recipes compiled by King Richard II's cooks among several
works being digitised for viewing on internet

A rare medieval cookbook is to be digitally photographed page by page and
the results uploaded to the internet for gourmands around the globe to
study.

Forme of Cury, a recipe book compiled by King Richard II's master cooks
in 1390, details around 205 dishes cooked in the royal household and
sheds light on a little-studied element of life in the Dark Ages.

Written in Middle English, it contains the instructions for creating long-
forgotten dishes such as blank mang (a sweet dish of meat, milk, sugar
and almonds), mortrews (ground and spiced pork), and the original quiche,
known in 14th century kitchens as custard.

It is one of 40 literary treasures being made freely available on the
internet for the first time by the University of Manchester's John
Rylands University Library.

Other Middle English manuscripts to be digitised and put online include
one of the earliest existing editions of the complete Canterbury Tales by
Chaucer, John Lydgate's two major poems Troy Book and Fall of Princes and
500-year-old translations of the Bible into English.

The project will reunite fragments of a 15th-century manuscript of
Chaucer's Miller's Tale, in an online collaboration with the Rosenbach
Museum and Library in Philadelphia.

The work, which will be carried out using a state-of-the-art high-
definition camera, will begin next month and is due to be completed by
late 2009.

Jan Wilkinson, the director of the John Rylands library, said: "The
library's Middle English manuscripts are a research resource of immense
significance. Yet the manuscripts are inherently fragile, and until now
access to them has been restricted by the lack of digital copies.
Digitisation will make them available to everyone.

"For the first time it will be possible to compare our manuscripts
directly with other versions of the texts in libraries located across the
world, opening up opportunities for new areas of research. We hope that
this will be the beginning of a wider digitisation programme, which will
unlock the tremendous potential of our medieval manuscripts and printed
books for the benefit of the academic community and the wider public."