Journal Competition: Feast Cooking
I remembered there was an article I read online a while back before I'd even thought of entering it in the journal competition, but that's okay because it's in my bibliography. It was interesting though because it talked about who started using New World foods and when, and also affirmed a theory I had thought probably, that when redacting recipes it's appropriate to also make reference to modern recipes to help get the quantities right, and it was backed up with a real example, so it was doubly nice.*
I have ordered Scappi and hte other book that I think might be 16th century. It came to US$100, which was all my vouchers doubled plus some, but fortunately the international postage rate has come down, so it was only $5 instead of $12-20 like it used to be.
In the mean time, I've been doing some background reading, and have been reading "A History of Cooks and Cooking", by Michael Symons (Illinois, University of Illinois Press, 2000). However, I've gotten halfway through and given up because I'm entirely sick of it and there's nothing I can pick that's especially going to be of use. Also I think the title of the book is a misnomer, and it really should be called "why cooks should be worshipped as gods", and should then maybe have a subtitle: "Cooks as Sharers: 101 expoundations of the same theory". It was interesting to start wiht. But I have some other more promising books to read as background reading, so I'll renew them and make a start on them instead.
I may not be able to do the "harvest" portion of the feast as I am having trouble finding information here. I even emailed the apprentice list, but no-one's replied. There are a couple of books on Amazon purportedly to do with medieval times and harvest practices, but they really do look quite dubious.
*The article in question is Friedman, D. & Cook, E., “Cooking from Primary Sources: Some General Comments” from http://www.pbm.com/~lindahl/cariadoc/cooking_from_primary_sources.html and apparently I read it on the 9th of December, 2008.
I have ordered Scappi and hte other book that I think might be 16th century. It came to US$100, which was all my vouchers doubled plus some, but fortunately the international postage rate has come down, so it was only $5 instead of $12-20 like it used to be.
In the mean time, I've been doing some background reading, and have been reading "A History of Cooks and Cooking", by Michael Symons (Illinois, University of Illinois Press, 2000). However, I've gotten halfway through and given up because I'm entirely sick of it and there's nothing I can pick that's especially going to be of use. Also I think the title of the book is a misnomer, and it really should be called "why cooks should be worshipped as gods", and should then maybe have a subtitle: "Cooks as Sharers: 101 expoundations of the same theory". It was interesting to start wiht. But I have some other more promising books to read as background reading, so I'll renew them and make a start on them instead.
I may not be able to do the "harvest" portion of the feast as I am having trouble finding information here. I even emailed the apprentice list, but no-one's replied. There are a couple of books on Amazon purportedly to do with medieval times and harvest practices, but they really do look quite dubious.
*The article in question is Friedman, D. & Cook, E., “Cooking from Primary Sources: Some General Comments” from http://www.pbm.com/~lindahl/cariadoc/cooking_from_primary_sources.html and apparently I read it on the 9th of December, 2008.