Subject: medieval cookbook

From: [email-masked] (Sandra P. Hoffman)
Date: Thu, 29 Jul 1993 21:30:19 GMT

i am looking for a cookbook containing medieval recipes. i believe it is
called pleyn delight(not sure of spelling). as far as i can tell it is now
out of print and i have been unable to find a copy of it anywhere. if
anyone can give me any information about how to get a copy of it i would
appreciate it. if you have a copy if you could send me the recipe for
ginger fudge(thats not what it is called in the book but that accurately
describes the end result) you would have my undying gratitude.

-- 
		enough, or too much?
			sandra

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From: [email-masked] (Joel Polowin)
Date: 30 Jul 93 03:17:09 GMT

>describes the end result) you would have my undying gratitude.

_Pleyn Delit_ was published by University of Toronto Press, 1976, by Hieatt
and Butler.  It's still available from U of T Press; I don't have ordering
information at hand, but one of my colleagues recently received the U of T
Press' catalogue of discounted books and _Pleyn Delit_ was listed.  I'll try
to get the info.

In a lot of ways, _Pleyn Delit_ is an excellent book for relative beginners
at medieval cookery (like me).  A friend of mine, who has considerably more
experience in the field and who has been doing her own redactions in 
preparation for an SCA event this autumn, has some reservations.  I'll see 
if I can get her to post her comments.
n
Joel
[email-masked], [email-masked],
[email-masked]

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From: [email-masked] (Cheryl Tallan)
Date: Fri, 30 Jul 1993 14:50:46 GMT

>Press' catalogue of discounted books and _Pleyn Delit_ was listed.  I'll try

_Pleyn Delit_ is not only available, it is probably the least expensive
of all of the cookbooks with both medieval recipes and modern
redactions/adaptations (with the possible exception of _The
Miscellany_ a collection of various things (no surprise there)
published privately by David Friedman and Betty Cook. _The Miscellany
contains about 100 pages of recipes and sells for $10 US, last time I
bought one

>if I can get her to post her comments.

Your friend may have considerably more experience in the field than
you or I (I've only been doing it for ten years now) but I sincerely
doubt that she has considerably more experience than Connie Hieatt,
author of _Pleyn Delit_. Connie Hieatt is probably the world's leading
living authority on medieval English cuisine (I'd be happy to hear of
who would challenge her for the title). The couple of times that
people I know have *thought* they caught her in a mistake, they were
wrong. I myself, when I found a recipe that I thought she had made a
serious deviation from the model (leaving out the cheese in a meat and
cheese pie) was told by a friend that when that recipe was mentioned
to her, she immediately responded "Be careful, there is a typo. The
publishers left out the cheese in the adaptation."

A number of her recipe adaptations are derived from a number of
cognate recipes, only one of which is printed in the cookbook. (The
recipes in _The Miscellany_, are all derived entirely from the one
medieval recipe that is printed alongside). That does make it more
difficult to compare and see where typos or modifications may have
creeped in. And, even if you have copies of all of the published
medieval recipes, she had access to the unpublished ones and may be
bringing things in from unpublished ones (I suspect she was doing that
in her book _An Ordinance of Pottage_ when she said that salmon was
used in the Middle Ages as a substitute for eel.)

All in all, I don't think you will find a better first cookbook for
medieval cooking. Of course, there are many more...

David Tallan
([email-masked])
*I don't read the mail addressed to this account I'm posting from - *
*so hitting the "R" key to reply won't work.                        *
42 Camberwell Rd. Toronto ON M6C 3E8

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From: [email-masked] (Stephen Bloch)
Date: Sun, 1 Aug 1993 18:38:54 GMT

>if I can get her to post her comments.

_Pleyn Delit_ is one of several widely-available modern "books of
medieval cookery," and probably the most respectable and useful for
the beginning medieval cook.

Another good one, which should also be in print, is _To the King's
Taste_, by Lorna J. Sass, published by the Metropolitan Museum of Art,
ISBN 0-312-80748-1.  Like _Pleyn Delit_, it gives an original recipe
and a modern redaction; unlike _Pleyn Delit_, it gives the original
recipe in a legible modern typeface.

Less easily found, less easily used, but eminently respectable, is _An
Ordinance of Pottage_, also by Constance Hieatt, published by Prospect
Books, ISBN 0-907325-38-6.  This is really an edition of primary
sources, but Hieatt includes modern redactions of SOME of the recipes.

Easily found, but not terribly useful for people serious about
medieval cooking, is _Fabulous Feasts_, by Madeleine Pelner Cosman,
published by George Braziller, ISBN 0-8076-0832-7.  This book includes
a lot of information about medieval food, eating, serving, sanitation,
etc. and a bunch of redactions of medieval recipes.  However, Cosman
doesn't provide original recipes along with the redactions, nor does
she even tell you where the original recipes came from, but rather
gives a single list of manuscripts used for the book.  If you want to
check one of her redactions against its original, you have to search
through dozens of primary sources looking for recipes from which the
redaction in question MIGHT have come.

And of course there's the _Miscellany_ mentioned in a previous post,
of which about a third is medieval recipes with redactions, and the
other two thirds are articles, letters, and stories of interest to SCA
and other medieval-reenactment people.  Not easily found except
through the SCA (or through David Friedman, who's on this group).
Every recipe includes an original, a redaction, comments on the
redaction, and a specific reference to a primary source.

-- 
					Stephen Bloch
				     [email-masked]

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From: [email-masked] (Joel Polowin)
Date: Sun, 1 Aug 1993 19:54:11 GMT

>From the latest U of T Press catalogue:
_Pleyn Delit_ by Contance B. Hieatt and Sharon Butler, ISBN 0-8020-6366-7.
Paperback, $9.50.  North American customers postage and handling $3 for one,
$1 each additional.  Canadian customers add 7% GST; NY customers 8% sales
tax.  Outside North America, P&H is $5 U.S. for one, $1 U.S.
each additional.  Outside Canada, prices are in U.S. dollars drawn through
a U.S. Bank.  The offer includes one free bonus book (from a list of seven,
which I won't list here) for each three books purchased from the catalogue.

Mail to DIRECT MAIL ORDERS / University of Toronto Press / 5201 Dufferin St. /
Downsview, Ontario / CANADA  M3H 5T8
Or fax to DIRECT MAIL ORDERS, (416) 667-7832.  Payment, purchase order, or
charge account must accompany the order; cheques should be payable to
University of Toronto Press; they'll take VISA or MasterCard.

>who would challenge her for the title).

I wouldn't dispute the point; I don't know.  Bear in mind, though, that it
was published 17 years ago.  I expect that the authors were not so experienced
then.  I want to emphasize that _Pleyn Delit_ is not a bad book; it is indeed
a very good one.  My friend comments that 'reservations' is too strong a
word.  She hopes to post on this subject in a day or two when she is less
frenziedly busy. 

Joel

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From: [email-masked] (Patrick S. Paul)
Date: 2 Aug 1993 17:29:31 -0400

The copy of Pleyn Delit that I have (Pb 1987) called this disk a fudge-like 
candy.  I think that this is the dish that was requested last week.  I will 
reproduce the page here for any interested viewers.  It is recipe 125.

Payn Ragon

Take hony sugar and clarifie it togydre and boile it with esy fyr, and kepe 
it wel from brenyng and whan it hath yboiled a while, take up a drope ther=of
with thy fynger and di it in a litil water and loke if it hong  togyder and 
take it fro the fyre and do therto the thriddendele and powder gynger and 
stere it togyder til it bigynne to thik and cast it on a wete table; lesh it
and serue it forth with fryed mete on flesh day or on fysshe dayes.    FC 67

(I lack the  type fonts to properly render the spelling fron the book)

This recipe makes a fudge-type candy, complete with soft ball test.  The 
unspecified ingredients, added during the beating stage would most probably 
be ground almonds, currents, pine nuts - the sort of ingredient used to stuff
roasts, flavor stews, etc. Pegge suggests that the 'third part' must be bread
('payn'), bur it seems more likely that this is one of the names which 
suggests an appearance rather than an ingredient.  Just as 'yrchouns' are 
suasage  made to look like hedgehogs, this is recomended to accompany fried
meats, it would provide the kind of contrast that a sweet sauce might.

Honey and Almond Candy
       
        2 cups sugar
        3 tbsp honey
        2/3 cup water
        2/3 cup ground almonds
        1/4-1/2 tsp ginger

        Cook the sugar, honey, and water togeather, stirring frequently,
        over fairy low heat, stirring, until the syrup reaches the soft-ball
        stage (approximatley 234F).  Cool it a little, then beat it until it
        begins to stiffen.  Then add the almonds and ginger, stir together, 
        and poor out onto waxed paper.  When hardened, slice and serve.

*****************************************************************************
*-Tully-*  NOTICE: My opinion may not all ways agree with reality.          *
*********          This will be corrected in future realities               *
*****************************************************************************

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From: [email-masked] (Marina Waltz)
Date: Thu, 5 Aug 1993 20:46:28 GMT

Hello, everyone.  I'm new to this newsgroup so please
forgive me if the information in the following post
has already been given.

There is a two volume set of medieval recipes you
may be interested in trying.  The title is "Take A
Thousand Eggs or More - A Collection of 15th Century
Recipes" by Cindy Renfrow.

This is a translation of medieval recipes from
Harleian MS. 279, Harleian MS. 4016, and extracts
of Ashmole MS. 1439, Laud MS 553, and Douce MS. 55.

Volume One - ISBN 0-9628598-1-8
Volume Two - ISBN 0-9628598-2-6

2 Volume Set - ISBN 0-9628598-0-X

>From the Introduction:

"Volume 1 contains almost 100 translated recipes
which have been adapted for modern cookery.  Volume 2
contains nearly 300 translated recipes that have not
yet been modernized; these include recipes for extinct 
or protected species and for species not to be found
in North America.  These recipes are here both for
curiosity's sake and the sake of completeness, as
they were part of the original text.

Volume 2 contains two appendices not found in the
first volume; appendix one consists of several
menus which were listed in Harleian MS 279.  The
second appendix lists the original tables of
contents.  Volume 2 also includes a section entitled
"So Now What?", which is a guide to preparing the
recipes in the second volume.  It contains a glossary
of common recurring phrases."

I hope you find this useful.

Regards,

Marina