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Gallery of manuscript recipes
I’m finishing up some long neglected work on mustard (coming soon!), but in the meantime, here’s a gallery from some manuscript recipe books that wandered through recently:
Butter
I made cultured butter as preparation for my De Condimentis entry at hilobrow. To get the culture going, I needed unpasteurized milk which I sourced from Lawton’s in Foxboro. It wasn’t the creamiest, but I gather that can be a problem in winter. It was a lovely yellow which, they say, is a sign that [...]
Uova agli aparagi
An interesting period in Italian cuisine – Italy was undergoing a painful series of events leading towards complete unification. Most of Italy was rolled up in il Risorgimento in 1861, though Venetia wasn’t added until the Third War of Independence in 1866 when it was ceded from Austria. Beginning during this period, a national cuisine [...]
Bacalao con huevos
COD WITH EGGS: Make a sauce from eggs, parsley, garlic, and breadcrumbs; once it is cooked, stir into the sauce, cod pieces and fry in butter. Is it possible for a recipe to be too simple? I bought the parsley for this – which would have looked LOVELY – and left them in the refrigerator. [...]
Mole poblano guajolote: The secret to enjoying turkey
A thousand years ago the Aztecs knew something that Norteamericanos are still struggling with, at least once a year: Turkey just isn’t very good. Sure, deck it out with mom’s stuffing, aunt Carol’s squash soup, some candied carrots, a metric ton of mashed potatoes, a couple of pies and plenty of liquor, and it will [...]
Grasshoppers, Cactus and Fish Tacos at Tu y Yo
Since I’m loath to cross the river, I hadn’t heard of Tu y Yo until they recently opened their Needham location – now I wouldn’t normally write about a restaurant, but their array of pre-Columbian delicacies is well worth the mention and the trip: We started out with the miniature grasshopper tacos (Tacos de chapulines) [...]
Turkey Wheate from John Gerard’s Herbal
The first in a series of posts celebrating Gerard’s 1597 masterpiece The Herball or Generall historie of plantes. Gerard’s Herball was one of the first publications to discuss the New World food basket that had been imported over the last century. Gerard, like most European farmers, was skeptical: These kinds of Graine were first brought [...]
Making Wine and Eating Gold – The History of the New World
More from La Historia del Mondo Nuovo di M. Girolamo Benzoni Milanese, Venetia, 1565 (an English translation published by the Hakluyt Society, 1857, and extracted below, is here in its entirety) Of those whom they caught alive especially the captains they used to tie the hands and feet throw them down on the ground and [...]
Chevreaux Nouveaux
The Viandier of Taillevent (see bibliography for details) is a collection of manuscript cookbooks spanning the 13th to 15th centuries grouped by convention under the banner of Tirel de Taillevent, a 14th century cook to Charles V. It’s a classic of medieval cookery, less famous but more cookable than The Forme of Cury. Chevreaux, metez [...]
Why I will no longer take couscous for granted
So I found out that couscous dates back at least to the 13th century where it appears in an anonymous Andalusian cookbook (a terrific pro bono translation of which is online) and was impressed. Impressed because couscous seems so modern, subtle, and fragile, and because this means it pre-dated pasta in Europe (Marco Polo returned [...]
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