Le Menagier De Paris
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Le Menagier De Paris (often abbreviated to abbreviated to Le Menagier) is a medieval cookbook, dating from 1393.
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[edit] Format
Like most of the original resources on medieval cuisine (that is to say, books and manuscripts actually written in the medieval period), the cookbook includes information on ingredients and preparation methods, but is short on quantifying anything; most ingredients are given without specifying amounts, and most cooking methods are listed, without specifying amount of heat and time of cooking.
Since this is a standard limitation on references of this type, modern scholars will often attempt extrapolation or trial-and-error experimentation to produce a redaction of the recipe. When working with cookbooks, a "redaction" is generally a recipe, using the methods and ingredients of the original, that the modern author/scholar believes will produce a faithful (and, it is to be hoped, edible) reproduction of the product the original cook would have produced.
The difference, however, is that in a modern redaction, cooking times and amounts are specified. One hopes this will allow the modern cook to make the proper dish, although some differences in cooking equipment may require special adjustments by the cook; it is to be hoped that the scholar has included these adjustments in the redaction.
The cookbook appears in a topical format.
[edit] Remedies
As is common, for cookbooks from early historical period authors, many of the recipes are provided as remedies for common complaints. This is due to the crossover, in medieval works, between herbalism, medicine, and cooking; at times, there appears to be no real difference between them, as books for cooking will include information on herbalism and medicine, and vice versa, to the point where it is hard to determine, at times, which of the above was the primary purpose of the book.
[edit] Recipes
Le Menagier lincludes a variety of different types of recipes; soups, preparations for meats, eggs, fish, sauces, beverages, pastry, tarts, and so on. Despite the popular conception of medieval food being, merely, "meat on a stick," Le Menagier shows us a staggering variety of foods available to the medieval eater.
One should remember, however, that extant cookbooks of the period will not, generally, illustrate what was eaten by the very poor, who may have had a much more limited diet. But those who illustrate the medieval feast as being what a primitive carnivore with a campfire might eat are not, apparently, bothering to do any research.
