In article ,
Jaques d'Alltrades writes:
|
| There is very little written about how the common people cooked,
| which doesn't help :-( Try and find anything written about how
| the poorer people (or even somewhat richer people in poorer areas)
| cookec in even 1950, for example, and it's hard. Try for 1850,
| and it's diabolical. Try for 1750, and it's almost impossible.
| And so on ....
|
| Hmmm. I have recipe books dating from the 1950s, and the 1940s - though
| the latter was full of ways of cooking to make the most of your food
| ration.
|
| There are good fish recipes in the Compleat Angler, and I could give you
| a madiæval recipe for stuffed swan, though this was hardly a recipe of
| hoi polloi.
|
| I think that if you are prepared to dig in the right places (Dr.
| Johnson?) you might find more than you expect.

In article ,
lid (Rodger Whitlock) writes:
|
| I suspect you might find the nitty-gritty on these matters in
| travelogues written by visitors from *other* countries. "You
| wouldn't believe what the English peasantry eats!" iow.

No, what I wrote is correct. As both of your examples show, there
is a certain amount on what the richer people ate, and what the
peasantry ate for feasting, as well as some rude remarks (verging
on propaganda) about the common diet. But there is effectively
damn-all on either the details of the latter or sufficiently
unbiassed evidence to just what it was really like.

As a modern example, I know some of those 1940s and 1950s cookbooks,
and none of them include the food that was routinely eaten in areas
that I know, and communication with other people indicates that it
was generally true. Most of them were written as attempts to get
the peasantry to improve its diet, after all!

| At any rate, if I can be allowed to slightly reformulate my
| hypothesis, evidence is very scanty and many modern books on the
| subject of Herbes in Ye Olden Dayes may contain more imagination
| than fact.

That is unquestionably so. There is much better evidence on their
use in medicine than cooking.


Regards,
Nick Maclaren.