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Utilis Coquinario

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Utilis Coquinario is an English cookery book written in Middle English in the late fourteenth[1] or very early fifteenth century.[2] The title has been translated as "Useful for the Kitchen".[3] The text is contained in the Hans Sloane collection of manuscripts in the British Library and is numbered Sloane MS 468.[4][5]

Author

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The author's name is unknown. It has been theorised that he was "the high-ranking chef of a large kitchen", though not one as large as that of Richard II (for example, compare this text to The Forme of Cury).[6] It is accordingly assumed that he was a man.[7][a] The resemblance of some of the author's recipes to early French recipes indicates the author may have had a reading knowledge of Middle French.[7] The author's references to "fyssh day" and Lent indicate that the author cooked for a Christian household.[8]

Text

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Contents

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The manuscript contains recipes for things such as butter of almond milk,[9] roasted duck,[10] a meat pottage[11] and a sweet-and-sour fish preparation.[12][13] The manuscript is loosely organised and has no real system beyond a basic grouping of recipes for cooking birds, blancmange, and fruits and flowers.[3][7]

Purpose

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It has been suggested that the text was not intended as a cookbook for the layperson since the level of lay literacy at the time was still relatively low and distribution of manuscripts was a "patchy affair".[14] Several alternative purposes for its creation have been proposed, including: serving as testimony to the author's culinary skill,[14] presenting and influencing trends,[14] securing the status of the chef as a professional,[14] and serving as a tool for professionals (e.g. doctors and lawyers) aspiring to raise their class status by learning about higher-class meals.[15] The latter theory has been proposed in part due to the text's location in the Sloane collection of manuscripts, where it is placed in a selection of medical recipes described as "utilitarian".[16]

Modern study

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The text is notable to both culinary historians and linguists, containing several examples of unique recipes and vocabulary.

Historical interest

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Of historical interest, the work contains the only references to recipes such as pyany (a poultry dish garnished with peonies) and heppee (a rose-hip broth).[14] The text was written in the time of Geoffrey Chaucer and provides insight into the types of food Chaucer may have eaten and written about.[17] As was the case with most late medieval cooking, the author did not associate colours with specific flavours, but he did occasionally use colour to denote contrasts in flavour.[18] For example, one of the included fish recipes uses saffron in part of the dish flavoured with sugar and ginger (giving that part a reddish, saffron colour), and leaves the remaining part of the dish white to denote that it is flavoured with sugar only.[18]

Linguistic interest

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Of linguistic interest, it contains the only known references in fourteenth-century English texts to cormorants and finches.[14] Additionally, it contains the only references to woodcocks, botores (bittern), pluuers (plovers), and teals in fourteenth-century English cookbooks, though all are found elsewhere in menus of that era.[14]

See also

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Footnotes

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  1. ^ Though women of the time were responsible for basic domestic cooking, professional chef work in large kitchens was undertaken by men.[7]

Citations

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  1. ^ Carroll 1996, p. 45.
  2. ^ Hieatt 1985, p. 19.
  3. ^ a b Notaker 2017, p. 89.
  4. ^ Kernan 2016, p. 64.
  5. ^ "Entry for "Cookery Recipes in BL MS Sloane 468" in Middle English Compendium HyperBibliography". quod.lib.umich.edu. University of Michigan. Retrieved 31 July 2018.
  6. ^ Carroll 1996, p. 48.
  7. ^ a b c d Carroll 1996, p. 46.
  8. ^ Carroll 1996, pp. 47, 50.
  9. ^ Matterer, James L. "Medieval Recipe Translations – Botere of almand melk". www.godecookery.com.
  10. ^ Matterer, James L. "Malardis". www.godecookery.com.
  11. ^ Matterer, James L. "Medieval Recipe Translations – Chauden for potage". www.godecookery.com.
  12. ^ Matterer, James L. "A dauce egre". www.godecookery.com.
  13. ^ "MS BL Sloane 468". www.medievalcookery.com.
  14. ^ a b c d e f g Carroll 1996, p. 47.
  15. ^ Kernan 2016, pp. 13–14, 64–65.
  16. ^ Kernan 2016, pp. 64–65.
  17. ^ Matterer, James. "Chaucer and Food". Food in the Arts. Retrieved 30 July 2018.
  18. ^ a b Woolgar 2017, pp. 18–19.

Bibliography

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