Type2demon
First Post
CRGreathouse said:While I agree with the rest of your post, I'm not sure I agree with this. (If you have more information than I do, great -- I'd be interested to know!)
I've seen a fair number of recipe books from the Middle Ages, as well as an ancient Roman cookbook. The recipes struck me as very basic -- things like "spiced honey wine: add 1 part honey to 2 parts wine, stir, add spices, serve warm". I'm just not convinced that cooking was particularly advanced until the agricultural advances that came with the Renaissance.
Ok, It's show and tell time......
Please remember that ancient recipies relied on ingredients available regionally, but Empires such as Rome had trade routes that ran for over a thousand miles (eventually). So they imported a lot of non regional spices as well.
Some of the recipies in the websites below have been translated into modern equivelent measurements and language so that you can duplicate them at home and try them!
The middle ages had some rather complicated cuisine...Here is a cookbook from the 1400's:
http://www.geocities.com/and_pollett/mari4.htm#rommac
The food of the Nile region of Ancient Egypt:
http://www.ancientnile.co.uk/recipes.php
Last but not least, 2 sites with ancient Roman Recipies (I've tried some of these, and they really turned out be quite good):
http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/~mjw/recipes/ethnic/historical/ant-rom-coll.html
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/lostempires/roman/recipes.html
Cha-cha-cha.....Delicious!