Harpstrang-cb-msg - 1/31/05

Information on and recipes from the Harpestraeng cookbook. This cookbook appears to be the oldest cookbook in Western Europe. The original seems to have been a French manuscript from the 13th-century, and later translated to German and from German to Danish and Icelandic.

NOTE: See also the files: cookbooks-msg, cookbooks-bib, books-food-msg, merch-cookbks-msg, cb-novices-msg, cookbooks-SCA-msg, online-ckbks-msg, cb-rv-Apicius-msg.

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Date: Mon, 19 Jul 1999 15:01:00 +0200
From: "ana l. valdes" <agora at algonet.se>
Subject: SC - danish recipes from 1300

The collection of 25 recipes seems to be, after Apicius, the oldest kept
cookbook in the Western world. Its from the beginning of the 13th
century. Its three different collections, written in German, Icelandic
and Danish. Rudolf Grewe has worked for a long time comparing the
different manuscripts. The Danish is kept today at the Royal Library in
Copenhaguen.
Here [are] some recipes from it:

Put a hen in a pan with oil, cut in small pieves, crush garlic and add
warm buljong, lard, wine and salt and several wipped eggyolks, plus the
innards and the liver.
The hen must cook a long time in this coction.

White Mouse

Sugarmilk and white bread in small pieces, wipped eggs, crushed saffron,
and let it boil until it gets thick. Serve in a plate with butter and
cinammon.

A sauce for lords

Take Peppar, cinammon, ginger, cardamom, nutmeg, cloves, as much
cinammon som the other together. Take the same amount fried bread and
mash all together and add strong vinegar. Put in a jar and seal it. It
can be kept six months.

Ana

Date: Mon, 19 Jul 1999 21:02:16 +0200
From: "ana l. valdes" <agora at algonet.se>
Subject: Re: SC - danish recipes from 1300

Sorry, it was difficult to translate it. Its beating and not whipping,
and buljong is the same as broth.
Yours
Ana

Date: Mon, 19 Jul 1999 21:31:17 +0200
From: Thomas Gloning <Thomas.Gloning at germanistik.uni-giessen.de>
Subject: SC - danish recipes from 1300

>>>
The collection of 25 recipes seems to be, after Apicius, the oldest kept
cookbook in the Western world. Its from the beginning of the 13th
century. Its three different collections, written in German, Icelandic
and Danish. Rudolf Grewe has worked for a long time comparing the
different manuscripts. The Danish is kept today at the Royal Library in
Copenhaguen.
<<<

I heard of that. It seems to be the Harpestraeng-cookbook. But I never
found the edition of Harpestraeng:
- -- H. Harpestraeng, Gamle Danske Urtebo"ger, Stenbo"ger og Kogebo"ger.
Ed. M. Kristensen. Kopenhagen 1908-20.
Nor did I see the paper, Rudolf Grewe published on that topic in
"Current Research in Culinary History, Boston 1987, 27-45".

So:
- -- Did anybody see the Harpestraeng-edition?
- -- Did anybody see the Grewe-paper?
- -- Could anybody provide one original "German" recipe from that
collection? I would love to see what a German recipe from around 1200
looks like.
- -- Did Grewe publish anything else on the Harpestraeng-collection?

Thomas

Date: Mon, 19 Jul 1999 10:40:20 -0700
From: david friedman <ddfr at best.com>
Subject: Re: SC - danish recipes from 1300

At 3:01 PM +0200 7/19/99, ana l. valdes wrote:
>The collection of 25 recipes seems to be, after Apicius, the oldest kept
>cookbook in the Western world. Its from the beginning of the 13th
>century. Its three different collections, written in German, Icelandic
>and Danish. Rudolf Grewe has worked for a long time comparing the
>different manuscripts. The Danish is kept today at the Royal Library in
>Copenhaguen.

Grewe wrote a piece on it, published for some reason by the Culinary
Historians of Boston (or some similar named group). His conclusion was that
the original was actually a southern European cookbook that someone had
brought north and that had then spawned the surviving daughter manuscripts
(the original is lost).

The Lord's Salt is something we have been making for years; it really works
quite well for preserving meat. I don't guarantee six months, but we tested
for several weeks. There is also a chicken wrapped in bacon wrapped in sage
wrapped in dough that is one of our standard recipes. It's known in SCA
circles as "Icelandic Chicken," since when I first discovered the
collection it was the Icelandic version (contained in an Icelandic Medical
Miscellany) that I had.

David/Cariadoc
http://www.best.com/~ddfr/

Date: Mon, 19 Jul 1999 16:03:51 -0700
From: david friedman <ddfr at best.com>
Subject: Re: SC - danish recipes from 1300

At 9:31 PM +0200 7/19/99, Thomas Gloning wrote:
>-- Did anybody see the Grewe-paper?

Yes. I've read it, and include part of it (with the author's permission) in
Volume II of my collection.

>-- Could anybody provide one original "German" recipe from that
>collection? I would love to see what a German recipe from around 1200
>looks like.

Not according to Grewe, who thought the original recipes were
mediterranean, and only the surviving daughter manuscripts northern
European.

David Friedman
Professor of Law
Santa Clara University
ddfr at best.com
http://www.best.com/~ddfr/

Date: Tue, 20 Jul 1999 01:15:30 +0200
From: "ana l. valdes" <agora at algonet.se>
Subject: Re: SC - danish recipes from 1300

> -- Did anybody see the Harpestraeng-edition?
> -- Did anybody see the Grewe-paper?
> -- Could anybody provide one original "German" recipe from that
> collection? I would love to see what a German recipe from around 1200
> looks like.
> -- Did Grewe publish anything else on the Harpestraeng-collection?
>
> Thomas

I have all these material from a book written by the Norwegian
specialist Henry Notaker, the title is "All Cookbooks of the World". But
he doesn´t specify which recipe is from Germany, since there are three
manuscripts, one in German, one in Icelandic and one in Danish. But they
are copies of each gether and its 25 recipes. Notaker assume
Harpestreng, who lived in the 12-century in Danmark, was not the author,
but the keeper of these book.

Ana

Date: Tue, 20 Jul 1999 11:36:53 +0200
From: "ana l. valdes" <agora at algonet.se>
Subject: SC - more om Danish cookbook

Notaker says when the manuscript went published, 1826, it was atribuited
to Henrik Harpenstreng, dead in 1244. He writes: "Harpenstreng studied
at different outlandish universities. He maybe found the book in his
travels. The original has more certainly been a German translation of a
French manuscript from the 12th-century, translated later to German and
from German to Danish and Icelandic."

Ana

Date: Tue, 20 Jul 1999 07:31:52 -0400
From: Philip & Susan Troy <troy at asan.com>
Subject: Re: SC - more om Danish cookbook

"ana l. valdes" wrote:
> Notaker says when the manuscript went published, 1826, it was atribuited
> to Henrik Harpenstreng, dead in 1244. He writes: "Harpenstreng studied
> at different outlandish universities. He maybe found the book in his
> travels. The original has more certainly been a German translation of a
> French manuscript from the 12th-century, translated later to German and
> from German to Danish and Icelandic."
> 
> Ana

Grewe also specifically states that one of the manuscripts is in Low
German, as I recall, but his published work seems to contain the recipes
only in English. The foods themselves seem to suggest, as has been said,
a Mediterranean origin: lots of saffron, almonds, garlic, etc., and if I
remember correctly, Grewe suggests Harpenstreng may have acquired them
while in medical school in Provence. This might also help explain how
they became part of an Icelandic "medical miscellany".

On a tangential note, the references made to eggs being beaten or
whipped seem to be accurate -- we should bear in mind that the practice
of passing eggs through a strainer seems to be primarily [but not
exclusively, I suppose] English, while  these recipes pretty clearly aren't.

Adamantius

Date: Tue, 20 Jul 1999 12:27:34 -0000
From: "=?iso-8859-1?Q?Nanna_R=F6gnvaldard=F3ttir?=" <nannar at isholf.is>
Subject: Re: SC - more om Danish cookbook

Adamantius wrote:
>Grewe also specifically states that one of the manuscripts is in Low
>German, as I recall, but his published work seems to contain the recipes
>only in English. The foods themselves seem to suggest, as has been said,
>a Mediterranean origin: lots of saffron, almonds, garlic, etc., and if I
>remember correctly, Grewe suggests Harpenstreng may have acquired them
>while in medical school in Provence. This might also help explain how
>they became part of an Icelandic "medical miscellany".

I recently asked our foremost culinary historian, Hallger›ur Gísladóttir,
about the miscellany (or rather, the cookbook) and this is part of her
reply:

"There are several versions of this manuscript, somewhat spread over Europe.
The oldest preserved version was copied by a monk at Sorø in Denmark, Knud
Juul, in around 1300. The Icelandic version comes to us through a Norwegian
version, now lost. It is written in Norse and is combined with some of
Henrik Harpestreng´s herbal manuscripts in the collection you asked about
(the medical miscellany). It is now stored at the Árni Magnússon Institute.
Hans J. Pedersen at the Danish restaurant museum in Svejbek has adapted
these recipes for the modern kitchen and they have been published in a book
called "Til taffel hos kong Valdimar" (At King Valdemar´s Table)."

Nanna

Date: Tue, 20 Jul 1999 20:18:02 -0400
From: "Robin Carroll-Mann" <harper at idt.net>
Subject: Re: SC - danish recipes from 1300

And it came to pass on 20 Jul 99,, that Thomas Gloning wrote:

> There is a now lost original. There are (at least) three manuscripts
> with texts that stem from this original: a (low) German, a Danish, an
> Icelandic version. The nature of the recipes is mediterranean.
[snip]
> I understand from the contributions that the Danish version is in
> Copenhagen, the Icelandic version is in the Arni Magnússon Institute.
>
> Where is the manuscript with the German version?

I have not been closely following this thread, so forgive me if I repeat
anything which has already been said.

There is an article on Danish culinary sources in _Du Manuscrit a La
Table_, which is an anthology of essays on medieval cuisine.  The book
was edited by Carole Lambert and published in 1992 by the University
Press of Montreal, and at least half of the contents are in French.
(ISBN 2-7606-1564-2)

One of the essays in the book is "Sources of Medieval Cuisine in
Denmark" by Bi Skaarup.  It begins with a brief discussion of this c.
1300 Danish cookbook (brief, because Rudolf Grewe's paper -- which is
not included in this book -- had already covered the topic in great detail).
I have quoted below the parts which seem to address your question.

- - - - begin quoted text - - -
There are two known versions of this cookery book, both of them in the
Royal Library of Copenhagen, Denmark.  The oldest, known as codex
K, is part of a manuscript in which herbals and lapidaries predominate.
These have been attributed to the Danish scholar and physician Henrik
Harpestreng, who died in 1244.  However, neither the cookery book nor
the lapidaries have anything to do with the physician Harpestreng.
Cookery books often appear in medical manuscripts, and usually
consist of collections taken from various sources; they are rarely the
work of a single author.  Codex K is dated at circa 1300.

The other version, known as codex Q, was originally kept in the Royal
Library in Stockholm, Sweden, where it was part of a codex which also
contained two medieval law texts.... Codex Q is dated fifty years later
than K, at around 1350.

The two codices are not directly related.  K has undoubtedly been
translated from a Low German version, while Q apparently has its origin
in a French text; its language and contents, however, show that the
Urtext to both must have been a now lost French cookery book.

- - - - end quoted text - - -

I would gather from the above that the Low German version is lost.

Incidently, there is a footnote to the article which says that Rudolf
Grewe and Constance B. Hieatt are preparing a new edition of these
manuscripts.  Anyone know if this project is still in the works?

The rest of the article is about two sources of information on actual
Danish cookery.  One source is the household account books of Queen
Christine, covering a period of 1496-1521.  The other is a complete
listing of meals eaten in one year (c. 1520) by a certain Catholic bishop.

Lady Brighid ni Chiarain
Settmour Swamp, East (NJ)

Date: Wed, 21 Jul 1999 11:13:34 -0400
From: Philip & Susan Troy <troy at asan.com>
Subject: SC - In Grewe's own words, The German Connection, was: Danish recipes, etc.

Hullo, the list!

After all the commentary, questions, and _talking around_ Rudolf Grewe's
work on this early XIII century Somewhere-In-Northern-European cookbook
presenting reputed Somewhere-in-Southern-European recipes, I thought I'd
check Grewe's own article(s) on the piece. In particular I was
interested in determining why he seems to feel the recipes were
originally written in German. After examining what he says, though, I'm
still not completely certain I buy the explanations given. The evidence
he supplies doesn't seem to me to be in conclusive support of his claim.
Either I'm misunderstanding something he's saying, or there's more
evidence I'm not seeing, but he appears to me to be adding two and two
to get five.

Anyway, though, here's Part One of Dr. Rudolf Grewe's "An Early XIII
Century Northern-European Cookbook", sans an introduction saying,
essentially, that the paper is in three parts:
----------------
 FIRST PART: TEXTUAL QUESTIONS.

 The original text of the cookbook or recipe collection seems to be lost, and the original language in which it was written, and its place of origin, is a matter of conjecture that I will discuss later once the evidence available has been described. The extant versions of the cookbook have been preserved in four codices and I will start by discussing these in order of publication.

 CODEX K. (COPENHAGEN)

 This codex is in the Royal Library of Copenhagen (Ny samling, nr. 66, 8vo). Physically it is of small dimensions, a fact that it is important to keep in mind. It has 147 parchment folios of 11.7 x 9 cm. It may be dated c. 1300 and except for a few pages extraneous to the text it appears to be written by the same hand, in a very legible script typical of the XIII or XIV centuries.

 This codex contains 3 works in Danish; an herbal (110 folios), a lapidary (24 folios) and our cookbook (7 folios), and it was first published by Molbech in 1826 as works of Henrik Harpestraeng, and more recently by Marius Kristensen. (See bibliography)

 Kristensen and other scholars have identified Henrik Harpestraeng with Magister Henricus Dacus. He studied and practiced medicine in Orleans, France in 1181 and became physician to the Danish king, and died in 1244. It is worth mentioning that the herbal attributed to him has for sources Macer Floridus and Constantius Africanus, both of the School of Salerno (XI and XII centuries).

 The cookbook cannot be attributed to him, as it will be made clear, but he could have translated it into Danish. If so, an early XIII century date for the original would be obvious. This version has 25 recipes and has the peculiarity that each recipe has a Latin title.

 CODEX Q. (COPENHAGEN)

 This codex is also in the Royal Library of Copenhagen (Ny samling Nr. 7OR, 8 vo.) and consists at present of only 5 small folios (13 x 11 cm.). It is dated as XIV century. It contains only our cookbook written in Danish, except for some extraneous material in folio 1 recto.

 Molbech discovered it after having published the previous codex and realized the similarity to the previous cookbook and published it in 1844. A more modern edition has been made by Kristensen, as part of the works of Harpestraeng. This version contains 31 recipes and has no Latin titles. Comparing it with K it becomes clear that Q is independent of K; that is, they are different translations of an original that has probably been lost.

 CODEX D. (DUBLIN)

 This codex is at present in Dublin (Royal Irish Academy 23 D 43). It is a small octavo of 74 folios and is dated last quarter of the XV century. The contents are much older, however, and consist of several medical works, including the three of Codex K, attributed to Harpestraeng. All are written in Icelandic.

 This codex was published by Henning Larsen in 1931. Larsen shows that this Icelandic version of our cookbook stems from version K, but through a Norwegian intermediary. In the process, it has lost 3 recipes and added one at the end on vinegar, traceable to a different source. It preserves the Latin titles of the recipes.

 DIACHRONIC CHANGES IN RECIPE COLLECTIONS: SKIPPING AND JUXTAPOSITION

 Obviously some changes occur to the text when it is successively copied by hand. When the text is a recipe collection in medieval times, two changes stand out: skipping and juxtaposition. Both are illustrated in our case and many other examples can be given.

 (a) Skipping. A copyist occasionally skips a recipe. Several reasons can be suggested for this behavior, which I will not discuss here. The net result is that the copy is shorter, but preserves the ordering of the original.

 (b) Juxtaposition. New material is generally added at the end. In the case of two recipe collections, this amounts to juxtaposition. There is usually no reordering or reorganization of the recipes.

 In other words, a recipe collection in Medieval times usually decreases its size by skipping and increases its size by juxtaposition. Note that in these processes the ordering of the recipes in the original is preserved in the copies.

 CODEX W. (WOLFENBUETTEL)

 There has been the suspicion that Versions K and Q of our cookbook have a German source, due to the presence of some German words in them. But no trace of it has been thought to exist. I have found a version of our cookbook embedded in a XV century Low German cookbook. This version has suffered from skipping, being removed from the original by perhaps 200 years.

 The codex that contains this cookbook is in the Herzog August Bibliotek of Wolfenbuettel, Germany (Helmst. 1213). It is dated as XV century and the folios are of small size 14 x 10.5 cm. A detailed description of this codex has been given by Otto von Heinemann. The cookbook was published by Hans Wiswe in 1956.

 The fragment that contains our cookbook spans recipes 56 through 71 in the numbering of Wiswe. The correspondence of the recipes with the other versions is given in Table 1.

 Recipes 59 and 71 of this text are nonsensical and the Danish versions clarify what has happened. Recipe 59 corresponds to the beginning of recipe K6. Recipe 71 has an initial fragment that is extraneous to our text and it is followed by the end of recipe K6 and by recipes K7 and K12. A rearrangement of the pagination explains how this mixup could have occurred and it is given in Table 2. The number of folios shown in Table 2 is of course speculative but likely to be close to the correct number, if the size of the pages is small, as they are in all our codices. Such size allows for 3 or 4 recipes per page.

 SOME CONCLUSIONS.

 From the discussion so far we can draw some conclusions:

 (i) Harpestraeng (+1244) is not the author of the cookbook, but may have translated it into Danish or may have owned a copy since it is associated with his works.

 (ii) The original text or urtext was written most likely in Middle Low German.

 (iii) Codex K is probably the oldest of our codices. Since the Codex K is of c. 1300 and contains a translation of the urtext, the urtext must be earlier than c. 1300. Conclusion (i) above suggests an early XIII century date, which is corroborated by the condition of our cookbook in Codex W. The analysis of its contents, which follows, alos points to an early XIII date, and even earlier.

 (iv) The urtext contained probably 35 to 40 recipes, since versions K and Q are independent translations of it and are of familiar length. The mispagination of W seems to have occurred at the end of the cookbook, which suggests that the book ended around recipe number 35, in our numbering. Note also that the sequence of the four surviving versions meshes in, which suggest that this order was the original one.

----------
In the somewhat forlorn hope this has clarified something (but not sure
what!) for somebody (not sure who!),

Adamantius
- --
Phil & Susan Troy

Date: Thu, 5 Aug 1999 16:52:23 -0000
From: "=?iso-8859-1?Q?Nanna_R=F6gnvaldard=F3ttir?=" <nannar at isholf.is>
Subject: SC - Harpestrengs-manuscript: Was: Re: Northern Foods

Just wanted to tell you all - since the Harpestrengs manuscript, AKA
Icelandic Medical Miscellany, AKA old Danish cookbook - that I now have
obtained copies of the recipe part of the miscellany (Icelandic version),
and of the Kristensen edition of Harpestreng (the Codex K, I believe;
haven´t had time to find out for sure yet). The former is in 14th or 15th
century Icelandic, the latter in 13th century Danish, and I can read them
both fairly easily.

Some recipes are almost identical in both versions, others are not. To take
as an example something most of you are familiar with, the so-called
Icelandic Chicken:

Quomodo condiantur pulli in pastillis.
Madur skal eitt ongtt hæns j.ii. skera. ok svepa ﬂar um heil salve blod ok
skera j spek. ok salltt med lata ad lyfe. Sidan hylia ﬂat med deigh ok baka
sem braud i ofne.

which is translated in Cariadoc´s Miscellany as:
"One shall cut a young chicken in two and wrap about it whole leaves of
salvia, and cut up in it bacon and add salt to suit the taste. Then cover
that with dough and bake like bread in the oven."
(I would translate spek as lard or bacon fat, cut into small cubes.)

The Danish version:

De cibo qui dicitur spæk honer.
Man skal siuthæ et høns mæth helæ saluiæ blath oc spæk væl skoren sma sum
ærtær oc ædykæ. oc salt til matæ. Thæt hetær spæk honer.

which I translate as:
"One shall boil a chicken with whole leaves of sage and lard cut in cubes as
small as peas and vinegar and salt to taste. This is called lard chickens."
(I translate spæk as lard but bacon might be more accurate - not really sure
about this.)

As you can see, there is very considerable difference even though this is
supposed to be the same recipe. I haven´t had time to compare the rest yet.

The Icelandic version has 23 recipes, the Danish has 25. There are 8 chicken
recipes, 2 dessert recipes, one recipe for a venison marrow paté; the rest
are various spice blends and condiments, almond milk and such.

Nanna

Date: Thu, 05 Aug 1999 13:30:58 -0400
From: Philip & Susan Troy <troy at asan.com>
Subject: Re: SC - Harpestrengs-manuscript: Was: Re: Northern Foods

Nanna Rögnvaldardóttir wrote:
> Some recipes are almost identical in both versions, others are not. To take
> as an example something most of you are familiar with, the so-called
> Icelandic Chicken:
>
> Quomodo condiantur pulli in pastillis.
> Madur skal eitt ongtt hæns j.ii. skera. ok svepa ﬂar um heil salve blod ok
> skera j spek. ok salltt med lata ad lyfe. Sidan hylia ﬂat med deigh ok baka
> sem braud i ofne.

<snip>
> As you can see, there is very considerable difference even though this is
> supposed to be the same recipe. I haven´t had time to compare the rest yet.

I think this is a good example of Grewe's comments on skipping and
juxtaposition. According to his paper, the Danish Codex K is supposed to
have, I think, 25 recipes, of which the "spaek honer", or chicken with
lardons, is recipe #22, and the "pulli in pastellis", a.k.a. Icelandic
chicken, is a completely distinct recipe #24 in the same manuscript.

Grewe refers to the Icelandic versions (Codex D, probably D for Dublin,
where they live) as descendants of Codex K, possibly through a Norse
intermediary.

Adamantius

Date: Thu, 5 Aug 1999 20:56:30 -0000
From: "=?iso-8859-1?Q?Nanna_R=F6gnvaldard=F3ttir?=" <nannar at isholf.is>
Subject: Re: SC - Harpestrengs-manuscript: Was: Re: Northern Foods

Adamantius wrote:
>I think this is a good example of Grewe's comments on skipping and
>juxtaposition. According to his paper, the Danish Codex K is supposed to
>have, I think, 25 recipes, of which the "spaek honer", or chicken with
>lardons, is recipe #22, and the "pulli in pastellis", a.k.a. Icelandic
>chicken, is a completely distinct recipe #24 in the same manuscript.

Yes, well, I guess I should have taken time to read the texts through ...

A few notes (and then I´ll not post any more on this until after you are all
back from Pennsic):

Recipes #1-11 are the same in both versions. The Danish version then has two
recipes that are missing from the Icelandic version (De salso ualente ad
quosdam pisciculos and De salso ualente ad tres dies et non amplius).
Recipes #12-19 in the Icelandic version are the same as recipes #14-21 in
the Danish version. Then the Danish version has the recipe I posted earlier
(the chicken boiled with sage and lardons); it is not in the Icelandic
version, which is why I mixed the recipes up. Recipes #20-22 in the
Icelandic version correspond to #23-25 in the Danish. And recipe #23 in the
Icelandic version is the only one which is not in the Danish manuscript; it
has instructions for making vinegar.

The correct Danish version of the "Icelandic Chicken" recipe goes like this:

"Quomodo condiatur pullus in pastello. Man skal et unct høns .i. tu skæræ oc
swepæ thær um helæ saluiæ blath. oc skær .i. spæk. oc salt. oc hyli thæt
høns mæth degh. oc latæ bakæ i en ogn swa sum brøth. Swa mughæ man gøræ allæ
handæ fiskæ pastel. oc fughlæ oc annæt køt."

One shall cut a young chicken in two and wrap around it whole sage leaves,
and cut in it lardons and salt, and cover the chicken with dough, and let
bake in an oven as bread. In this manner one can also make all kinds of fish
in dough, and birds and other meat.

Now I only need to find Codex Q as a comparision - but more on this later.

Nanna

Date: Fri, 06 Aug 1999 00:10:21 +0200
From: Thomas Gloning <Thomas.Gloning at germanistik.uni-giessen.de>
Subject: SC - Harpestraeng

Thank you, Nanna!

It is a great day to _see_ the original text of a recipe around 1300!

The parallel recipe in the manuscript W, according to Wiswe's edition
(1956) goes like this:

"66. Item me schal over eyn hon mydden entweysniden unde maken van
mele unde van water twe vladen unde sniden darin speck unde do:en dartho
gantze salvienblade unde peper. Salte thomathe. Unde bewerke dat in den
vladen. Unde late id backen like eyne brade. Dyt [dy_Hs.] sind
posteidenhoner."

The ending "Dyt sind posteidenhoner" ('these are chicken in a pie')
corresponds in a loose way to the latin heading "Quomodo condiantur
pulli in pastillis" ('The way chicken can be deliciously prepared in
_pastillis_ (pies, little breads)'; the Icelandic and the corrected
Danish version headings, Nanna posted, differ in the number: "condiatur
pullus in pastello" is singular, while "condiantur pulli in pastellis"
is plural).

See also Wiswe's "Nachlese", p. 111, s.v. "vlade".

Thomas

Date: Fri, 6 Aug 1999 11:03:42 -0700
From: david friedman <ddfr at best.com>
Subject: Re: SC - Harpestrengs-manuscript: Was: Re: Northern Foods

At 4:52 PM +0000 8/5/99, Nanna Rögnvaldardóttir wrote:
>Just wanted to tell you all - since the Harpestrengs manuscript, AKA
>Icelandic Medical Miscellany, AKA old Danish cookbook - that I now have
>obtained copies of the recipe part of the miscellany (Icelandic version),
>and of the Kristensen edition of Harpestreng (the Codex K, I believe;
>haven´t had time to find out for sure yet). The former is in 14th or 15th
>century Icelandic, the latter in 13th century Danish, and I can read them
>both fairly easily.
>
>Some recipes are almost identical in both versions, others are not. To take
>as an example something most of you are familiar with, the so-called
>Icelandic Chicken:

Grewe published (obscurely--I think via the Boston Culinary Guild) a piece
comparing all of the versions.  Someone should get PPC to reprint it.

David/Cariadoc
http://www.best.com/~ddfr/

Date: Sat, 07 Aug 1999 00:17:34 -0400
From: Philip & Susan Troy <troy at asan.com>
Subject: Re: SC - Harpestrengs-manuscript: Was: Re: Northern Foods

david friedman wrote:
> At 4:52 PM +0000 8/5/99, Nanna Rögnvaldardóttir wrote:
> >Just wanted to tell you all - since the Harpestrengs manuscript, AKA
> >Icelandic Medical Miscellany, AKA old Danish cookbook - that I now have
> >obtained copies of the recipe part of the miscellany (Icelandic version),
> >and of the Kristensen edition of Harpestreng (the Codex K, I believe;
> >haven´t had time to find out for sure yet). The former is in 14th or 15th
> >century Icelandic, the latter in 13th century Danish, and I can read them
> >both fairly easily.
> >
> >Some recipes are almost identical in both versions, others are not. To take
> >as an example something most of you are familiar with, the so-called
> >Icelandic Chicken:
>
> Grewe published (obscurely--I think via the Boston Culinary Guild) a piece
> comparing all of the versions.  Someone should get PPC to reprint it.
>
> David/Cariadoc
> http://www.best.com/~ddfr/

I think I obtained it via interlibrary loan. It was published by the
Culinary Historians of Boston, I think, and is entitled, "An Early XIII
Century Northern-European Cookbook". What I have is photocopied from
some journal or other, presumably from said Culinary Historians of
Boston, since the first page is marked as page 27. Probably a search
through a Reader's Guide to Periodical Literature would be a start.

I don't have easy access to a scanner at the moment, but will see if I
can get my lady wife to fax it to me from her office, then run it
through some OCR software, and see if I can get an electronic copy that way.

FWIW, Grewe does not include any of the recipes in their original forms,
only his English translations. It's still a good resource for simply
cooking the dishes, since it is an attempt to re-create the
ur-manuscript by putting all the versions side by side to get as many
different recipes as possible (a total of 35). I think the German
version has more, but not all the recipes are from the ur-text (Grewe's
term, not mine).

Adamantius

Date: Sat, 7 Aug 1999 09:20:59 -0400
From: "Robin Carroll-Mann" <harper at idt.net>
Subject: Re: SC - Harpestrengs-manuscript: Was: Re: Northern Foods

And it came to pass on 7 Aug 99,, that Philip & Susan Troy wrote:
> > Grewe published (obscurely--I think via the Boston Culinary Guild) a
> > piece comparing all of the versions.  Someone should get PPC to reprint
> > it.
> >
> > David/Cariadoc
> > http://www.best.com/~ddfr/
>
> I think I obtained it via interlibrary loan. It was published by the
> Culinary Historians of Boston, I think, and is entitled, "An Early XIII
> Century Northern-European Cookbook". What I have is photocopied from some
> journal or other, presumably from said Culinary Historians of Boston,
> since the first page is marked as page 27. Probably a search through a
> Reader's Guide to Periodical Literature would be a start.

With respect, Master A., I'm afraid that it's a start that wouldn't go
anywhere.  The Reader's Guide does not usually index scholarly
journals and publications.  It's meant to be an index to periodicals of the
sort that are carried by public and school libraries.  However, the article
by Skaarup (in _Du Manuscrit a la table_) is nicely footnoted, and
contains the following citation:

Grewe, Rudulf, "An Early 13th Century Northern-European Cookbook" in
_Current Research in Culinary History: Sources, Topics and Methods
(Proceedings of the Conference sponsored by the Schlesinger Library of
Radcliffe College and the Culinary Historians of Boston)_, Culinary
Historians of Boston, 1986, pp. 27-45.

Lady Brighid ni Chiarain
Settmour Swamp, East (NJ)

From: "Nanna Rognvaldardottir" <nanna at idunn.is>
To: <sca-cooks at ansteorra.org>
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] medieval scandinavian sources
Date: Fri, 10 May 2002 12:09:44 -0000

Bear wrote:
> IIRC, the original owner is believed to have been a gentleman who served
> as an ambassador and developed a taste for haute cuisine.

Harpestrang was actually not an ambassador, although connected with the
Danish court (he was the King's physician), but he had studied medicine in
the South of France. I did put forward some highly imaginative speculation
on how the collection had ended up in Northern Europe:

"How did the collection travel north? Of course we don't know but it is easy
to imagine a scenario. Let's say that in the 1180s, the young Dane Henrik
Harpestrang is studying medicine in Orleans, or somewhere further south; he
probably studied at the medical school of Salerno in Italy as well and he
may have been at the famed medical school at Montpelier. Other young men
from Northern Europe studied at these schools as well and they probably
enjoyed the climate, the culture and the exotic cooking. Later Harpestr=E6ng
goes home to Denmark but he misses the fine French dishes he had become
accustomed to; even when he becomes the King's own physician, the royal
feasts, made up of simple Scandinavian dishes, do not compare. So when he
visits one of his German colleagues who studied with him in France a long
time ago, he is excited to discover that this splendid fellow had been wise
enough to pester the cooks for some of his favorite recipes and translate
them into German. So of course Harpestr=E6ng sits down and quickly translates
his friend's collection into Danish. It may have happened like that, or it
may have happened in a completely different way. We have no way of knowing
exactly how these recipes came to Scandinavia, but it is very likely that
the medical profession was involved. As Grewe and Hieatt say:
,, . the only way in which recipes were generally disseminated in the early
Middle Ages was through medical texts.""

> As for Icelandic chicken, Nana pointed out that it couldn't be an
> Icelandic dish, as there were no chickens in Iceland at the time.

Not quite, although they were rare, but other ingredients might have been
harder to get. This is (more or less) what I said:

"Now there are good reasons why this recipe is so popular, and I even see
that British chef Jamie Oliver has a variation on it in his newest book,
"Happy Days with the Naked Chef". But in Iceland in the Middle Ages, chicken
were rare and fresh sage leaves were unavailable. Besides, there were few if
any ovens to bake the chicken in, as I explained in my paper on Early
Icelandic Cooking."

I did also point out that there were other recipes in the collection that
could definitely not have been cooked in Iceland at the time, notably the
recipe for a pasty of deer marrow (no deer or any large game at all was to
be found there, and no way to obtain the deer bones called for).

Nanna

<the end>