
Early Modern Recipes (1600-1800) in a Modern Kitchen - benbreen
http://rarecooking.wordpress.com/
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jmenn
The cutoff at 1800 seems odd given Louis Eustace Ude's _The French Cook_ comes
out in French in 1813, and had a strong foothold in England prior to 1800. [1]
If I understand correctly, he was also one of the first to bring what we now
consider modern gastronomic techniques into British cooking. He may present an
interesting case study for the period before Grimod and Brillat-Savarin.

[http://www.cooksinfo.com/louis-eustache-ude](http://www.cooksinfo.com/louis-
eustache-ude)

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jack-r-abbit
There is a group in San Francisco called the Guild of Cookery[1] that is doing
this with old recipes and running pop-up dinners based on Game of Thrones
feasts. I went to one and it was fascinating to hear them talk about finding
old recipes and sourcing ingredients as authentic as they could get.
Interesting stuff.

[1]
[https://www.facebook.com/guildofcookery](https://www.facebook.com/guildofcookery)
\- sorry, they only have Facebook

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ruricolist
I imagine people who are interested in this would also be interested in the
Silk Road Gourmet: www.silkroadgourmet.com. Everything from Babylonian recipes
to reconstructions of Roman fish sauce.

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wall_words
If you like deciphering ancient recipes, you may interested in "The Forme of
Cury: A Roll of Ancient English Cookery Compiled, about A.D. 1390":
[http://www.amazon.com/The-Forme-Cury-Ancient-
Compiled/dp/142...](http://www.amazon.com/The-Forme-Cury-Ancient-
Compiled/dp/1426425759)

It's remarkable that English written over six centuries ago is still more or
less comprehensible, albeit with a little effort.

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devindotcom
Boy, that beef roll looks great. I definitely need to give that one a try.

These kinds of historical recipes are always fascinating to me. Some survive
and are still quite good - my girlfriend made a middle eastern dish that
apparently hasn't changed in a long, long time (shakshouka) and it turned out
surprisingly complex and wonderful.

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yincrash
I actually just cooked shaksouka tonight. It's interesting to note that
tomatoes are natively American and didn't even make it to the middle east
until the late 1700s.

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vram22
>tomatoes are natively American

So are chillies (chili peppers). Yes, Shakshouka is good.

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kosmopolska
Heston Blumenthal's London restaurant Dinner by Heston[1] has a similar theme,
with British recipes from the 14th to 20th century. The only restaurant I've
been to where the menu had a bibliography

[1] [http://www.dinnerbyheston.com](http://www.dinnerbyheston.com)

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evgen
And if you are into that, his cookbook Historical Heston contains a lot of the
recipes and background for some of the items at Dinner. Eventually picked it
up just for the tipsy cake recipe...

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idlewords
It's frustrating how much they alter the recipes. Do it like the funny text
says!

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Mikeb85
Yup. The fish custard may have actually turned out had they followed the
recipe. And there are fish-custard-y recipes from other cultures that turn out
and taste great...

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Natsu
Wow, mac & cheese has been around longer than I realized -

[http://rarecooking.wordpress.com/2014/06/30/maccarony-
cheese...](http://rarecooking.wordpress.com/2014/06/30/maccarony-cheese/)

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cobralibre
Of the recipes that I read, cherry brandy is the easiest by far — you macerate
several pitted cherries in a jar for several days — and not alien at all to a
contemporary reader with an interest in these things. But should it have been
quite so easy? 'Brandy' is almost as general a term as 'wine' or 'beer'. Which
brandy available to an American in 2014 would be most comparable to the brandy
available to an English cook in 1601, I wonder?

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snori74
The SCA do a lot of this sort of thing, so if you're interested, then the
links at [http://www.medievalcuisine.com/favorites/cookery-pages-by-
pe...](http://www.medievalcuisine.com/favorites/cookery-pages-by-people-of-
the-sca) might be to your liking.

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Squarel
I liked this, I have some of the 1500s or so recipes from when I have been
inspired watching historical cooking documentaries, but the problem for me has
been figuring out how to translate them properly to modern ingredients.

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carlob
My grandmother had a cookbook from the 1920s and she claimed she had to update
all the recipes to account for increased egg size. From the first recipe it
doesn't look like that's the case here.

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aptwebapps
Some recipes are more sensitive than others. Also, they seem to just be
feeling their way through with no real way to compare their results with the
originals.

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rare_cooking
@rare_cooking, here. Thanks for checking our our project. Let us know if you
try any of our recipes (as we cooked them or otherwise) and how it turns out.

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kaji88
I am not much of a cook but everytime I cook, recipes never work.

Sometimes, it seems like that if you follow the receipes measurements exactly,
your food almost never tastes like what you expect. There always needs a bit
of human discretion.

As such, I find video recipes to be far more effective. You can see them cook
and get a feel of what "cook meat until brown" really means, or what is a
"sprinkle of green onion"

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kevinconroy
I've found that part of the problem is that there's a very bad user experience
with recipe formats. They assume that one will get all ingredients out first
and will only start to follow the instructions once everything is ready.
Almost no one does that all of the time.

The back and forth reading that you have to do results in errors because you
lose your place, skip a step, add an ingredient in the wrong order, etc. That
really impacts the results. In this vein, I've been working on a format that
lets you just go top to bottom with much better results. Would love to hear
your thoughts.

[http://www.makebetterfood.com/recipes/](http://www.makebetterfood.com/recipes/)

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jack-r-abbit
Your format is most certainly NOT for me. I am one of those people that do get
all ingredients out first. I also get all my required measuring instruments
out ahead of time. I also read the entire recipe so I can plan my steps. A
normal recipe format is ideal for me. Your format is confusing to me. But
everyone does things differently. I'm sure your format has an audience. Good
luck.

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jghn
In fact, it is much better to do what you describe. My cooking life became
much easier once I learned to get a proper mise-en-place going. By the time I
actually turn on a burner or anything like that, _everything_ is fully prepped
and ready to go in a pre-measured container.

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sk5t
How can you do a mise for, e.g., one-off home baking? In the case of familiar
recipes I find it easier and cleaner to use a JIT process...

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jghn
I don't bake, I only cook so your specific example I don't know.

I'll also admit that when I'm dialing something in ("needs more X") that
obviously that's not prepped ahead of time.

Anything else I find it easier and cleaner to just have a bowl of X ready to
go. It goes in the dishwasher within minutes of using it, and my cutting board
and such was already cleaned.

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gameshot911
The image presentation on the site is beautiful. Is that a native feature of
wordpress?

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dbarlett
Sort of. WordPress provides the gallery; the carousel comes from the Jetpack
plugin [1] which is included on wordpress.com sites and can be installed [2]
on self-hosted sites.

[1] [http://jetpack.me/support/carousel/](http://jetpack.me/support/carousel/)

[2]
[http://wordpress.org/plugins/jetpack/](http://wordpress.org/plugins/jetpack/)

