`Pleyn Delit' subtitled `Medieval Cookery for Modern Cooks' by Constance B. Hieatt, Brenda Hosington, and Sharon Butler, all Canadian Ph.D. professional historians, is a scholarly book of very old Western European recipes translated into modern English, modern measurements, and readily available ingredients. Unlike several recent books by Francine Segan on recipes of Shakespeare's time and recipes of ancient Greece and Rome, this is a genuinely scholarly book with much less flash and much more exposition on how recipes were translated from an old English more familiar to Chaucer's pilgrims than 21st century foodies.
One can easily wonder what possible use such a book would be to members of the Food Network generation who do not happen to have any interest in medieval studies. How can one possibly appreciate a cuisine with no tomatoes, potatoes, chilis, corn, or string beans? Well, there are a few things a nonscholar foodie can get from this book.
First, it is an excellent source of recipes for entertaining to a Middle Ages theme. I can easily imagine that after a few years of running through food themes from Provence, Tuscany, Asian Georgia, Lebanon, New Delhi, Saigon, Kyoto, Hong Kong, and Kiev, one can suddenly find themselves at a loss for something new.
Second, for the somewhat more adventurous, who happen to have a green thumb or some nearby friendly greengrocers with an eye to the unusual, there is the opportunity to try unusual herbs and greens, some of which the authors cannot imagine why they have fallen out of favor. In an environment where foodies are searching out nettles and pig's jowls, people will be more than happy to find new scavenger hunt targets such as borage and sorrel.
Third, these recipes are generally very easy, which is not too hard to understand, as the job of collecting the ingredients required a lot more work than a quick trip to the local megamart.
Fourth, these recipes are great for people who are very fond of eggs, nuts, old grains, game meats, and `garbage'. `Garbage' happens to mean odd pieces of flesh that are perfectly edible, but with only a small amount of edible meat such as chicken heads and giblets.
Lastly, the old English vocabulary is really funny to modern eyes. The use of `garbage' is just a sample of the fun one can find in the shifts in word meanings that pop up in these recipe and ingredient names.
All of these delights are available in a very nicely inexpensive paperback from the University of Toronto.
Be aware that the recipe translations are not literal, and the authors make no claim to doing literal translations, as they have clearly proclaimed in their subtitle. They often reverse steps, as when vegetables are diced before being cooked rather than after, as specified in the original recipe. And, recipes are written in a modern style in that prep instructions are given with the ingredients rather than in the procedure.
My only objection to this book is in their technique for citing the sources of their recipes. There is no explanation for the method of citing sources, so I assume it is a commonly accepted English / Canadian scholarly tradition, but, as this is a scholarly book with value to non-scholars, I found the method very annoying. Once I caught onto the method, it was still difficult for me, a person trained in various academic arcana, to track down many of the references. If the authors do a third edition, creating a foodie friendly method of references would be a big improvement.
A very nice and very fresh foodie resource for a very reasonable price. If you are willing to slog through a little old English and some scholarly garnishes, you will enjoy this book.
