Taught at Atlantia Summer University 2025
Cooking with seasonally appropriate ingredients was the standard practice in the SCA’s period of focus. But, with refrigeration, canning and other preservation methods why should we worry about it for the modern reenactor? If we are preparing a feast one of the main reasons is cost, things in season cost less generally. The other main reason is flavor, things that are in season together taste better together.
There are three levels of ease in adapting this to cooking for SCA events. Easiest, if you want to do Roman Renaissance dishes is to use the “Opera of Bartolemeo Scappi” as he listed when each ingredient was best the first time that he mentioned the ingredient. Next is to look at household manuals, frequently written by or for a husband about how he wanted his household run. These manuals discuss planting and harvesting times as well as recipes. The most common source, but most difficult to decipher is the general cookbook that just lists variations of recipes with no information about timing.
Starting easy with Terence Scully’s translation of Scappi we find, as an example, Recipe 142 To Spit Roast a Crane, and Cook it in Several Ways. In this recipe it says, “It is first seen in Italy in October and is around until the end of February, those months being its season.” This sort of description is in the first mention of virtually all ingredients that there are recipes for. To make it even easier for you I went through the book and made a spreadsheet for all the ingredients and posted it at www.aeduinofskye.com/articles for people to use.
Examples will be pulled from three household manuals, Gervase Markham’s “The English Housewife”, and “The Goodwife’s Guide, or Le Menagier de Paris” from France.
And the last shall be first, starting in Paris. The manuscript for this class is the 2009 edition from Cornell University Press of “The Good Wife’s Guide” translated by Gina Greco and Christine Rose. They compiled their translation from three 15th and one 16th Century manuscripts that are similar but not exact copies. This manuscript is divided into multiple sections, most of which are interesting but not relevant for this. What is relevant is the sections on horticulture, menus, and recipes.
Scattered throughout the horticulture section are things like, “White cabbage and headed cabbage…are sown during the waning moon in March…These cabbages are ready to be eaten in June and July.” This section deals mostly with when to plant things and gives some estimates as to when they will be ready for harvest. Some of the information is superstitious-the waxing and waning of the moon is frequently mentioned. You also need to have a Catholic Church calendar handy since it frequently mentions Holy Days and Saints’ Days. As an example, “Nota, you need to sow green vegetables from April to St. Mary Magdalene’s Day.” which is July 22. While sowing dates don’t give exact harvest times they can give you an idea. If you are sowing in April then you probably aren’t eating them fresh in Sprig or early Summer depending on the variety.
The first part of the “Menu” section is general information about butcher shops and various ingredients, some useful information is found here such as, “the season for fresh shad begins in March”, “wood pigeons are good eating in winter:, and “white trout are good in winter and red in summer.” The specific menus are only broken down into “meat” and “fish” day dinners and are designed per the author to serve as examples to be mixed and matched at the wife’s and/or cook’s whim. Some ingredients lend themselves to seasonality but aren’t specifically relegated to a certain time of year. Roast kid (baby goat) and desserts with fall fruits as examples.
The recipe section starts with general terms and information. It mentions slaughtering male pigs in November and female pigs in December. Later is says “Chines (from the ribs) and hams are cooked with peas.” However it doesn’t say fresh or dried. But from the month of slaughter they are probably dried. It then goes into when to salt beef and other meats as well as when to use them. In the winter it says to grind beef or mutton flesh finely before using coarse salt instead of salting the whole piece. Sometimes the author combines calendar and church dates as in “Poiree of cabbage sprouts is good from January to Easter or even later.”
Next we move to England in the early 17th Century with “The English Housewife” by Gervase Markham first published in 1615. He divides his work into nine sections including Wines, Dairy, Brewing, Distillation, Fibers (wool, hemp, flax etc), Oats, Malting, and of course Cooking. We will be focusing on Section 2, Cooking for this class.
He gets right into timing things by listing what to plant in each month starting in February and going through August’s full moon. His list includes vegetables, herbs, flowers both edible and medicinal, and other things that are planted annually.
A little earlier is Wynkyn de Worde’s, “The Boke of Keruynge” or “Book of Carving” that goes into what a gentleman’s manservant must know during the late medieval and early Tudor periods. The author breaks up the menus according tot the Church calendar, Easter to Whitsunday (though the individual items say Pentecost, not always the same), Pentecost to Mid-Summer, Other holiday’s mentioned include Feast of St. John the Baptist, Michaelmas and Christmas. The Spring meals say to serve a boiled calf, possibly one that is not needed from the herd and would use the mother’s milk that could be used for cheese production. Late spring to summer is beef or mutton that is boiled or roasted. Unfortunately, this source doesn’t go into full menus, just the things the carver needs to worry about but it does show the progression of proteins throughout the year.
Cookbooks, as opposed to household manuals, are just generally the lists of recipes. Incidentally the paragraph form of recipe found in period manuals continued up through the early 20th Century. There are two ways that the recipes are listed. First is a specific main ingredient such as in Francois Pierre La Varenne’s, “The French Cook” for oysters. There are four main recipes Oysters in Broth, Oysters in Fritters, Oysters with Ragout, and Oysters Roasted. The “with broth” recipe has two “another way” variations. But, they are all oyster recipes cooked with appropriate fresh ingredients.
The other main type of “cookbook” or manuscript is like the pair known as “Two Fifteenth Century Cookery Books” which are Harleian MS 279 and 4016. The version used here is Cindy Renfrow’s “Take a Thousand Eggs or More”, Second Edition which includes excerpts from other manuscripts. These manuscripts have many recipes under the general category of “Potage Dyverse” that list a choice of ingredients. Many of the coney (rabbit) recipes say “coney, or hen” or “coney, or hen or mallard”. If you are in a city getting your meat from a butcher or fowler you can probably get coney or hen all year round due to their prolific reproductive tendencies. But if you are more rural and don’t raise rabbits they need to be hunted.
In Harleian MS279 there is a recipe for Egredouncye or Sweet and Sour Pork. But it says to use pork or beef. Granted Rome and England have different climates, but going to the dates that Scappi likes for each ingredient their time of best quality doesn’t overlap, adult cows he say are best from May through September, while young pig bookends it being best in March-April and September-October. That makes this recipe good with minor herbal variations for eight months of the year. Many seafood recipes call for Haddock (summer) or Lingcod (Spring through Fall) expanding the usefulness of the recipes.
For a real world example. Let’s say your camp wants to do a period feast at Pennsic, pulling from the information in Scappi you have a wide range of choices. Beef, mutton, various types of deer, and rabbit/hare are all available in the meats. Poultry options include, pullet (young chicken), partridge, quail and turkey. Kohlrabi, crook necked squash, asparagus, melon, quince, and eggplant are all at their peak. There are also plenty of fish but those don’t always go well with camping. There is an even wider variety of ingredients available for planning a 12th Night feast or Yule dinner.
Sources:
Bartolomeo Scappi, and Terence Scully. The Opera of Bartolomeo Scappi (1570) : L’arte et Prudenza d’Un Maestro Cuoco. University Of Toronto Press, 2011.
Greco, Gina L., and Christine M. Rose. The Good Wife’s Guide : A Medieval Household Book. Cornell University Press, 2009.
La, Pierre. The French Cook by Francois Pierre La Varenne. Southover Press, 2001.
Renfrow, Cindy. Take a Thousand Eggs or More : A Translation of Medieval Recipes from Harleian MS. 279, Harleian MS. 4016, and Extracts of Ashmole MS. 1439, Laud MS. 553, and Douce MS. 55, with More than 100 Recipes for Modern Cookery. Royal Fireworks, 2003.
Wynkyn de Worde, and Peter. The Boke of Keruynge. Equinox, 2003.
著者： Gervase Markham, and Michael R. Best. The English Housewife. Mcgill-Queen’s University Press, 1998.
Æduin of Skye 