Fantastic news! An article from the Guardian says that the University of Manchester will be digitally photographing their manuscript of Forme of Cury and making the images freely available on the Internet.
Photograph: University of Manchester John Rylands University Library
Forme of Cury, a recipe book compiled by King Richard II's master cooks in 1390, details around 205 dishes cooked in the royal household and sheds light on a little-studied element of life in the Dark Ages.
The text of Forme of Cury is already available online, but the existing transcriptions do have some errors. Being able to compare transcribed text to the original is incredibly helpful in working out recipes. This will also allow others to make their own transcriptions.
The work, which will be carried out using a state-of-the-art high-definition camera, will begin next month and is due to be completed by late 2009.
Oooh! I hate waiting!
That will be great. I already have the existing online version but a more accurate one would be excellent. I think the recipes in there are really interesting and some sound soooo yummy!
ReplyDeleteThe online text version (via Project Gutenberg) was taken from Samuel Pegge's transcription in 1780 (which is apparently different from the manuscripts used by Hieatt and Butler in "Curye on Inglish")
ReplyDeleteThere are a few differences between those transcriptions and the single image of the University of Manchester manuscript that was included in the news story - and that's just in a couple of recipes.
Late 2009 - ugh! I really hate waiting.
Ooo... Definitely something to look forward to!
ReplyDelete