Any good finds lately?

On Mon, 3 Dec 2007 05:49:40 +0100 (CET), Barbara Bailey
<rabrabbjb.DeleteThis@yayhu.comm> wrote:

>Jack Campin wrote:
>
>>>>> I got a copy of a cookbook dated 1848 for $10
>>>> One wonders what ingredients it uses that may no longer be
>>>> available?
>>
>> Probably none if you look hard enough and are prepared to spend
>> enough.
>>
>>> Some years ago a friend gave me a book that is a translation of
>>> Apicius de re Coquinaria. The book is Apicius, Cookery and Dining in
>>> Imperial Rome (Ed. and Trans. by Jos. Dommers Vehling) Dover, 1977.
>>>
>>> There are definitely a number of ingredients which, available or not,
>>> you would probably pass on. For instance, sow's womb, cracklings,
>>> udder, tails and feet.
>>> One recipe is for sow's udder or belly with the paps on it. Then
>>> there are
>>> recipes for Flamingo, Ostrich and Crane and suggestions for dealing
>>> with strong smelling birds. Another recipe is entitled "Fine Ragout
>>> of Brains and Bacon". Some other ingredients that mean nothing to me
>>> are : laser, lovage, colocasium, aphros, cyprian rush. And while
>>> other ingredients such as saltpeter, laurel berries or myrtle berries
>>> have meaning, I don't expect to find them at the local grocer.
>>
>> Any Chinese supermarket should have saltpetre. I saw ostrich sausages
>> in the seasonal French market in Edinburgh at the weekend (ostrich
>> farming is a sizable business in Europe). Oxtail soup is a
>> traditional British food - casualty of the BSE epidemic, but my mother
>> used to make it.
>>
>> The one you won't find is silphium.
>
>No, they won't, nor laser (which is the resin of the silphium plant, but
>the OP may be able to find asafoetida, which is apparently very similar
>to silphium (Strabo, a Roman writer and geographer, used the same word
>for both asafoetida and silphium.)

Asafoetida should at least have similar conctraceptive properties as
silphium, though not necessarily for the same reason.