A fact from Subtlety appeared on Wikipedia's
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I listed the article as needing expansion in an attempt to find more sources. So far, I've only found references in Michael Crichton's Timeline, some medieval enthusiast pages on the internet and the brief passage about it in the source cited in the article.
Peter Isotalo 12:03, 26 March 2006 (UTC)
Ok, thanks for all the links. All of them clearly don't fit in the article right now, but I'll put them here so they can be sorted through and perhaps used to expand the prose of the article.
Peter Isotalo 06:49, 28 March 2006 (UTC)
Everything Imaginable Made of Sugar Translation of the third course of The first banquet for Emperors for the early meal on a meat day, and re-creation of a selection of said third course from Ein New Kochbuch by Marxen Rumpolt http://clem.mscd.edu/~grasse/GK_ASQPsugar98.htm From Functional Feast to Frivolous Funhouse: Two Ideals of Play in the Burgundian Court Paper given at the 5th Annual Indiana University Symposium on Medieval Studies http://www.byu.edu/~hurlbut/perform/hurlbut.html Illusion Dishes Article by Cindy Renfrow http://members.aol.com/renfrowcm/illusion.html Ivan Day's website Decorated food history and courses http://www.historicfood.com/portal.htm Subleties from "Le Viandier de Taillevent" translation from the original manuscript http://www.telusplanet.net/public/prescotj/data/viandier/viandier465.html
Trimalchio's Banquet A Roman feast, containing many illusion foods, described in a contemporary satire http://www.sacred-texts.com/cla/petro/satyr/sat06.htm
Feast of Illusions in 2 Courses http://www.florilegium.org/files/FEASTS/ill-fd-feast-art.html
An illusion feast http://www.florilegium.org/files/FEASTS/Valentines-Fst-art.html
A Great Pie http://members.aol.com/renfrowcm/gretepye.html
A Recipe for Fake Fish 16th C Danish apple pastry disguised as a fish https://coquinaria.nl/en/fake-fish/
A conceit of walnuts http://home.comcast.net/~morwenna/Receipts/walnuts.html
Chastlete (Pastry Castle) http://www.florilegium.org/files/FOOD-SWEETS/Chastlete-art.html
Coqz Heaumez Gode Cookery reconstruction of a 14th c subtlety http://www.godecookery.com/helmeted/helmeted.htm
Gode Cookery Illusion Foods Recipes for subtleties (including translations) http://www.godecookery.com/illusion/illusion.html
Illusion Food Messages from Various E-Lists http://www.florilegium.org/files/FOOD/illusion-fds-msg.html
Incredible Foods, Sotelties and Entremets Gode Cookery spectacle foods http://www.godecookery.com/incrd/incrd.htm
Marzipan Messages From Various E-Lists http://www.florilegium.org/files/FOOD-SWEETS/marzipan-msg.html
Peacocks and Pasties https://coquinaria.nl/en/peacocks-and-pies/
Pommes Dorres http://home.earthlink.net/~smcclune/stewpot/recipe_pommesd1.html
Sotleties Messages from Various E-Lists http://www.florilegium.org/files/FOOD-SWEETS/sotelties-msg.html
The Cockentrice - A Ryal Mete http://www.godecookery.com/cocken/cocken.htm
Warners http://www.florilegium.org/files/FOOD/Warners-art.html
Consuming Wealth and Eating Words: Sugar Paste http://www.kal69.dial.pipex.com/shop/pages/285chap9.htm
Sugar Paste Discussion From E-lists http://www.florilegium.org/files/FOOD-SWEETS/sugar-paste-msg.html
Sugar Paste a Cook's Playdough http://home.comcast.net/~iasmin/mkcc/MKCCfiles/cooksplaydough.html
OED, subtlety, sense 5:
Cookery. A highly ornamental device, wholly or chiefly made of sugar, sometimes eaten, sometimes used as a table decoration. Obs. exc. Hist.
?c1390 Form of Cury in Warner Antiq. Culin. (1791) 4 It techith for to make curious potages and meetes, and sotiltees. c1440 in Househ. Ord. (1790) 450 A soteltee Seint~jorge on horsebak, and sleynge the dragun. 1467-8 Durham Acc. Rolls (Surtees) 92 Pro le Tynfole empt. pro ornacione et pictura del soteltez erga festum Natal. Domini. 1517 R. TORKINGTON Pilgr. (1884) 7 They mad vs goodly Chere wt Diverse Sotylties as Comfytes and Marche Panys. 1552 LATIMER Serm. Par. King (Parker Soc.) II. 139 At the end of the dinner they have certain subtleties, custards, sweet and delicate things. [1768 H. WALPOLE Let. to Cole 6 June, I am no culinary antiquary: the Bishop of Carlisle, who is, I have often heard talk of a sotelte [printed sotelle], as an ancient dish. 1852 C. M. YONGE Cameos II. xxxi. (1877) 327 The feast was entirely of fish: but they were of many kinds, and were adorned in the quaintest fashions, with sotilties, or subtleties. 1875 J. C. JEAFFRESON Bk. Table I. 133 A subtelty, representing a pelican on a nest with her birds.]
The point of clearing out most of the content of this article is because the term "subtlety" was far more specific than entremet. Though I'm still not entirely sure what it meant in the late medieval context, it appears that it did not include theatricals (I think they're called "pageants") and basically covered only table ornamentations of various kinds. To what extent they were actually edible, I'm also not sure. Anyway, there's no point in fleshing out both articles with identical content, and especially not when the content here was summarized in the other article some time ago.
Peter Isotalo 10:13, 28 May 2007 (UTC)
A subtlety is as far as I know just a Middle English term for a specific type of entremet and the two terms are often used interchangeably by medieval food scholars, though some actually point out differences in usage. I chose entremet as the proper main article because it was more widely applicable to the concept of "medieval and early modern dinner entertainment provided between courses". After all, articles are for the most part supposed to be about concepts, not terms. The article at the Ricardian society website that you added as a source doesn't seem to be all that reliable, btw. It confuses "entrements" [sic] with what appears to be aperitifs, makes a weak (but still unforgivable) attempt at regurgitating the old myth about using spices to conceal spoiled food, and even confuses L'Mangier De Paris [sic again] with Le Viandier (de Taillevent).
Peter Isotalo 11:07, 28 May 2007 (UTC)
Lets start by getting consensus for the merge, then making a major change. (H) 12:43, 29 May 2007 (UTC)
Isotalo reverted with "motivate your edit before demanding that it be respected" as the edit summary.
There are reasonable grounds, which I stated, for restoring Subtlety to its pre-stub state: to aid comparison for discussion here with other editors. I made no demand. — Athaenara ✉ 01:44, 30 May 2007 (UTC)
I am here as a result of a plea posted on Wikipedia:Third opinion. I know nothing about this subject, but I am rather disturbed at seeing sourced material relevant to subtlety being deleted. I see good material in this version that should be merged into entremet if it's more appropriate there, after which this article can simply redirect to entremet. If that deleted material is more appropriate here, then the non-stub version of subtlety should stay. - Amatulic 18:11, 30 May 2007 (UTC)
- "… you may find your merger reverted, and as with all other edits, edit wars should be avoided. If you are uncertain of the merger's appropriateness, or believe it might be controversial, or your merge ends up reverted, you can propose it on either or both of the affected pages."
User Peter Isotalo ( talk · contribs) posted on my talk page about issues with these two articles. I removed it with the suggestion that he post where the discussion is located.
He posted on my talk page a second time. I removed that as well, again requesting that he post not on my user talk page but on the article talk pages.
There are many other articles on my watchlist (more than 180 at the moment, down from nearly 300 a few weeks ago). I avoid obsessing about any of them. I rely on the fact that many other NPOV editors have valuable insights to offer, and I do what I can in cooperation with them to improve articles.
I won't edit war. This is not avoidance. The two articles need more, not less, NPOV attention, and it is on article talk pages that article improvement discussions are centered. The removal of nearly all of the content of one of the two the articles does not aid the process. — Athaenara ✉ 08:03, 1 June 2007 (UTC)
I was supposed to take a wikivacation, but when even H (who so far hasn't weighed in with an opinion on anything subtlety-related) made a revert I noticed something had to be done. The point is that I made an over-generalization when I wrote the material that you're now fighting me in keeping here. I've made a compromise and removed only the material which was included here when the article was supposed to cover the entire concept of "medieval entertainment dish", which included entremets. That was before I came across material that noted that a subtlety appeared to be a very specific English form of entremet. I do not recommend re-adding the stuff about the orange meat balls either because I'm not sure it was a subtletly as much as it was a fancy type of illusion dish. Same goes for the blackbird pies and fake maggots. Even if they are distantly related as "food that can astonish", there's no mention of them being defined as subtleties.
I would really like to have some motivations from those insisting on reverting me all the time. Why are you questioning my presentation of it and what alternatives do you propose? I'm also being accused of violating NPOV, but I'm still at a loss as to the reason for this. How am I being partial? What POV are other editors insisting on for that matter?
Peter Isotalo 00:59, 5 June 2007 (UTC)
I feel as though the original contributer to this article Peter Isotalo has become overly invested in the controlling the reception of his contributions. I reverted the article to his and others' earlier and better version. I don't see anything here on the talk page that "proves" he was wrong, other than his claim that he was wrong. I then see that he has engaged in countless attacks against other editors. I really don't think a article on Subtlety should cause such angry exchanges. It shouldn't be the focus of one's defensive energies to this extent. I think it would be best that Peter Isotalo just let go of his "ownership" of the article until and unless he can provide some sort of peer-reviewed text-based evidence that his earlier "interpretation" of the material was wrong. There comes a point where one is no longer "neutral" enough of about his own work to be involved in the page anymore. Saudade7 22:31, 4 October 2008 (UTC)
During my break I have looked through a few sources. Here is what they have to say on the matter.
Regional Cuisines of Medieval Europe has a few references to both terms. In the essay on England by Constance B. Hieatt describes "English courtly cookery aimed at 'subtle' (that is, clever, surprising) combinations, or, as in the decorative "subtleties" brought out at the end of each course of a major royal feast, food made to look like something other than it is." (p. 35) A dish of "Lenten eggs" (empty eggshells of fish and almond milk with "yolks" colored with saffron) are described as subtleties with a reference to a collection of two 15th century manuscripts published under the title Two Fifteenth-Century Cookery-Books (p.36). Later on Hieatt explains that a type of modern ancestors to the old subtleties can be identified in things like figurines on wedding cakes (p. 38). Hieatt's use of the term appears to be more descriptive (she always uses the terms in quotes), and as far as I can tell she also applies the term to much older recipes from the 13th century, even though the term isn't actually used in this way back then.
In one of the sources used by Hieatt, Two Fifteenth-Century Cookery-Books, subtleties are described by the 19th century author as decorative dishes what end the end of a course. They include examples of an Angus Dei, a Doctor of Law and a peacock with a "gilt nib" (p. x).
In The Art of Cookery in the Middle Ages Terence Scully, who has also edited several editions of Taillevent's Viandier and collected them in a modern edition with commentary. Scully uses the terms interchangeably. In the index, the two are listed together (under entremets, it says "see subtlety", and when referring to the dish(es) he considers them to be synonymous in the sense of a decorative dishes in the same manner that the author of Two Fifteenth-Century Cookery-Books does (p. 103, 104-110). When referring to English dishes, the terms is always subtlety (see again 104-110 and p. 121). French, or at least non-English, dishes are called entremets (pp. 125, 215).
Melitta Weiss Adamson is the editor of several books on medieval cuisine, including Regional Cuisines, and has written a general book on the topic called Food in the Middle Ages. She uses both sotelties and entremets, but makes it clear that they are merely two different terms for the same type of dish or in-dinner entertainment:
In Fast and Feast: Food in Medieval Society, Barbara Henisch discusses the concept in the chapter about meal entertainment. No distinction between the two terms are made other than that one was distinctly English and the other French. After explaining the basic premises of other types of food-related entertainment, she gives this explanation:
Savoring the Past by Barbara Ketcham Wheaton was added as a reference, but I don't understand why. I've read the book before and I checked it again for any mention of subtleties. Neither the English nor the French terms are in the index, but entremets are described in the first chapter, "The Middle Ages". On p. 21, "entremet" is mentioned in relation to a 15th-century edition of Le Viandier which describes edible and inedible entremets.
Last term I used a Swedish translation of La Varenne's Le pastissier françois and Le cuisinier françois as a source for an essay in culinary history. I also briefly checked a French original edition from the late 17th century. I didn't see any sign of the term "subtlety", regardless of spelling. The only term that I recall used was "entremet", which was also used in the Swedish translation. So which sources confirm French usage of "subtlety" and which scholars classify them as distinctly separate subjects?
Peter Isotalo 10:35, 9 October 2008 (UTC)
A fact from Subtlety appeared on Wikipedia's
Main Page in the
Did you know column on 2 October 2006. The text of the entry was as follows:
|
This redirect does not require a rating on Wikipedia's
content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: | ||||||||||||||||||
|
I listed the article as needing expansion in an attempt to find more sources. So far, I've only found references in Michael Crichton's Timeline, some medieval enthusiast pages on the internet and the brief passage about it in the source cited in the article.
Peter Isotalo 12:03, 26 March 2006 (UTC)
Ok, thanks for all the links. All of them clearly don't fit in the article right now, but I'll put them here so they can be sorted through and perhaps used to expand the prose of the article.
Peter Isotalo 06:49, 28 March 2006 (UTC)
Everything Imaginable Made of Sugar Translation of the third course of The first banquet for Emperors for the early meal on a meat day, and re-creation of a selection of said third course from Ein New Kochbuch by Marxen Rumpolt http://clem.mscd.edu/~grasse/GK_ASQPsugar98.htm From Functional Feast to Frivolous Funhouse: Two Ideals of Play in the Burgundian Court Paper given at the 5th Annual Indiana University Symposium on Medieval Studies http://www.byu.edu/~hurlbut/perform/hurlbut.html Illusion Dishes Article by Cindy Renfrow http://members.aol.com/renfrowcm/illusion.html Ivan Day's website Decorated food history and courses http://www.historicfood.com/portal.htm Subleties from "Le Viandier de Taillevent" translation from the original manuscript http://www.telusplanet.net/public/prescotj/data/viandier/viandier465.html
Trimalchio's Banquet A Roman feast, containing many illusion foods, described in a contemporary satire http://www.sacred-texts.com/cla/petro/satyr/sat06.htm
Feast of Illusions in 2 Courses http://www.florilegium.org/files/FEASTS/ill-fd-feast-art.html
An illusion feast http://www.florilegium.org/files/FEASTS/Valentines-Fst-art.html
A Great Pie http://members.aol.com/renfrowcm/gretepye.html
A Recipe for Fake Fish 16th C Danish apple pastry disguised as a fish https://coquinaria.nl/en/fake-fish/
A conceit of walnuts http://home.comcast.net/~morwenna/Receipts/walnuts.html
Chastlete (Pastry Castle) http://www.florilegium.org/files/FOOD-SWEETS/Chastlete-art.html
Coqz Heaumez Gode Cookery reconstruction of a 14th c subtlety http://www.godecookery.com/helmeted/helmeted.htm
Gode Cookery Illusion Foods Recipes for subtleties (including translations) http://www.godecookery.com/illusion/illusion.html
Illusion Food Messages from Various E-Lists http://www.florilegium.org/files/FOOD/illusion-fds-msg.html
Incredible Foods, Sotelties and Entremets Gode Cookery spectacle foods http://www.godecookery.com/incrd/incrd.htm
Marzipan Messages From Various E-Lists http://www.florilegium.org/files/FOOD-SWEETS/marzipan-msg.html
Peacocks and Pasties https://coquinaria.nl/en/peacocks-and-pies/
Pommes Dorres http://home.earthlink.net/~smcclune/stewpot/recipe_pommesd1.html
Sotleties Messages from Various E-Lists http://www.florilegium.org/files/FOOD-SWEETS/sotelties-msg.html
The Cockentrice - A Ryal Mete http://www.godecookery.com/cocken/cocken.htm
Warners http://www.florilegium.org/files/FOOD/Warners-art.html
Consuming Wealth and Eating Words: Sugar Paste http://www.kal69.dial.pipex.com/shop/pages/285chap9.htm
Sugar Paste Discussion From E-lists http://www.florilegium.org/files/FOOD-SWEETS/sugar-paste-msg.html
Sugar Paste a Cook's Playdough http://home.comcast.net/~iasmin/mkcc/MKCCfiles/cooksplaydough.html
OED, subtlety, sense 5:
Cookery. A highly ornamental device, wholly or chiefly made of sugar, sometimes eaten, sometimes used as a table decoration. Obs. exc. Hist.
?c1390 Form of Cury in Warner Antiq. Culin. (1791) 4 It techith for to make curious potages and meetes, and sotiltees. c1440 in Househ. Ord. (1790) 450 A soteltee Seint~jorge on horsebak, and sleynge the dragun. 1467-8 Durham Acc. Rolls (Surtees) 92 Pro le Tynfole empt. pro ornacione et pictura del soteltez erga festum Natal. Domini. 1517 R. TORKINGTON Pilgr. (1884) 7 They mad vs goodly Chere wt Diverse Sotylties as Comfytes and Marche Panys. 1552 LATIMER Serm. Par. King (Parker Soc.) II. 139 At the end of the dinner they have certain subtleties, custards, sweet and delicate things. [1768 H. WALPOLE Let. to Cole 6 June, I am no culinary antiquary: the Bishop of Carlisle, who is, I have often heard talk of a sotelte [printed sotelle], as an ancient dish. 1852 C. M. YONGE Cameos II. xxxi. (1877) 327 The feast was entirely of fish: but they were of many kinds, and were adorned in the quaintest fashions, with sotilties, or subtleties. 1875 J. C. JEAFFRESON Bk. Table I. 133 A subtelty, representing a pelican on a nest with her birds.]
The point of clearing out most of the content of this article is because the term "subtlety" was far more specific than entremet. Though I'm still not entirely sure what it meant in the late medieval context, it appears that it did not include theatricals (I think they're called "pageants") and basically covered only table ornamentations of various kinds. To what extent they were actually edible, I'm also not sure. Anyway, there's no point in fleshing out both articles with identical content, and especially not when the content here was summarized in the other article some time ago.
Peter Isotalo 10:13, 28 May 2007 (UTC)
A subtlety is as far as I know just a Middle English term for a specific type of entremet and the two terms are often used interchangeably by medieval food scholars, though some actually point out differences in usage. I chose entremet as the proper main article because it was more widely applicable to the concept of "medieval and early modern dinner entertainment provided between courses". After all, articles are for the most part supposed to be about concepts, not terms. The article at the Ricardian society website that you added as a source doesn't seem to be all that reliable, btw. It confuses "entrements" [sic] with what appears to be aperitifs, makes a weak (but still unforgivable) attempt at regurgitating the old myth about using spices to conceal spoiled food, and even confuses L'Mangier De Paris [sic again] with Le Viandier (de Taillevent).
Peter Isotalo 11:07, 28 May 2007 (UTC)
Lets start by getting consensus for the merge, then making a major change. (H) 12:43, 29 May 2007 (UTC)
Isotalo reverted with "motivate your edit before demanding that it be respected" as the edit summary.
There are reasonable grounds, which I stated, for restoring Subtlety to its pre-stub state: to aid comparison for discussion here with other editors. I made no demand. — Athaenara ✉ 01:44, 30 May 2007 (UTC)
I am here as a result of a plea posted on Wikipedia:Third opinion. I know nothing about this subject, but I am rather disturbed at seeing sourced material relevant to subtlety being deleted. I see good material in this version that should be merged into entremet if it's more appropriate there, after which this article can simply redirect to entremet. If that deleted material is more appropriate here, then the non-stub version of subtlety should stay. - Amatulic 18:11, 30 May 2007 (UTC)
- "… you may find your merger reverted, and as with all other edits, edit wars should be avoided. If you are uncertain of the merger's appropriateness, or believe it might be controversial, or your merge ends up reverted, you can propose it on either or both of the affected pages."
User Peter Isotalo ( talk · contribs) posted on my talk page about issues with these two articles. I removed it with the suggestion that he post where the discussion is located.
He posted on my talk page a second time. I removed that as well, again requesting that he post not on my user talk page but on the article talk pages.
There are many other articles on my watchlist (more than 180 at the moment, down from nearly 300 a few weeks ago). I avoid obsessing about any of them. I rely on the fact that many other NPOV editors have valuable insights to offer, and I do what I can in cooperation with them to improve articles.
I won't edit war. This is not avoidance. The two articles need more, not less, NPOV attention, and it is on article talk pages that article improvement discussions are centered. The removal of nearly all of the content of one of the two the articles does not aid the process. — Athaenara ✉ 08:03, 1 June 2007 (UTC)
I was supposed to take a wikivacation, but when even H (who so far hasn't weighed in with an opinion on anything subtlety-related) made a revert I noticed something had to be done. The point is that I made an over-generalization when I wrote the material that you're now fighting me in keeping here. I've made a compromise and removed only the material which was included here when the article was supposed to cover the entire concept of "medieval entertainment dish", which included entremets. That was before I came across material that noted that a subtlety appeared to be a very specific English form of entremet. I do not recommend re-adding the stuff about the orange meat balls either because I'm not sure it was a subtletly as much as it was a fancy type of illusion dish. Same goes for the blackbird pies and fake maggots. Even if they are distantly related as "food that can astonish", there's no mention of them being defined as subtleties.
I would really like to have some motivations from those insisting on reverting me all the time. Why are you questioning my presentation of it and what alternatives do you propose? I'm also being accused of violating NPOV, but I'm still at a loss as to the reason for this. How am I being partial? What POV are other editors insisting on for that matter?
Peter Isotalo 00:59, 5 June 2007 (UTC)
I feel as though the original contributer to this article Peter Isotalo has become overly invested in the controlling the reception of his contributions. I reverted the article to his and others' earlier and better version. I don't see anything here on the talk page that "proves" he was wrong, other than his claim that he was wrong. I then see that he has engaged in countless attacks against other editors. I really don't think a article on Subtlety should cause such angry exchanges. It shouldn't be the focus of one's defensive energies to this extent. I think it would be best that Peter Isotalo just let go of his "ownership" of the article until and unless he can provide some sort of peer-reviewed text-based evidence that his earlier "interpretation" of the material was wrong. There comes a point where one is no longer "neutral" enough of about his own work to be involved in the page anymore. Saudade7 22:31, 4 October 2008 (UTC)
During my break I have looked through a few sources. Here is what they have to say on the matter.
Regional Cuisines of Medieval Europe has a few references to both terms. In the essay on England by Constance B. Hieatt describes "English courtly cookery aimed at 'subtle' (that is, clever, surprising) combinations, or, as in the decorative "subtleties" brought out at the end of each course of a major royal feast, food made to look like something other than it is." (p. 35) A dish of "Lenten eggs" (empty eggshells of fish and almond milk with "yolks" colored with saffron) are described as subtleties with a reference to a collection of two 15th century manuscripts published under the title Two Fifteenth-Century Cookery-Books (p.36). Later on Hieatt explains that a type of modern ancestors to the old subtleties can be identified in things like figurines on wedding cakes (p. 38). Hieatt's use of the term appears to be more descriptive (she always uses the terms in quotes), and as far as I can tell she also applies the term to much older recipes from the 13th century, even though the term isn't actually used in this way back then.
In one of the sources used by Hieatt, Two Fifteenth-Century Cookery-Books, subtleties are described by the 19th century author as decorative dishes what end the end of a course. They include examples of an Angus Dei, a Doctor of Law and a peacock with a "gilt nib" (p. x).
In The Art of Cookery in the Middle Ages Terence Scully, who has also edited several editions of Taillevent's Viandier and collected them in a modern edition with commentary. Scully uses the terms interchangeably. In the index, the two are listed together (under entremets, it says "see subtlety", and when referring to the dish(es) he considers them to be synonymous in the sense of a decorative dishes in the same manner that the author of Two Fifteenth-Century Cookery-Books does (p. 103, 104-110). When referring to English dishes, the terms is always subtlety (see again 104-110 and p. 121). French, or at least non-English, dishes are called entremets (pp. 125, 215).
Melitta Weiss Adamson is the editor of several books on medieval cuisine, including Regional Cuisines, and has written a general book on the topic called Food in the Middle Ages. She uses both sotelties and entremets, but makes it clear that they are merely two different terms for the same type of dish or in-dinner entertainment:
In Fast and Feast: Food in Medieval Society, Barbara Henisch discusses the concept in the chapter about meal entertainment. No distinction between the two terms are made other than that one was distinctly English and the other French. After explaining the basic premises of other types of food-related entertainment, she gives this explanation:
Savoring the Past by Barbara Ketcham Wheaton was added as a reference, but I don't understand why. I've read the book before and I checked it again for any mention of subtleties. Neither the English nor the French terms are in the index, but entremets are described in the first chapter, "The Middle Ages". On p. 21, "entremet" is mentioned in relation to a 15th-century edition of Le Viandier which describes edible and inedible entremets.
Last term I used a Swedish translation of La Varenne's Le pastissier françois and Le cuisinier françois as a source for an essay in culinary history. I also briefly checked a French original edition from the late 17th century. I didn't see any sign of the term "subtlety", regardless of spelling. The only term that I recall used was "entremet", which was also used in the Swedish translation. So which sources confirm French usage of "subtlety" and which scholars classify them as distinctly separate subjects?
Peter Isotalo 10:35, 9 October 2008 (UTC)