For anyone who has been amused by my posts of funny index entries in an old French book, I've started posting what I've translated.
So far it's just the index and chapters 1 & 2. (I skipped translating the preface, it seems to be pages and pages and *pages* of mostly flattery of the lords and complaints about translations that "update" the text with less well researched content.)
https://varve.neocities.org/la-maison-rustique/
Also I am hand-rolling an RSS feed for my static website, in case you want to see future updates. Who knows there might be another chapter or two tomorrow, too. It is at https://varve.neocities.org/rss.xml
Ooh, chapter 10 is useful for people writing fantasy! What *are* those peasants doing in any given month?
Chapter 10 is a breakdown, by month, of the tasks that need to be done on a medieval farm. It's written for a place that is warm enough to grow wine grapes, and refers to rain in December, as opposed to a place that can't grow grapes and is buried in snow in December.
medieval french translation amusement, genitals mention
Took a detour through the dental care section of this book and found the word "gosse". Almost every translation or definition translates as "child" or "young" but... the phrase is "un gosse d'aulx" which is about garlic. A child garlic? Seems odd, maybe seeds, or or a clove of garlic perhaps.
But I said almost... so way down at the bottom of the ortolang definition, apparently a Canadianism (presumably Quebec) has "les gosses" meaning testicles.
Which also doesn't help all that much! But it's funny. And does kind of support the notion that it's about the bulb of garlic.
And I do remember hearing something about how colonies tend to preserve older forms that the parent country drops as languages evolve. (This book was written after the columbian exchange - it mentions turkeys and tobacco - but a century before the earliest edition of the Academie Francaise's first dictionary.)
medieval french translation amusement, genitals mention
@Satsuma also possible!
... since I don't plan to actually use the recipe in question, it's not super important, but it is a curiosity. I will add scapes as a possibility in my translation notes.