Mama Carillo's Lasagne Recipes

Documents and books claiming to be collections of Mama Carillo's lasagne recipes can be found all over the continent, but not all are authentic recipes... hopefully...

Historical Details

Background

Lasagne is a layered savoury dish that uses flat sheets of pasta. It typically features alternating layers of meat, tomato sauce and cheese sauce. It originated in the South Eastern corner of the Kingdom of Men and has long been very popular there.

History

Mama Carillo spent fifteen years working as the cook at a small inn located inland from the coastal capital. While there she became used to making the favoured lasagne with whatever meat was available. When she later moved to the capital and made a connection with a librarian, she decided to put together a book. Many people would know one or two orally transmitted recipes for lasagne using a couple of the most common meats. Mama Carillio's book distinguished itself by giving details on the spices, herbs and other special preparations for more than twenty meats. It started with beef, pork and chicken, the most common meats with the upper classes. It included hare, fox and goat, more common with the lower classes. It had fish, squash and eggplant too. If you needed to know it, Mama Carillio's book would tell you how to make the most of rat lasagne. Other recipes in the original edition include deer, lamb, cat, dog, camel, donkey, horse, wolf, guinea pig, turkey, goose, grasshopper, crab, turtle. The book gained immediate popularity, being a very useful reference for a wide variety of cooks, whether the situation was a noble wanting something exotic or a pauper making do with something less palatable. The inclusion of some rather taboo animals helped it to gain fame and notoriety.
Mama Carillio released subsequent editions over the years, adding more recipes, updating old ones, introducing combinations. The most notorious "editions" are those that contain recipes for making lasagne using human, elf, dwarf or gnome meat. Mama Carillio insists that these books are not genuine - that someone has copied her animal-and-plant-based recipes and added to them. There is some suspicion that she may actually have been the source as a ploy to boost sales after they began to taper off. The biggest question really is not whether these recipes originated with her or another. It's how the recipes were developed...

Type

Guide, Generic