sca-cooks Re: So many listings

[James and/or Nancy Gilly]

In a message dated 97-04-10 19:23:28 EDT, you write:

<< Recipes? How do you make sure they are "good"?  >>

I know that my advice here will probably not be an answer for 99 percent of
this list. However, as a former professional cook (13 years) and an avid
hobbyist of cookery, I wait fro things to be "on-sale". If I have a period
chicken recipe that I have redacted and not "tried", I wait for chicken to be
on sale. (.29 cents a lb. here last week. :-)) I bought 10 lbs. ($2.90).
Divide the item into 10 1-lb. packets, roll up your sleeves and get to
cooking. By the time you get to the last lb. you will usually have a
realitively wonderful and tasty redaction that will serve 4-6 people.. It
then becomes a matter of simple arithmetic to enlarge it to crowd size. All
in all a reletively cheap way to do my hobby and it works for the most part.
Yes, horror of horrors, I have produced several "yucks"! :-)

As far as how do you know they are "good"? Although many times you can tell
what a recipe is going too taste like by reading it, you can rest assured
that period recipes that have survived are for the most part taken from
manuscripts that were used in royal households. thereby implying that they
were (are) good. The fun is in figuring how to prepare them in the manner
that they were intended to be prepared. This doesn't always work, however.
One recipe I worked on turned out to be a soup, a casserole, a crouquette and
a loaf. All tasted good. :-( To this day I have 4 radactions from this one
recipe that are very servable and I still don't know which one is the actual
way it was prepared and served!

Lord Ras the Reformed