SC - Vinegar

[Tom Brady]

Dottie Elliott wrote:
> 
> >Period cooks combined period foods, spicery, techniques every day wihtout the
> >benefit for the most part of a "cookbook".
> 
> An admirable sentiment and correct of course. However, cooks in period
> had benefit of long training and experience with their kind of food just
> as we have the same kind of experience (simply by eating it everyday) in
> modern dishes. For medieval dishes we do not have anything like the
> lifetime experience with period foods and how they taste and were
> prepared.  If someone who has been cooking with period recipes a long
> time goes creative with a dish that is one thing. However, I see the
> excuse of not all recipes being written down to condone all sorts of
> dishes that definitely are not period. And, in my experience, its most
> often the inexperience cook (at least medievally) that uses this excuse.
> Its one thing to say I choose a pork recipe but use beef instead because
> its all I had. Its another to say I took some beef and spices and made a
> period dish but I cannot show a recipe with similiar ingredients.
> 
> Clarissa

I would like to pose another question.  I believe that someone mentioned the 
ability to "taste" a recipe.  I am not a professional cook, but I have a lot of 
experience.  I can read a recipe and have an idea of how it would taste.  I can 
imagine what changes it would make to the taste if I were to change an 
ingredient or two.  I know that I (personnally) would not like the taste of 
pepper in my milk, for example.

I believe that a person who has had the benefit of eating several period feasts 
(those actually redacted from period sources) and read many of the sources can 
imagine what the general taste of a recipe would be.  It would then be possible 
to combine different ingredients to create the same sort of taste.  If I know that 
cinnamon, mace, and raisins were sometimes used to flavor pork in a certain 
dish, could I not then create a dish "in the Medieval style" by using the same 
ingredients in a new way?

I am over simplifying.  But just as I don't want to go to a restaurant and eat the 
very same dish that I read about in my cookbook, I would like to partake of the 
cook's own dishes "in the Medieval style" at a feast.  I am not saying that the 
entire feast should be "new".  A little creativity goes a long way.

Linneah
who could not live without being creative