SC - Scottish Recipes

[Philip W. Troy]

Greetings, gentles.

I've only been on this list for a few days, and have already found an
argument that I like ;)

Terry Nutter wrote:

> >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?
> 
> Perhaps; but what do you mean by "in a new way"?  If you use the same
> ingredients in the same combinations with the same general preparation methods,
> you've probably just followed the medieval recipe.  If you haven't -- how
> do you know that the changes you've made do not, themselves, embody modern
> assumptions about how dishes should be structured, that violate medieval
> ones?

This is one of my favorite arguments.  Food certainly has followed
trends, especially since cetain ingredients have only been available to
certain cultures at cetain times.  But, it doesn't follow the strict
fashion rules of, say, clothing.  I think it's very safe to extrapolate
that medeival cooks, like modern, would look at the set of potential
ingredients available to them in a kitchen, and at the tools they have
to manipulate those ingredients, and use them in whatever seemed to be a
reasonable combination.  They may have sometimes used actual written
recipes, but more often they likely used approximate recipes that they
knew, or improvised on a written idea, or improvised according to the
kinds of things they were used to making or eating- just like cooks of
any other era.  So, to look at a medeival recipe, and improvise on it
seems perfectly resonable to me, so long as the improvisation involves
ingrediants and tools that are appropriate for that culture and period. 
Or, to take a set of period ingrediants and tools (well, perhaps
substituting an electric stove for a cookfire, but not using a food
processer or electric mixer, etc.)  and figure out something to do with
them would certainly be period.  

Keep in mind, people were not likely to have exactly what they needed to
make specifically what someone wrote down for them on hand at all times-
they had no supermarkets.  Additionally, they had no chest freezers to
store the ingredients that they had in abundance in any given season. 
Instead, they would make a meal- whether a pot of stew for a family, or
a feast for a celebration- using what they had on hand in some
reasonable combination or arrangement.

Just my 0.02 ;) 
Charissa
|<*><-><*>|
http://www.geocities.com/SunsetStrip/Towers/1258
Si hoc signum legere potes, operis boni in rebus Latinus alacribus et
fructuosis potiri potes!