SC - Re: question on your mustard/ho

[L Herr-Gelatt and J R Gelatt]

At 10:55 AM -0400 4/24/97, Michael Macchione wrote:
>What I had meant with the "if a novice" idea, was more along the lines of
>the reverse.  For Example, Suppose I have a moderately simple recipe
>for a dish that I cook all the time, that's been past down through a
>number of generations. I might want to cook it in a feast.

But "passed down through a number of generations" only gets it back to
about 1900, so tells us essentially nothing as to whether the dish is
period.

>So I check to
>see if all of the ingredients were used in period. I wouldn't recommend
>doing this for something complicated, but spices used to season a roast,
>or vegetables used in a rice dish.  Basic dishes.

Consider gravy. It is a nice basic dish, made out of ingredients most of
which were available throughout our period. As I make it, you create a roux
by stirring flour into hot fat, then add liquid; the result is a thick
suspension. So far as I know, this technique was unknown in the Middle
ages; I know of no medieval recipes that use it, although I think someone
once told me that he thought he had seen one (If someone has a medieval
example, I hope he will post it). Medieval thickening is done with
breadcrumbs, rice flour, egg yolk, amydoun (wheat starch), but not, so far
as I can tell, with a roux.

>Or possibly to try to
>find a replacement ingredient for a recipe.  Ie. you found out that the
>king is allergic to one of the ingredients of one of the recipes and you
>want to know what was available that wouldn't disrupt the recipe much.

A better reason.

>It would be more of a "No, I can't prove it, but it seems to make sense"
>kind of thing.

Obviously, it isn't practical to limit ourselves in the SCA to doing only
things we can prove are period--there are too many cases where we need to
do something and don't yet know what the period way of doing it is. On the
other hand, I think there is a disturbing tendency to think of "period" in
symbolic terms--"X is the officially period way of doing something because
we've been doing it that way for years--even though there is no evidence it
was done that way in period." I've actually seen an article in an SCA
cooking newsletter that described worcestershire sauce as the official
substitute for liquamen in Roman cooking, or some phrase close to that.

"Being period" then becomes a ritual, an arbitrary requirement, rather than
an interesting way of making our events more medieval and giving us an
excuse to learn more about the Middle Ages. Perhaps some of my reservations
about your suggestion are due to the fear that someone will say "of course
I'm doing a period feast--I looked up all the ingredients in the list." At
which point, why bother to actually find out what period cooking was like?

>I dunno, it seems like a good idea to have, but an impossible task to
>construct (but of course, being a good Scadian, I'm considering trying
>it... :)

Go to it.


David Friedman
Professor of Law
Santa Clara University
ddfr at best.com
http://www.best.com/~ddfr/