SC - Re: sca-cooks Creativity

[Terry Nutter]

Hi, Katerine here, responding to Allison.

>>>I recently spent several weeks working with a professional
>on a paper for the Oxford Food Symposium trying to establish just what
>the heck makes something a galentine <<
>
>What are the chances of us getting a copy of that paper?  It's
>information we could all benefit from knowing.

The Oxford Food Symposium publishes its results as a book; wait a bit,
and it will be there.

>But as for the vast array of medieval recipes, not all of us have access
>to all the reprints.  Even confirmed book buyers like myself may not have
>found and acquired every source.  We have to go a little easy on the
>cooks with less experience, helping rather than chiding.  That's one good
>use for this list--if a Feast Master has a good source of xxx in season
>and can't find a receipt, we can always ask.

I have absolutely no difficulty with people who don't work from medieval
recipes.  What I have a problem with, is presenting the result as "authentic
medieval food", or claiming that recipes invented by modern people who are
not, and in principle cannot be, steeped in the medieval traditions the
way the medievals were, are "just as period", let alone the claim that it
brings us closer to what medievals did "because they didn't use recipes".
The *practice* is fine.  The question is the *advertising*.

Do whatever you like, so long as you produce decent food and don't poison
anyone.  But be honest about it.

That said: anyone who wants more medieval recipes than s/he will ever
be able to deal with need only contact Cariadoc.  His two volumes will
keep a novice busy for decades.  There are also many, many, many 
recipes in print today: any good bookstore can order _Curye on Inglysch_,
and _An Ordinance of Pottage_, and _The Menagier of Taillevent_, and
(I forget the precise English title, as I have the French) Scully's
translation and edition of Chiquart.  For those (not everyone, I freely
recognize, but more people than realize it, because many local public
libraries participate) with access to interlibrary loan, a wide variety
of later period collections that were set in print are available by
ILL thanks to to microfilming services.  And Austin and Morris and
Hodgett can all be obtained as books by ILL, as can Warner's (dreadfully
error-filled) version of Arundel 334, reproduced from the (slightly 
less dreadful, but usually restricted because rarer) Society of
Antiquaries edition.

For those who want to start with redactions, there is the new edition
of _Pleyn Delit_ (worth getting even if one has the old; it's not 
only corrected, but greatly expanded), and the Stock Clerk sells
Cindy Renfrow's _Take a Thousand Eggs or More_.  And Cariadoc's
Miscellany is available on the web.

The key, of course, is knowing what titles to look for, and which are
in print.  That is information that needs circulating.  (I've done a
little work toward that at my web page -- for those who are interested
in glancing at it, the URL is 

     http://www.watervalley.net/users/jtn/culhist.html

There aren't a lot of recipes, though there are a few, but there is
other material of various sorts, including lists of sources.)

But what I was responding to, was not plaints of the difficulty of
finding or working with original material; it was claims that working
without them is just as good, and sometimes better, not only for producing 
good edible feasts, but for producing *medieval* ones.  That simply
isn't so; and while people believe it is, telling them where to find
source material is a waste of time -- because they won't be looking
for it.

Cheers,

- -- Katerine/Terry