Re(2): sca-cooks Creativity

[Sue Wensel]

> 
> Hi, Katerine Rountre here.
> 
> Lord Ras writes:
> 
> >Any creation useing period food, techniques, spicery, etc. is period.
Period!
> >:-)
> >Period cooks combined period foods, spicery, techniques every day wihtout
the
> >benefit for the most part of a "cookbook". I feel that to restrict "period"
> >to recipes from existing period cookbooks would be on the same caliber as
> >saying a modern cook was not createing modern food if they didn't use a
> >recipe from Betty Crocker.
> 
<snip>
 
> There are a lot of problems with this approach to defining period cuisine.
> The most obvious is that different people in different times and places 
> combine foods differently, even if they start with the same available
> foodstuffs.  For a single example, consider the recent discussion of what
> to replace potatoes with in beef stews.
> 
> There are surviving recipes for beef stew.  None that I am aware of calls
> for any vegetable except onions.  In fact, I'm not familiar with any 
> non-Islamic medieval European recipe that looks like a modern stew (as
> opposed to a soup) that significantly combines meat (not just broth) 
> and vegetables.  The evidence is that they didn't _do_ that.
> 

Check out Markham.  He gives all kinds of recipes for "pottages" which are
simply soups.  In fact, I redacted a recipe for a pottage that used cabbage,
onions, and barley.


<much more nifty stuff snipped>

While I am interested in creating my own recipes in period style, I would not
try to create a whole menu of my own recipes.  In fact, creating menus is
among one of the more difficult ventures, as what is in season together
modernly may not have been what was in season together then.  Likewise, we
have geographic issues to contend with (this dish is German, this one Italian,
etc.), or even temporally (this was 12th century, this was 15th...).

Derdriu

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