sca-cooks: no recipe = period? (long)

[Fiona P.]

At 11:14 AM -0400 11/4/97, Mark Schuldenfrei wrote:
>  So, I create a nice stew made up of meat and appropriate veggies, and use
>  the presumeably age-old technique of "bung it in a pot and let cook until
>  meat is soft" kinda thing.  Have I created a period dish or, because I
>  haven't actually followed or recontructed a mediaeval recipe, a merely
>  "perioid" style dish?
>To me, period means a time and place that we create.  You can create a
>period compatable dish, but not a period one that way.

Looks like we need a definition here, then.  what is "period"?  Is it a
feel, a style, or something documentable?  Hence my use of the term
"perioid": "in the period style".  No, it's not a typo ...

>  I personally think that a period dish can be created by knowing foods,
>  flavours, and styles, and applying them appropriately without reference
>  to a recipe.  After all, we can't possibly except that every known dish
>  was documented, can we?  And we can also safely assume that mediaeval cooks
>  were inventive, serendipitous and prone to using whatever ingredients were
>  on hand, whilst applying well-worn techniques.
>On the other hand, how would you know if what you create was something a
>period person would say "Yech" to?  Do you know, for example, which foods
>were hot and which were cold?

If I make up a "modern" recipe, I do it on the basis of knowing what is
best served hot, cold, spiced, etc.  I expand my repertoire, and have
managed to create dishes that taste "authentic" to people of a particular
culture (eg Chinese,  Sri Lankan, Greek, just to name a few of my friends)
by reading books and sources.  To me, mediaeval foods are simply another
culture.  Maybe a person in 1367 would find my dish a little odd, but then
she probably finds the cooking of her next-door Irish neighbour a little
odd, too.  I don't believe that she would look at me and reject ALL my
dishes and say "you're not from around here, becuase you don't cook right".
If we're going to put ourselves in our ancestor's shoes, then REALLY put on
those shoes.  They are human, as we are, and they have a similar set of
reactions and abilities, regardless of the sociological tempering that has
been applied.

France had its own cuisine.  So did Italy.  So did England, Scotland,
Wales, Ireland, Germany, and ALL the other places and times we try to
incorporate into ine big lump. If I read enough, and learn techniques to
the point that they become automatic, then whatever I create using those
techniques and foodstuffs, based on my knoweldge of the times, must be at
least faintly recognisable to my great-great (etc) grandparents.  No, we
can never know flavours, and this, I think, may be a problem.

>  So yes, imvho, a modern cook can "create" a period recipe.  Sometimes I
>  think it's possible to get TOO enamoured of documentation and forget about
>  intent and feel ...
>Do you pepper your ice cream?  Why not?  You'd add cinnamon to ice cream,
>and it's nearly the same thing!  Most period recipes for spices call for
>both cinnamon and pepper....

Yes, actually.  I have eaten chocolate chilli icecream, and cheese sorbet,
and meat cooked with chocolate (in the mexican style), and they're all
incredibly yummy, and commerically viable (they were bought from shops in
Melbourne ...).  So I look at the context, and find that pepper and
cinnamon are added to meat, but never to desserts.  From this I conclude
that pepper is not a common additive to a gooseberry fool, and so create a
cream-based fruity sweet served chilled that I have never seen a recipe
for, but know the technique.  I can tell when a dish tastes "english",
"french", or "chinese",  Why, after many years of eating mediaeval foods,
shouldn't I be able to tell when a dish tastes "mediaeval"?  I'm talking
about applying a little intelligence and research, and learning techniques.
I had to learn my 20th English-style (Elizabeth David, Jane Grigson, and
other women who based their styles on ancient recipes) techniques, and I
can apply them and create meals for my appreciative friends.

Let me demonstrate (while I'm up on this soapbox) some mediaeval techniques
that survive in my modern cooking: meat and fruit (chistmas mincemeat, coq
au vin, pork and apple sauce).  fruit and "savoury" spices: melon salad
with ginger and pepper, bread-and-butter pudding (salty bread and/or
butter).  The list goes on.

>It's the same thing with period.

Maybe I, as an Anglo-Saxon Australian, have an advantage in that my English
ancestry's not terribly far in my past (not if my mother has anything to do
with it!!) and so my instinctive cooking style is firmly based in the
age-old English technique.  I've read mediaeval cookbooks and recipes, and
see nothing in them that runs counter to how I already cook.

>	Tibor (Adds a touch of tabasco to cream sauce: but not ice cream.)

You should try it sometime.  Adding salt to a fruit salad braing out the
flavour of the fruit something increadible, too ...

*steps meekly off soapbox that seems to have arisen*

Fyrean ...
never thought I was quite that passionate about food!



                   @>-'--,--        --'--,-<@

I have the simplest tastes.  I am always satisfied with the best.

                                           - Oscar Wilde