SC - Re: sca-cooks Creativity

[Dottie Elliott]

>Period cooks combined period foods, spicery, techniques every day wihtout the
>benefit for the most part of a "cookbook". 

An admirable sentiment and correct of course. However, cooks in period 
had benefit of long training and experience with their kind of food just 
as we have the same kind of experience (simply by eating it everyday) in 
modern dishes. For medieval dishes we do not have anything like the 
lifetime experience with period foods and how they taste and were 
prepared.  If someone who has been cooking with period recipes a long 
time goes creative with a dish that is one thing. However, I see the 
excuse of not all recipes being written down to condone all sorts of 
dishes that definitely are not period. And, in my experience, its most 
often the inexperience cook (at least medievally) that uses this excuse. 
Its one thing to say I choose a pork recipe but use beef instead because 
its all I had. Its another to say I took some beef and spices and made a 
period dish but I cannot show a recipe with similiar ingredients.

Clarissa