SC - Re: sca-cooks Creativity
linneah at erols.com
linneah at erols.com
Tue Apr 15 04:24:42 PDT 1997
Dottie Elliott wrote:
>
> >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
I would like to pose another question. I believe that someone mentioned the
ability to "taste" a recipe. I am not a professional cook, but I have a lot of
experience. I can read a recipe and have an idea of how it would taste. I can
imagine what changes it would make to the taste if I were to change an
ingredient or two. I know that I (personnally) would not like the taste of
pepper in my milk, for example.
I believe that a person who has had the benefit of eating several period feasts
(those actually redacted from period sources) and read many of the sources can
imagine what the general taste of a recipe would be. It would then be possible
to combine different ingredients to create the same sort of taste. If I know that
cinnamon, mace, and raisins were sometimes used to flavor pork in a certain
dish, could I not then create a dish "in the Medieval style" by using the same
ingredients in a new way?
I am over simplifying. But just as I don't want to go to a restaurant and eat the
very same dish that I read about in my cookbook, I would like to partake of the
cook's own dishes "in the Medieval style" at a feast. I am not saying that the
entire feast should be "new". A little creativity goes a long way.
Linneah
who could not live without being creative
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