sca-cooks hot and cold

[Stephen Bloch]

At 11:14 AM -0400 11/4/97, Mark Schuldenfrei wrote:
> >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?

to which Fyrean replied:
> If I make up a "modern" recipe, I do it on the basis of knowing what is
> best served hot, cold, spiced, etc.

I believe Mark was thinking of "hot" and "cold" in humour, rather than
temperature or flavor.  A competent medieval cook was very concerned
about the medicinal properties of the food, and the theory of the four
humours was a prevailing medical theory.  A medieval cook would be
expected to serve a meal with balanced humours, unless the person
eating it had a particular ailment (for a cold, serve foods that are
hot and dry, etc. to bring the patient's humours back into healthy
balance).  Incidentally, has anybody studied other cultures with
humoural theories (e.g. I think at least some regions of China), to
see how their categories agree with Western ones?

> 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.

These are good points, especially in the SCA where we have much more
interaction between people (or at least personas) of different cultures
than would have happened in most of medieval Europe.  It is likely that
a medieval Englishman tasting Renaissance Italian food would think "this
is a bizarre, foreign cuisine," but might well be willing to eat it
anyway.  Of course, the same could be said of a Big Mac. 

In other words, there's no way we can cook a feast which would have been
familiar to all the personas who are allegedly seated for it, because
the SCA has such a broad scope.  The question remains, are we cooking a
feast which would have been familiar to SOME or MANY of the personas
seated for it?  Or, if we're doing a narrow-focus event where people are
encouraged to put themselves in a particular place and time, are we
cooking a feast which would have been familiar to people of that place
and time?

> 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.

Probably.  I'll take Fyrean's word that he is as good as he says at
learning the cuisines of other cultures.  I'm not sure I am, so I tend
to stick to recipes that I _know_ are period, and hope my 20th-century
bias isn't screwing up the redaction too much.  YMMV.

					mar-Joshua ibn-Eleazar ha-Shalib
                                                 Stephen Bloch
                                           sbloch at panther.adelphi.edu
					 http://www.adelphi.edu/~sbloch/