SC - it's too quiet!

[Terry Nutter]

Hi, Katerine here.  Brid writes:

>For instance "Pleyn Delit" is organized fairly well, but everyonce in awhile a
>comment is made that just isn't backed up- right now I am wondering about
>"medieval cooks couldn't whip cream"  What does this mean?  They didn't have
>whisks ;)?  They couldn't separate cream? or there is some modern process that
>makes cream whipable.

One quick note.  It's certainly best to provide evidence for remarks where
possible.  But it's also sensible, sometimes, to realize that some points
take an article to establish, not a sentence.  Recipe collections aren't the
best venue for scholarly dissertations on cooking techniques.  (This holds
both inside and outside the SCA.  Readers of _PPC_ and the various Oxford
Symposium collections can be assumed to be interested in longish
articles on points of technique, or studies on recipe derivation, or 
on shifts in ingredient use.  _Pleyn Delit_ is openly and explicitly
designed for modern cooks who are interested in getting a taste of
what medieval food was like.  It's written by scholars, but it's a 
popular book, and should be approached like one.)

In a collections of recipes for SCA use, where it's possible to give
a simple reference to a fact, that should be given.  But where it would
take pages to explain why something is so, and those pages aren't 
already published elsewhere, one must decide what to do.  My inclination
would be to put in a footnote that says something like "There is no simple
reference on this point; it's a complicated issue.  For more information,
contact xxxxx at yyyyy."  If one wants to publish a booklet on cooking
techniques, or other research results, that would doubtless find an
audience too -- but probably a somewhat different one.

Cheers,

- -- Katerine/Terry

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