SC - Re: The powers that (might or might not) be

[Michael F. Gunter]

>> -more precisely "here is someone else who wants a medieval excuse for 
>> what he has already decided to cook." At it happens, I was wrong--it 
> >was clear that the poster actually wanted a medieval recipe fitting 
> >his vague memory of one he thought he had heard of. But
> >"documentation," in SCA culture, quite routinely means  "evidence
> >that X, which I have already decided to do, is period,"  which
> >rapidly degrades into "might possibly be period." 
>
>Another possibility is this:  If someone has a logical extrapolation of
>things they know to be period, but wishes to find concrete evidence for
>this assumption before claiming it's period.
>
>For example, lets assume I have some recipies for beef pies from country
>X in time period Z, and I know that those people also kept pigs, but I
>can find no recipies for pork pies... Wouldn't asking if anyone had
>documentation for such a thing be appropriate?
>
>Marjorie

OK, I'm new at this, so bear with me.

I think I fall into this category.  I have a recipe for "marlborough pie" 
that I was told dated to the American colonial era.  It is an apple 
custard pie (take your basic pumkin pie recipe, substituting applesauce 
for the pumpkin puree.  I use homemade applesauce cooked very dry, canned 
applesauce might require adjustment to the other  liquid measures).  
Custard bases were pretty common (it seems, from what little reading I've 
done so far) and apples were certainly available.   I can imagine that a 
recipe like this is maybe the basis for pumpkin pie, once pumpkins were 
available.  

So that's the extrapolation part and I'd like to see if I can actually 
find something like this was in existance and document this recipe as my 
very first "period" recipe.  It would be fast and satisfying if someone 
here replied with "But of course dear, we all know that recipe!", but it 
would be nice enough if someone could just point me in the right 
direction.  How do you go about documenting these things?  

Anne of Buckston
(the new girl, wandering through the kitchens, trying to watch 
everything, dodging all the busy cooks.)


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