SC - pre-1500 cookery

[Decker, Terry D.]

>                      RE>SC - pre-1500 cookery                     12/16/97
>
><snip>Which brings up a subject :-).......for curiousity's sake, what is
>thefascination with early modern cookery in the SCA as opposed to true
>medieval
><snip>
>
>I think there is sort of a myth that there is no documentation for earlier
>stuff.  Kinda like when one starts researching costumes, and most of the
>school textbooks start with the early rennaisance and list it as medieval. 
>There are so many examples of well published or existant material from the
>rennaisance, it is much easier to settle there than to put the extra oomph
>into researching the earlier stuff.  Also many peoples modern stereotypic
>image of "medieval" is very rennaisance, and they just don't differentiate
>that what came before could be of worth, or that the difference between the
>centuries is at all obvious.
>just a thought
>-brid
>(happily pre-1500)

And as food for thought:

There are disputes as to the beginning and ending dates of any "period"
(in the historic rather than SCA sense).  Often people do not establish
the parameters of their period of interest or assume that you have the
same parameters or assume that you have some idea that such parameters
exist.

We often work from sources far removed from the primary source and often
have no idea of the actual date or contents of the primary source.  The
Forme of Cury, which is one of our most commonly quoted primary
documents, was written about 1390 C.E.  An edited edition appeared in
1780 as the Forme of Cury.  A different edited edition with quit a bit
of additional information was published as Antiquitate Culinariae in
1791.  If an author does not thoroughly document which source is being
quoted, how can we value the information gleaned?  How can we place it
accurately within a given time and place?  About the only way is to be
one of those fortunate people with facsimiles of the original text.

Bear
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