SC - Period Recipes

[Lenny Zimmermann]

On Tue, 10 Jun 1997 09:20:03 -700 MST, "Berengaria/Jeanne Stapleton"
<jstaplet at adm.law.du.edu> wrote:

>On Tue, 10 Jun 1997 11:11:58 -0400 (EDT), Tibor/Mark Schuldenfrei
> <schuldy at abel.MATH.HARVARD.EDU> wrote:
>> I don't do the SCA to do modern things.  Therefore, I don't do
>> modern cookery as an SCA thing.  New World ingredients, to me, just
>> aren't period cookery.  It isn't the kind of fun I want to have.  I
>> don't want to have Pizza and Corn Chips at events, even if you COULD
>> document them.  (And that is the principal difference between me and
>> so many.  I don't WANT fried chicken, biscuits and gravy, with green
>> and black eyed peas, even though you CAN document a lot of it.) 
>> That's for the weekdays.
>> 
>This nails it on the head for me!  I'm sorry for kind of a me, too 
>posting, but I am so strongly offended by being offered chocolate 
>chip cookies and being told that it's okay, chocolate being period is 
>so-and-so's whim, I could just scream.  As I said in an earlier post, 
>we have five days of the week to eat pizza, cornchips, chocolate chip 
>cookies.  I don't *want* them at feasts.  I don't want to order a 
>hamburger when I go to a Thai restaurant, either!

I can agree with both Berengaria and Tibor, to a point. I agree that
I'm, also, not really all that interested in processed American corn
chips and chocolate covered pretzels, where we can say that "Gee, they
knew about corn in period and they knew about flour, salt and
chocolate in period, therefore I can eat all of the above I want!" For
that, I prefer to do without. (Even though I often bring pop tarts
along for breakfast, but that's usually because I'm too asleep and
grumpy in the mornings to CARE what style my food is and those pop
tarts are just too darned handy. Rest assured that I do break the
nasty habit for the rest of my meals.)

However, if you have ever made something like Platina's Almond
Fricatellae you'll end up saying to yourself, "Wow! Period Chicken
McNuggets!" Admittedly they taste better than Chicken McNuggets, but
the basic characteristic is there. I find that despite this fact that
there is a certain level of modern connotation involved with such
foods, that if my persona would have eaten it in period, then I see no
reason to deprive myself of the same, no matter how oddly modern it
seems at first glance. I don't use BBQ sauce or Ketchup, I usually
prefer the period Italian Agresto (Nut and Garlic sauce). (Or was
Agresto the Italian word for Verjuice? It seems the more I learn the
more that just gets pushed right back out. I think I have hit neural
capacity.)

Back to the point, if you can fully document, as a recipe, chocolate
covered pretzels as an acceptable period foodstuff, I'm more than
willing to give it a try. Experimentation on weekends is fun, but our
personas didn't always experiment. After all, some of this food should
be considered fairly "everyday" (what, meatloaf again?) for them. Just
like eating a roasted chicken with a sauce. I can easily do that at
home (and I eat renaissance foods at home on a regular basis) so
should I not eat that at events because it is something I normally do?
As long as the bad logic (chocolate as anything other than an odd
drink with pepper and probably no sugar) for food is avoided, I'm
quite content. I'd much rather know one way or the other if it is
period, peridoid or just plain modern and I would also prefer to enjoy
period foods while events.

Honos Servio,
Lionardo Acquistapace, Bjornsborg
(mka Lenny Zimmermann, San Antonio)
zarlor at acm.org