SC - houghs and veal

[LrdRas@aol.com]

Murkial (Christi Redeker)  describes the "creativity" criterion from the
competiton she entered and asks:

> Should I cook feasts on one level (as close to period as humanly
>possible) and competitions on
> another (peroid)?

In a word, no. Even in a competition you should be continuing to set a good
example, as from your post you have been.

(1) It seems to me that doing a period recipe as close as you can to the
original involves quite a lot of creativity.  All quantities, times, or
temperatures, and a lot of the other information just isn't there, and has
to be filled in by your judgement as a cook.  Slavish imitation without
using your own imagination just isn't an option if you are working from
period sources.

(2)  I do not think rating "invent-it-yourself" as better than a careful
scholarly job is a good idea.  For one thing, most of our judges are not
competent to judge whether what you invented is a good job of being
creative in a period style vs being creative in a more or less
twentieth-century style--and a lot of the "creative medieval cooking" I
have seen is the latter.

Note that this is my opinion on what you should do, not on how you should
act to win competitions--the people who write these criteria probably
disagree with me.

Elizabeth of Dendermonde/Betty Cook


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