SC - Re: sca-cooks V

[Ron Brooks]

Rodney K. Zeigler wrote:
> 
> Wow, my first post, and I'm defending myself on all sides!

I'm sorry. I thought people had asked you a couple of questions about
your remarks, with a view to understanding them better. I didn't think
they were especially critical or hostile.
 
> Anyway, considering my use of a beef stock as a base for onion soup, brown
> has always seemed a perfectly reasonable color to me.

If the onion soup you are making is modern French onion soup, that would
be perfectly reasonable. Technically, brown veal stock is the classical
medium, but close enough. If, on the other hand, one is talking about
any of several other onion soups that predate the now standard French
onion soup, of the cheesy crouton, then just about anything goes as far
as color goes. I would have to say the most common colors for onion soup
prior to the late-nineteenth / early-twentieth-century were yellow or
white. This would be in soups without gratuitous added coloring, but
there were some of those, too.

> But then again, that's me.
> And the color thing I referred to elsewhere.

My point is that since one of this list's main purposes is discussion of
food across the SCA's rather broad historical spectrum, it seems rather
odd to assume that onion soup must be brown, and that anything else is
unnatural. Brown stocks in general are a product of the late seventeenth
century and on, while onion soups of various sorts are probably
prehistoric. That's a lot of onion soup made without the benefit of
brown stock, and at the time it was perfectly natural.

I hope you don't feel that you were unfairly assaulted by the evil
meanies on this list; I suspect it was your use of the word "unnatural"
that set some people off.

But seriously, though...welcome to the list! I'm sure when we get over
our respective faux pas, we'll all have some fun.

Adamantius 
______________________________________
Phil & Susan Troy
troy at asan.com
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