SC - SC Redactions...

[Charles McCN]

Somebody suggested we could all get together and come up with 'the right' 
"period" redaction.

I work in a period of about 300 years, and I think there are very 
significant differences in food from the beginning to the end of it. So 
we should have several 'period' versions. There are also regional variations.

But the biggest problem I have with it is that it is not a period 
appproach in the first place. If there were an approved, minutely measured 
and carefully calibrated set of instructions they would have written them 
down. There wasn't, and we shouldn't presume to produce them.

On the other hand, a group of people each redacting the same recipe, or 
one person trying it several ways, can produce an interesting set of 
results - several slightly different dishes, and most importantly an 
understanding of what the influences that produce a given effect might be.

This is how I do my own redactions - cook the recipe from memory  
til I like it, then check that I still have a valid interpretation of te 
original recipe (it is very easy when doing it from memory over a couple 
of years to lose the original completely. That is not necessarily a bad 
thing, but means that it is no longer a redaction)

Does anyone know what the literacy rate of medieval cooks was? There are 
some fundamental questions that arise if there were illiterate cooks. 
There is also the great unanswerable -why were cookbooks written?
Was it to provide a written source for people to learn to cook, or was it 
to describe a new style of cookery coming into vogue, or was it an 
exercise in vanity publishing or was it...

Charles


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