SC - Late-period is NOT Medieval

[Mike C. Baker]

- ---david friedman <ddfr at best.com> wrote:
> At 10:29 AM -0700 10/22/97, Mike C. Baker wrote:
> >Beginning of rant: the SCA covers the period of time extending
> >through the END of the 1600's,
> End of the 1500's. The bylaws say "pre-seventeenth century."

I've already responded and blushed on this point. Sorry, everyone,
the fingers were typing faster than the brain was proofreading.

Yes, end of 1500s -- 1600 itself might be a special case, and it has
generally been the custom for documentation in printed form
appearing in the first (N) number of years afterward to be
acceptable in limited usage. (The value of 'N' has varied from time
to time and place to place since I began participating in the SCA...
far, far better to rely more upon material provable to be pre-1601ce.)
 
> ...
> > My point: document and use, use as substitute, or make up 
> > from whole cloth based upon ingredient availability at a 
> > given time and place.
> At this point I disagree with you, if I understand you. 
> The fact that an ingredient was available isn't enough 
> to tell you how it was used. As has been pointed out before, 
> all the ingredients for making bluejeans (minus zippers, 
> which would have been hard to produce, although probably not
> impossible) were available in our period. It doesn't follow 
> that bluejeans are period garb.

Different field of endavor from cooking, with an observation:
while 5-pocket button fly Levis (don't even need the zipper!) are
specifically traceable to a given place and time, there has always
been a need for stout worker's clothing and that in *most* cases
there would be a cultural equivalent. A blacksmith would be more
likely to wear an apron of heavy leather than of loosely woven
cloth, for example, and some sources appear to illustrate this.

Adamantius' recent observation about Before Pants and After Pants
aside, I agree that it is BETTER to be able to cite specific use of
an ingredient before widely touting its use as acceptable.
Theoretical usage is well and good in its own time and place, and
that is what I had hoped to convey by the whole of my message.
Missed the mark again...
 
> Similarly, if you "make up from whole cloth" your recipes 
> based on ingredient availability, you are unlikely to 
> produce period food, whether early or late period. 
> Consider what a chinese cook would produce from the
> ingredients in an American supermarket (chinese food, 
> not american food) or an American cook with access to 
> a chinese market (American food, not Chinese food).
 
The modern example here could be a great deal of fun to explore at
some point, but agreed not within the SCA context. 

As long as a dish is plainly identified as "made up", I don't mind
the occasional experiment. I certainly agree that it is better to
explore the surviving recipes first, and would also encourage
attempts to recreate dishes for which we have only the slimmest of
descriptions before throwing much energy into the conjectural
concoctions.

===
Pax ... Kihe / Adieu -- Amra / TTFN -- Mike
Kihe Blackeagle (the Dreamsinger Bard) / 
Amr ibn Majid al-Bakri al-Amra (AoA in SCA, so: al-Sayyid) /
Mike C. Baker: My opinions are my own -- no one else would want them!
     F.O.B. (Friend Of Blackfox)
Homepage: http://www.geocities.com/Area51/8661
Alt. e-mail: KiheBard at aol.com MikeCBaker at aol.com

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