SC - My reservations about gimmick feasts

[david friedman]

Apropos of the recent query from Christi about finding recipes for a "silk
road" feast, I thought I would expand on my reservations about projects of
that sort:

1. They correspond, so far as I know, to nothing that happened in period.

2. They almost inevitably end up forcing the cook to use out of period
recipes, because he doesn't have period recipes for all the lands in
question. Quite often, given the nature of the SCA, some of those involved
with the project end up suggesting that the recipes are period when, so far
as we know, they are not (i.e. "documenting" them in the special SCA sense
of the term).

3. Implicit in the idea of such a feast is "oh no, we are all tired of
those boring authentic period feasts, let's do something different."

That reaction would be appropriate if we had actually exhausted the
available repertoire of period feasts, but in fact we have barely started.

Suppose one wanted to make as authentic a period feast as was practical,
given the current state of our knowledge. That would mean all period
recipes, all from the same cuisine, with the selection of recipes,
arrangement of courses, etc. fitting period practice from that cuisine.

Off hand, I can only think of one feast I have attended that met that
standard. Yet we have the information to do it for at least two cuisines
(14th-15th c. French/English and 13th c. Andalusian), and probably several
others as well. I don't see the point of being novel by being less period
when we still have the option of being novel by being more period.

David/Cariadoc
http://www.best.com/~ddfr/


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