SC - Re: spinach

[Russell Gilman-Hunt]

Micaylah writes:

><< Cariadoc, I am not trying to disrespect you or question your opinion
> but I do have a question. If the recipes are not period in the Known World
> Handbook then why are they there?  >>

Because the authors put them in the article, and the editor either didn't
know or didn't care if they were period.

Brangwayna writes, responding to Micaylah:

>First, remember that the Known World Handbook was first printed in AS XIV and
>has had minimal updating since.  It's been reprinted twice, in AS XX and AS
>XXVI, but little has actually been changed.  The recipes are in an article
>dated 1985; perhaps this was state of the art period cookery thirteen years
>ago?

It wasn't. I complained about it at the time the handbook came out.

Of course, lots of groups did ethnic cooking then and labelled it
medieval--and I expect lots still do, although things have improved
somewhat in the interval. But I've been cooking in the SCA from period
recipes since 1970 or so, and by 1985 a fair number of other people were
doing so too. By 1985, I had probably been publishing the first volume of
my collection of source materials for more than ten years.

...

>So at best it appears to be a mixture of redactions of period
>recipes without originals, modern recipes, and possibly some ethnic ones.

That was my conclusion when I first read it.

Incidentally, the Known World Handbook is not the only, or even the worst,
example of the SCA publishing non-period recipes and implying that they are
period. There was a T.I. article entitled "Period Pasta," as I recall--I
believe there were about six recipes, of which one was period. And there
was a C.A. a few years ago that consisted of some medieval stories, with
accompanying recipes. The recipes were repeatedly stated to be medieval.
Three out of twenty-four were period (and one more was 17th c)--two of them
from me, one of them with credit and one without. And that, as I recall, is
counting Sekanjabin--which is a period drink, but for which I gave (in the
Miscellany), and they copied, a modern recipe.

In that case the story, as best I could understand it from the author of
the C.A., was that she told the editor the recipes were not period, the
editor told her she would take care of it--and proceeded to publish the
recipes, unchanged, referring to them as medieval recipes. It contained
some fine examples of "documentation" in the worst SCA sense--for example,
an apple pie recipe "documented" by an apple fritter recipe; the common
element is that both were made from apples. And there is a recipe for a
rabbit, disjointed and fried, "documented" by a recipe in which rabbit is
boiled, cut up, pounded in a mortar into a sort of pate, then baked in a
pie. The common element is that both are made from rabbit. I don't know if
that CA (#79) is still being sold, but so far as I know they never did add
an erratum sheet admitting the recipes were not period, although I wrote
the editor a letter that went through the recipes in gruesome detail. I
cannot resist quoting one paragraph (the convenience of keeping one's
correspondence in machine readable form):

"Not only are the recipes not medieval, in many cases they cannot be. The
author uses, without comment, ingredients unknown to English medieval
cooks, including vanilla, allspice, cornstarch, pineapple and red pepper
(all from the New World), yogurt (used in medieval Islamic cooking but not,
to the best of my knowledge, in Christian Europe), rum and baking soda. One
result is that a reader who believes the claim that these are medieval
recipes will  know less about medieval cooking after reading the pamphlet
than before."

Of course, the same is true of unofficial publications in the Society. In
general, SCA publications, official or unofficial, should be viewed with
the same scepticism as non-SCA publications. If a recipe does not include
at least a translation of the original, and cite the source, it should not
be trusted, unless you happen to know that the author is an unusually
reliable person--Heiatt, say. And, of course, those people don't usually
publish worked out recipes without sources.

Remember, we are a bunch of amateurs and most of our work is done by
volunteers. If the editor of T.I., or C.A., or the handbook, happens to be
someone who doesn't care about authenticity, or doesn't care about cooking,
or cares about authenticity but doesn't know much about cooking and chooses
an author who doesn't know or doesn't care, it is quite easy to get
official publications containing bogus period recipes. And given that those
jobs require a lot of unpaid effort and a range of talents, it isn't
particularly surprising if some of the people who end up doing them lack
some of the desired talents. A good scholar who can't organize or edit is
arguably an even worse choice than a bad scholar who can.

Micaylay writes:

"IIRC, since names such as
Baroness Enid of Aurellia,  Dame TSivia and others are credited for these
entries why would they not have given period recipes to be included in the
"bible" as it were for newbies?"

Ask them. In Enid's case, perhaps because her culinary expertise is mostly
on Apicius, so far as I can tell.

"If this is the case shouldn't these be
replaced by other more period stuff?"

Yes.

"And if so I'll quite gleefully tap the
wrists of Enid and TSivia for you."

Taken care of long since.

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


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