SC - barley

[Stefan li Rous]

Mike Young wrote:
> 
> I was wondering
> if you could help me answer a question for a lady here.
> She is wanting to know if Barley is period.  She has a recipe for chicken
> and barley stew.

Hmmm. How to say this without sounding like a semi-party-pooper...?

Yes, barley is, as has been said by folks who would know, exceedingly period.

Yes, it is quite likely it could have been, and most likely was, eaten
in a thick pottage with chicken, given the known practice of eating
various grain-based dishes with a garniture of roast or boiled meat in
chunks or sections, with or without bones. Rice and wheat come to mind
immediately for this, while oats and barley seem exremely likely
candidates rather than definite yesses only because I can't think of
clear examples offhand.

There are seventeenth-century English meat pottage recipes calling for a
thickening of oats, so, again, barley seems very likely to have been
eaten the same way.

The only caveat I have is that while all this seems to support the
likelihood that barley was sometimes eaten in meat stews, possibly even
of chicken, it doesn't mean that the recipe your friend has isn't simply
a modern recipe that happens to have period ingredients, and it doesn't
make the recipe a period one by default, if you know what I mean.

Now, that's fine. The statement, "This dish could very well have been
eaten in period," would be better documentation than a lot I've seen in
the SCA. On the other hand, it's still different from saying, "This dish
was eaten in period," or "This dish is as close as I can get to a dish
we know was eaten in period."

It's up to your friend to decide whether she wants to find out if a dish
she intends to cook is in fact a period one, or if she would like to
cook a period dish, if you see what I mean. For example, there's a
fourteenth-century (I think) recipe for grewell ynforced, made, I
believe, from oats and pork. Similar principle of meat and grain, though.
     
Adamantius
Crown Province of Østgardr, East Kingdom

Argent, an owl displayed guardant sable, between three pheons inverted
gules, all within a bordure sable.
- -- 
Phil & Susan Troy

troy at asan.com
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