SC - kosher

[margali]

At 12:01 AM +0000 1/11/98, Daniel Serra wrote:

>Second, just some thoughts about evidence, I am curious to what extent you
>experiment with traditional, rural food, and trying to apply to that those
>ingriients that were available in "period". Though it is true that ther
>only way to be sure of the exact dishes is through recipies that has been
>kept, these must still keep the vast majority of recipies hidden as I
>assume they only deal with the diet of the nobility.

The problem is that traditional, rural food changes over time. We know it
changes, because we know it incorporates ingredients that were not
available in the past--potatoes in Ireland and Russia, tomatoes in Italy,
paprika in Hungary, and the like. If you take a traditional recipe and
remove or substitute for the modern ingredients, you have simply removed
the differences that are easy to spot.

Exempla gratia. One very common technique for making sauces, gravies, etc.
in modern cookery is to combine flour with hot fat, then add liquid to
produce a suspension. It uses ingredients available in the Middle ages--but
I do not believe I have ever seen a medieval recipe that did it.

"only deal with the diet of the nobility" is a slight exaggeration. _Le
Menagier de Paris_ is upper middle class, and the author comments on dishes
that might be served by more important people but would be inappropriate
for his household. A lot of the 16th c. English cookbooks seem aimed at
middle class and above. It isn't clear to me just who the Islamic cookbooks
are intended for, but I doubt it is just the upper class.

We do, of course, have some information other than recipes--archaeology,
literary references, pictures, etc. But it is pretty thin if you are trying
to derive recipes.

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


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