SC - rancid meat

[LrdRas@aol.com]

In a message dated 7/26/98 1:33:54 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
oftraquair at hotmail.com writes:

<< What duties does the word "cook" not include? Research and documentation? 
 Maybe not, but to me, that part of it is "persona" and "hobby".  >>

True. A cook is a cook. I cannot disagree with you. However, during the Middle
Ages into the modern era, (and , actually, before the Middle Ages) tasks not
directly dealing with the act of cookery were, in large estates and
households, delegated to a number of other people. Seneschal, Steward, Carver,
Panner, Baker, Brewer, ad infinitum come to mind. The acts of purchasing
provisions, planning menus, directing specific hunts, slaughtering were almost
without exception performed by second and sometijmes third parties. 

The varity of tasks performed by one person in the SCA during the planning,
preparation and service of a feast is, quite frankly, non-period, IMO. It is
one thing to be aware of the provisions in stock at a manor and use them
accordingly. It is quite another to find any period evidence that proves a
"cook" had any say in what provisions were kept.

In fact, I can personally find no evidence that the same thing wasn't true in
most of the other "trades". The existing evidence on period cookeryand other
crafts certainly show that there existed the medieval equivalents of Jeff
Smith and Martha Stewart in the form of Apicius and Cliquart among others.
These men knew about it all- purchacing, planning, production and service. BUT
they didn't it all at any one time which is required of SCA cooks or at least
SCA head cooks.

I certainly hope that this thread doesn't run off into "feast-o-crat vs.
whatever" limbo. Some of you have heard my previous views several times in the
past on this subject. However, I have thought about this long and hard and
think I have an exceptable compromise. Since there is no knopwn period
equivalent and feast-o-crat has become offensive to many perhaps an equally
non-period term would sound better. My proposal is Kitchen Steward. Literally
it could be interpreted as "protecter of the Kitchen". And if that doesn't
describe what an SCA head cook does  nothing ever will. :-)

Ras (Kitchen Steward for Silver Rhyll's Fall Event). :-)

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