SC - Re: Are Creations Period?
Elise Fleming
alysk at ix.netcom.com
Wed Jun 17 04:29:14 PDT 1998
Balldrich wrote:
>Please consider this: If we can cook without writing everything down
>so did period cooks. If we keep secrets about ingredients and how we
>use them so did period cooks. If we experiment with available food
>stuffs and spices and methods of cooking so did period cooks. How
>else did they ever come up with something "new" and wonderful for us
>to try?
Yes, but adding ingredients or mixing foods that seem logical to us may
_not_ have been considered logical or appropriate in the time period
the modern person purports to cook from. I think _that_ is the point
that some are trying to make. We eat food combinations and use spices
for which we can't find medieval/Renaissance equivalents. But, SCAers
will say that X existed in period and so did Y so _somebody_ probably
used them.
Now, I had a father who concocted combinations of things that most
modern folk wouldn't eat. He put blueberry juice in milk. True, there
are blueberry _milkshakes_ but I haven't seen people drinking
blue-colored, berry-flavored plain milk. (And, re-constituted powdered
skim milk at that!) Stop and think about what someone might
"reconstruct" for our time - tuna-topped yogurt (both popular lunch
ingredients) with a colorful salsa drizzled over it. They all exist in
our period. They all are documentable as lunch foods. Would _we_ eat
such a combination? I doubt it. Would someone try it in this century?
Possibly, but not as a serious meal to be served to guests. Given the
arguments SCAers put on their "documentation", though, this should pass
as a period lunch for 1998 by an SCAer in 2598.
The point has been made elsewhere that until we are thorougly expert in
the cookery of a particular country at a particular time, until we know
the recipes by heart as well as the cook did then, we really can't make
up our own combinations (without showing a similar combination in the
cookery corpus for the relevant time and place) and claim that they are
"period".
Alys Katharine, long-winded
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