SC - Re: Seeking Period Recipes & Sources

[Stefan li Rous]

Yes and most people don't acknowledge that other than game, and a small
proportion of expensive imported foods, the lord of the manor ATE EXACTLY
THE
SAME FOODS THE REST OF THE PEOPLE ATE most of the time.

Excuse me, Minna-
but the average lord of the manor isnt the person who had the chefs who
wrote the cookbooks. The lord of the manor of the majority of manors was a
knight or baron, out in the country away from court. When a Royal Progress
did hit the area, usually the crown had their own cooking staff in
attendance. The manors cooks were generally just other servants who had a
nack for cooking and worked in the kitchen until they moved up to fill the
next available job. Also, there are a number of ways to fix the exact same
batch of ingredients to make 2 different meals widely different[look at any
of the seige cooking contests recently]

On the other hand, another way to look at it is simply this-the repertoire
of recipes of the average cook is something on the order of about 50
recipes, with seasonal variations. If all you tend to have is beef, pork,
deer, fowl, freshwater and dried fish, eels as meats; turnips, cabbages,
carrots, peas, beans and potherbs as the veggies and oats, wheat, barley as
the grain you would tend to get into a rut. How many of you folks out there
tend to make a particular meal[for example roasted chicken,
carrots,potatos,celery and onions roasted along with the chicken and a sauce
of whitewine deglazing the roaster] 3-4 or more times a month because you
like it, can make it in your sleep, and you tend to have everything around
allthe time to make it with? The people of the middle ages were just like
us-they had 'comfort foods' just like mom used to make, they has pantrys
with pretty much the same foods year in and year out[with seasonal
variations] and they had to budget their supplies to make sure they had
enough to last all winter[to the next paycheck...]

I willl be the first one to confess- I  have comfort meals that I make
frequently, though I have had more than one houseguest that seems to thing I
do nothing but cook medievally[well, i do tend to get up and make bread
first thing in the morning on weekends, and I tend to make everything from
scratch] and I have to keep to a budget. I will also fess up to reading the
list and trying something that sounds interesting or that somebody is having
trouble working out to see if I can do anything with it. I am just like any
of my forebearers whether she was the wife of the 3d royal govenor of New
Hampshire, one of the New Amsterdam Van Pattens, or the wife of The
MacCourtie back in the old country before there was a new world to move to.

margali


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