SC - Re: EK Crown Feast

[William Seibert]

At 1:47 AM +1000 5/10/98, Kiriel & Chris wrote:

>Sometimes I do not know exactly what ingredients I will be putting into
>a dish until I have made it... I am sure that this is the case with most
>of us - as a good cook you adjust flavours continuously. A touch of
>lemon juice here, worcestershire there. A list of ingredients would have
>to be written after everything was cooked, which is when it is being
>served!

There seems to be a definite difference in approach here. What you describe
is how I  cook at home but not how I  cook an SCA feast, for several
reasons:

1. I am trying to do period cooking; worcestershire sauce doesn't belong in
it. More generally, since I was brought up in the 20th century, my tastes
are less likely to produce medieval cooking than the tastes of the people
whose recipes I am using, so modifying those recipes results in my doing a
worse job of producing medieval food.

2. I am not cooking in my own kitchen, so I only have with me the
ingredients I planned to use for the feast.

3. For a feast of any size, I am sharing the work with several cooks of
varying knowledge and ability--and it is entirely possible that one of them
will get sick and not show up. I might even get sick and not show up. So I
want to have precise written instructions available for each dish.

Hence, for me, providing a printed list of ingredients is almost
costless--I already have the worked out recipe in my computer. All I have
to do is to remove the supefluous parts and I have an ingredient list. It
sounds as though you are using a significantly different approach, and part
of the disagreement here may be that everyone is taking it for granted that
everyone else does the same sort of feast that same way he does.

>If I have an
>allergy, I will ask whether x dish has that ingredient in it.  I expect
>a truthful reply,

Who do you ask? If the person cooking that dish follows the pattern you
have just described of adding additional ingredients to taste, nobody but
that cook knows what is or is not in that dish. Are you suggesting that
someone with an alergy should go into the kitchen, ask which cook made each
dish, and separately check with the cook who made each dish for the
presence of the relevant ingredients in it? That sounds like a lot more
trouble for all concerned than simply posting an ingredient list for each
dish somewhere.

>I am sorry, but I refuse outright to take the responsibility for other
>peoples allergies without notification.

What is proposed is that you make it easier for other people to take
responsibility for their allergies, by letting them know which dish
contains what, hence letting them decide what it is safe for them to eat.

In an earlier post, you wrote:

>; and besides, it may be that I have
>some secret blend of herbs and spices I don't want to share!  (ask
>anyone who has had my hedgehogs whether I will reveal all their
>ingredients)

You  have a right to keep your secrets, but I cannot say I am comfortable
with the policy. Are all of your dishes based entirely on your own
research--did you find the primary sources for yourself and redact the
recipes for yourself entirely from the primary sources? If not, aren't you
engaged in a sort of free riding--accepting other people's efforts as an
input to your cooking, but then refusing to make the results of your
efforts available to others?



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


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