SC - period fruit pastries

[david friedman]

At 8:13 AM -0400 4/27/99, Robin Carroll-Mann wrote:
>And it came to pass on 27 Apr 99,, that Mouuze at aol.com wrote:
>
>> is there a period fruit pastry out there?
>
>Yes, many different kinds.
>
>> like pasties?
>
>I don't know what those are.
>
>> i have a friend who is serving a dish and was wondering if it was period

The problem is what does "is period" mean? Possible candidates:

1. We can't prove with reasonable confidence that nobody in period ever
made it. That covers anything that does not have ingredients unavailable
before 1600 (baking powder, for example, or milk chocolate), but it isn't
very useful, since the fact that you can't prove something wasn't done is
not much reason to think it was.

2. There is some significant probability that  it was made in period. That
covers things at least vaguely similar to period recipes, with no out of
period ingredients.

3. There is good reason to believe that it was made in period. That covers
things made from surviving recipes written down in period, and not much
more, in my opinion. Since we have thousands of pages of surviving recipes,
we don't have to be satisfied with 1 or 2 above, so this is my preferred
meaning. But it isn't what people asking that question in the SCA usually
mean.

If you accept meaning 3, then first finding a modern recipe and then trying
to "document" it is approaching the problem from the wrong end. At best, it
is an inefficient way of finding a period recipe (i.e. take your modern
recipe and search through cookbooks until you find a period one that looks
almost exactly like it) and in practice it is quite likely to end up
producing a modern recipe with fudged up arguments for why it might be
period (i.e. meaning 1 or 2). If you want a period dish, you might as well
start with a period recipe. Furthermore, that approach actually gives you
an opportunity to learn a new and interesting cuisine, instead of taking
modern dishes and finding excuses for serving them at SCA events.

>Can you tell us more about the type of crust, the shape of the pastry,
>and the ingredients of the filling?  At this point, all I can say is that
>fruit
>pastries are period.  It's kinda like saying that beef stew is period.
>There are so many different kinds, and some of them are blatantly *not*
>period.  (Like my grandmother's, which contains potatoes and tomato
>juice.)

Actually, I'm not sure beef stew is period. More precisely, I can't think
of any non-Islamic period recipes that correspond to what modern people
think of as "generic stew." There are dishes where the meat has been
stewed, but I can't think of any where pieces of stewed meat are combined
with substantial vegetables in a thick gravy or something similar. Perhaps
someone else can offer examples.

David Friedman
Professor of Law
Santa Clara University
ddfr at best.com
http://www.best.com/~ddfr/


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