SC - Cranberries and Lingonberry Jamup (long)

[LrdRas@aol.com]

Peldyn at aol.com wrote:
> 
> I totallly understand! I have often wondered why one cook will make a choice
> in a recipe that I wouldn't have made. I usually put it down to them having
> more experience, but sometimes I wonder! (smile)

Bingo. Keep wondering. I think Lorna J. Sass was the first author I
questioned in this way, but the best of the secondary-source cookbook
authors are medievalists and not necessarily cooks, and often make
decisions based on some historical supposition which may or may not be accurate.

For example, Constance Hieatt and Sharon Butler include breadcrumbs in
their adapted recipe for sambucade in the first edition of "Pleyn
Delit", ignoring the fact that the instruction to "put in the crust" is
pretty likely to be because the recipe is for a PIE!!! Then there is
their claim that an instruction to stick a pen into the skin of a bird
and blow it up means to baste it with a feather.

With the possible exception of Karen Hess, who seems to know her hind
quarters from her humeral/radial/ulnal joint , most such authors are
specialists in reading and interpreting the language of medieval
manuscripts, and are no more qualified to make decisons of a purely
culinary nature than you or me.
  
Adamantius
- -- 
Phil & Susan Troy

troy at asan.com
============================================================================

To be removed from the SCA-Cooks mailing list, please send a message to
Majordomo at Ansteorra.ORG with the message body of "unsubscribe SCA-Cooks".

============================================================================