SC - Good vs. bad redactions

[LrdRas at aol.com]

In a message dated 1/14/99 10:23:30 AM Eastern Standard Time,
Seton1355 at aol.com writes:

<< FABULOUS FEASTS is the ONLY book I have.  I that why my feasts don't come
out
 right & I don't like what I make?   Help!
 Phillipa >>

Knowing you personally, m'lady, I would say without hesitation definitely.
Remeber the chicken I served you at the Lewisburg Arts festival that you still
talk about? That was a redaction of a period recipe, Icelandic Chicken, IIRC,
that I found on Cariadoc's site or Stefan's. Also you might recall the various
feasts of mine that you have attended? All the dishes served were, without
exception based entirely on period recipes.

Period food is wonderful, make no mistake about that. If what you are
preparing is not wonderful then the recipes you are using are, IMO, very
poorly redacted. 

I know that others have taken exception to my personal opinion about Fabulous
Feasts but the reality of the matter is that every single recipe that I have
manged to find a source for that appears in that book has without fail been
redacted inappropriately. More times than not the recipes include techniques
and ingredients that were not known in period or they include substitutions
that are neither necessary nor period. Oftentimes the spicing is overly  done
and no attempt to balance the flavors is evident.

Admittedly I have said in the past that most bad period food is the result of
bad cooking but in your case it is most assuredly the result of using bad
recipes.

There are those who maintain that somehow our pallettes have changed in a mere
500 years. I disagree vehemently. Anyone that likes Middle Eastern,
Portuguese, Spanish, Greek, India or Northern African cuisines will inevitably
like medieval cuisine.

I am currently working on a collection of redacted recipes and other SCAdianly
useful recipes that I have collected over the years for the EXCLUSIVE use of
the members St' Martha's Guild. Since you play with us often it might be a
good idea for you yto join the Guild and recieve your own copy of the
collection which is going to be given to each student when they progress to
Apprentice. :-) In the meantime, there have been literally hundreds of very
tasty recipes given over this list by some of the Known World's finest cooks
and many books have been mentioned, such as Cindy Renfrow's, Cariadoc's, and
Scully's works that are an excellent source for good recipes. Stefan's files
and Cariadoc's web site also come to mind.

Hope this helps,
Ras
============================================================================

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".

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