SC - Re: Celtic Dung fires

[Steve Hughes]

In a message dated 7/5/99 11:41:15 AM US Mountain Standard Time, 
mbrunzie at dba-sw.com writes:

<< asserts that bananas were
 introduced to Europe by Muslims.  Eh?  That doesn't seem right, so
 it would be nice if I could just check a list of the most common modern
 foods which said whether or not they were period. >>

There are three problems here.  
First, SCA "period" does not have hard and fast dates.  Every one agrees that 
the "Middle Ages" is the period between "the fall of Rome, and the beginning 
of the Renaisance."  Problem with that is those are not definite dates.  
Which "fall" of which "Rome"?    The "Rome" of the Roman Caesars?  The "Rome" 
of the early church?  Visigoth "Rome"?  The "Rome" of the Catholic Church?  
The beginning of which "Renaisance"?  Where?  the Renaisance of Italian 
Painting?  That began in the thirteenth century.  The Tudor Renaisance in 
English Politics?  Late sixteenth century.
Second, while the combined research represented on these pages is extensive, 
we do not claim to be the final arbiters of the truth.  We know a few things, 
for instance, that say, potatoes or maize are New World plants.  But there is 
always room for controversy.  Certainly there were no potatoes in 11th 
century Ireland, but exactly WHEN they did appear, and where, involves 
ongoing research, and we are always finding our preconceptions overturned by 
new evidence.  
Because of these two things, any such list would have so many gray areas that 
we'd argue incessantly about it.  
Ras and I and some others are of the opinion that cooking techniques and 
ingredients changed so dramatically in the fifteenth century that that marks 
the beginning of the Cooking Renaissance.  Others will argue that if there is 
a single historical document of something being eaten or cooked before 1700, 
that we cannot rule it "out of period."
Third, we are frequently running into the problem of whether SCA cooking is 
aimed exclusively at the upper classes, or do we include "peasant" food.  
This often makes a difference as to whether something was eaten in period or 
not.  Take the recent question of cranberries.  First we established that the 
fruit commercially grown and distributed under that name today is almost 
definitely a New World hybrid.  Then we learned that there are European 
relatives.  Then we learned that they were probably never cultivated as a 
human plant food but were gathered from the wild occasionally and perhaps may 
have served as a part of the diet of the peasants and country folk.  So, are 
cranberries "period?"  I don't know the answer to that.  But, personally, 
I'll only serve them as such if I can find a pre-sixteenth century recipe 
that mentions them.  That is mostly a personal decision.  With so much chance 
for controversy, I cannot see how any of us can make any other than personal 
decisions on it.  I can say that most of the body of evidence points to 
cranberries being Out of Period for Western Europe, in my opinion.

Mordonna


Mordonna
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