SC - "personal recipies"

[Susan Browning]

At 4:20 PM -0400 5/12/99, Allison Hewett wrote:
>>  Once the recipe has changed from the original even a single iota it is
>>  no longer able to be called 'period'. It is a personal recipe. And, I can
>>  think of no excuse which is valid for doing so other than laziness on the
>>  part of the Kitchen Steward,.
>
>Um.  Inexperiece on the part of the Kitchen Steward's helper (that would
>be me)?    Limited budget?
>    And, I have to say, I think severe allergies *are* a reasonable
>excuse.  Our seneshal is SO allergic to roses that she could not join us
>to help in a kitchen in which rosewater is being
>used.  Should we try to chose strictly from those recipies in which
>rosewater is not used--which limits a great deal?
>
>To take the examples of the two dishes I'm currently working on;
>One is "hen's eggs in nestys"; jellied almond "eggs" on a bed of lettuce.
>(I just came up with the egg idea; our Cook came up with the
>presentation.)  I've retrieved a period recipe for
>"Eggs in Lent,"  eyed a number of other recipes for jellied things, and
>looked at some other illusion foods.  The way I'm actually making them
>(please, heaven, it works...today is my first
>batch.  For Saturday.  Yes, I knw, but there were complications,)  is not,
>in fact, perfectly period (weren't we just arguing about seaweed used to
>gel things?) but it is vegitarian and will,
>I believe, work.  Which, at this point, is more important.
>
>The other dish is cheesecake, taken from the recipie in the Miscellany, in
>which I am leaving out the mace.  I simply can't afford it; the only
>reason the cloves are making it in is becaue my
>room-mate is donating them (otherwise, I'd have used cinnimon, which I can
>find cheaply.)   Then, however, I will be covering then with strawberries
>and decorating with an escarbuncle in
>whipped cream--which is completely, as far as I can tell, undocumented and
>undocumentable, but tastes divine (quote from the test-batch, version 2
>(of 3) -- "I'll eat anything with
>strawberries on it.")  and should look good.  I'd been trying to think of
>some way other then whipped cream to do the escarbuncle, but come up with
>nothing practical.
>
>So is this completely useless and should be thrown out?

No. But it is probably farther from a period meal than you could have
produced.

Your first recipe, so far as I can tell by your comments, you got by first
deciding what you wanted to make and then trying to find something period
somewhat like that. In my view, that is the wrong approach, and one likely
to push people into doing things that aren't period and pretending they
are. There are period egg things and period jellied things--what is giving
you problems is first deciding what you want, instead of first seeing what
exists in period cookbooks and choosing from that.

I am also a little puzzled as to your leaving out the mace because you
can't afford it and then adding whipped cream and strawberries, which I
would expect to cost considerably more than one container of mace. Here
again, although to a lesser extent, you seem to be starting with something
you want to make (cheesecake with strawberries--a very common modern
desert) and then looking for period justification, instead of starting at
the other end. One result is that you are likely to end up learning only
about those period recipes which are most like (or at least which you can
persuade yourself are most like) modern recipes--i.e. the ones that are
least interesting, and teach you the least about period cooking.

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


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