SC - "personal recipies"

[Tollhase1@aol.com]

>I believe in only serving documentable recipes at feasts and I do that. 
>However, sometimes I can't get an ingredient or its too expensive or its
>not practicle and I will occasionally have to substitute. Also, sometimes
>I have particular needs (like all finger foods) and I will adapt recipes
>so that I am still serving medieval tasting foods but maybe they are
>handpies instead of a full pie or meat balls instead of meat wrapped in a
>casing. 
>
>This is not laziness. I have done the research and applied it to a 
>particular situation in a particular way as ANY cook in ANYTIME would do.
>
>Clarissa

Perhaps I am misunderstanding Lord Ras' argument.  What I understand him to
say is the substitutions that a modern cook would make to a receipe are
most likely very different from what a medieval cook with exactly the same
ingredients and cooking methods would choose to make.  I am just beginning
to learn more than very basic cooking techniques myself, and am new to
medieval cooking as well.  However, from what I have read, cooks in period
had a whole different view of food than a modern cook.  They have never
heard of the food pyramid, and I seriously doubt that they worried about
low fat, low salt diets.  Our view of "good" food would seem as alien to
them as putting parsley in a sweet pie seems to me.  We have so much
subconscious training on menu planning, (meat, veg, starch), how can we not
assume that they had the same subconscious rules that they would have
followed.  We look at the humors of food as a quaint theory.  It would seem
to me that they would have viewed it as a natural order, and would feel as
strange about incorrectly balancing the humors as we would if we served
rice and potatoes as the only two side dishes at a meal we prepared.  I
believe the point he is trying to make is that we cannot think like a
medieval cook, so we cannot truely cook like one without following
instructions.  Please feel free to correct me if you feel differently.  I
am still very new to this, and I promise I won't take it personally.

Eleanor d'Aubrecicourt

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