SC - First topics

[William Seibert]

>As a recreation/reconstruction/Living History/re-enactment
>blah blah blah project, optimal performance/conditions are when the
>person doing the project tries to learn as much as possible about the
>process being done (rolling out pasta dough, making bread, or even
>making hamburger stew) by performing the task in a manner as close as
>possible to the way it was done in period.

For me: this is the way it is done in family sized amounts, several times 
before the feast.  If I were entering the dish in a competition, I would 
also plan to do as much as I safely could by hand. For me, the learning 
process and or the competition demands that I work in a manner as original 
as I can.  While doing this, I'm trying to think of how much of this can be 
transferred into the feast hall kitchen, and what changes will have to be 
made for the sake of safety or time or cost or lack of experienced 
assistance. I wouldn't substitute ingredients without a variant recipe or 
cost requirement to justify it. Perhaps in future I can do elseways, but for 
now, the learning of recipes in the original and the cooking for huge crowds 
are only related activities, not the same thing.  In any case, I'll be using 
a modern stove/oven because the skills of maintaining a fire properly, and 
tools to do the job best over a fire, are not available to me.  Yet.

>While a
>period cook might well have added something at the last minute to adjust
>a flavor, we generally don't know what it would have been. Further, I've
>never been in a position where I couldn't adjust a dish when it needed a
>little kick in one direction or another, by simply adding, or changing
>the proportions of, the specified ingredients, or, at the most, needed a
>little more salt, or a pinch of sugar.

Whether trying out a modern recipe or historic recipe, I try to find as many 
variations of the same recipe as I can so that I can see how much more or 
less of something might be acceptable.  Each recipe will contain different 
kernels of advice and knowledge.  This is often not possible with historic 
recipes, but it's still what I'd like to do. The best I can do in this case 
is to examine as many redactions by more experienced people as I can, in 
order to find my path. All the cherry soup.pudding opinions are an example 
of this.


>been there and done that as much as 99% of cooks in the SCA. And I
>wouldn't say I know enough to say what constitutes an appropriate period
>substitution in a period recipe, or to create a dish of my own in a
>period style, and call it a period dish.

When presenting my attempts at re-creating a period recipe my inclination 
has been to refer to my dish as having been "derived from" a particular 
recipe or set of recipes/redactions for dishes with the same 
name/ingredients (for examble all the "blanc desires" discussed recently.)  
I'm not really comfortable calling it a re-creation even if I feel I've done 
exactly what the recipe says.  I'm pretty new at this and something I don't 
yet know may have invalidated my conclusions.

Bonne



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