SC - Sources, not sauces the Documentation and Subjective vs. Objective Judging

[Daniel Phelps]

The following was written:

I opted out of the A&S competitions years ago mainly because of superficial
and erroneous evaluations.


The following response made:

>Oh, I was once told that they didn't fry things in the middle ages so
>what I had done was not period. As a potter I know the archeaologists
>have found ceramic items that look suspiciously like fry pans and that
>the archeaologists call fry pans. As someone trying to translate medieval
>italian I know I have found words that today would translate as frying.
>So I believe they did fry things at some level. So I just started adding
>info on the methods the various foods I cook would have been cooked in
>period to help with this little bit of lack of info. Since then I have
>been told other things but not that I can't fry :).


My response:

I opted out of A/S competition for a long time and when I started up again I
realized that complete and damned near exhaustive documentation is as vital
as the object created.  Consider the questions that might be asked and
answer them point by point in your documentation.  Bad judging is generally
not the result of malevolence but ignorance.  Education is thus the key.  Be
that as it may, if someone judges your entry based on subjective criteria
and not on the evidence you have presented you have every right to take them
to task.   Base your arguments on the facts as presented in your
documentation.  Bring them back to the issues at hand.  Insist that they
judge solely on the issues as presented.  If for example they insist that
the ratafia you created is too sweet respond by saying that "based on modern
tastes" perhaps they might be correct.  Then  trot out your evidence
documenting the legendary medieval "sweet tooth"  up to and including tooth
decay as evidenced in Queen Elizabeth's dental problems.

Daniel Raoul
Deputy Shire A/S Officer
Shire of Sea March, Kingdom of Trimaris
>===========================================================================
=
>
>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".
>
>===========================================================================
=
>

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

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".

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