SC - "period" cookery and "period" poetry

[Russell Gilman-Hunt]

<font="underbreathmutter">Here I go again embarassing myself.</font>

Good Morning!  I'm not feeling as grouchy as I might sound in
this missive...

I'm sorry to have lost the attributions to this thought, but I
read the digest and I have been working hard at keeping my email
space on Rocketmail clean.  

"Someone" wrote, last week or so about cooking items with no recipe
just using a list of "period ingredients."  And they compared it with
writing poetry in period styles- the individual components are the same
but people would call the poetry period.  They (this person who I cannot
remember even the gender preference of) seemed to imply to my softened
brain that Poets write poems they call period using modern tools, but
Cooks are not allowed to combine period items in an analogous fashion
to create period foods.

I have been mulling this over.  You see, I am one of those poets; I
write poetry in a period fashion, using modern English.  And the process
is not quite the same (for me) as what that person was claiming to be
an analog of the "oh meat is period and bread is period, and I bet egg
and oil is period... would you pass me that roast beef sandwich with
Mayo?"

I've been writing poetry in what appears to be an appropriate style for
twelfth century Ireland, using stories from the correct time frame. I
know where the flaws are in my creations; the last one didn't follow 
the end-rhyme of the deibhide form properly, though I had good syllable 
counts and some of the other facets of Irish poetry). I could cite the 
rhyming patterns (ie, D and T "rhyme"), thus giving some sort of 
understanding as to how the medieval Irish poetic "tastes" differed from
modern tastes.

Now, if you could do a similar thing with period ingredients; combine
them in a period fashion for a period result, with an understanding of
how your "creation" differed from a period item, and then CALLED it a 
"food based on period sources with these differences" and explained 
the differences... I would be a little less annoyed.  But I don't call
my poetry "period" and I never could. Because I wrote it.  I could
perform a "period" piece (sigh... in translation out of respect for my 
audience and out of laziness for not learning Gaelic), but it wouldn't
be my creation; it would be something somebody else wrote in the time
period (one that would be accessible to 12th century Ireland).

So if you want to create foods based on period sources, using period 
ingredients (as close as you can get), to period tastes and have the 
source and the ingredients and the tastes match in a specific time 
frame, go ahead. Just don't call it period.  It's your creation, honor
that part of it.

HL (Filidh) Conchobar Mac Muirchertaig, Three Mountains, An Tir.


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