SC -

[Bonne of Traquair]

>Should standards differ for the different fields within arts and sciences?

Yes, because the available information to recreate from varies.

>  In the Bardic arts, if I am not mistaken, the ultimate demonstration of
>one's skill is to create a piece in a period style; this is held in a
>higher regard than simply reciting a known period piece, as it proves your
>total understanding of period style.

Those awarding the prizes aren't requiring that Viking Sagas be written in 
old Norse, or whatever, so in reality that total understanding is lacking a 
HUGE component of authenticity. This is roughly equivalent to the ingredient 
and method adjustments the cooks must make becuase of the unavailability of 
some foods and the usual lack of facilities and skill in working with fire.  
  Some do learn old languages and some do cook over fires, but it isn't 
required.

>
>In the art of cooking, however, the reverse is true:  the standard is to
>recreate a known period "piece."  Creating a piece from period ingredients
>in a period style is considered less valid.
>

It's not quite the reverse.  Writing down poetry was a not uncommon thing to 
do, so there is a strong framework of evidence defining style.  Writing 
recipes down was not very common.  Of those that are written down, the 
particular details of one or more elements are often left out.  Because of 
these two problems, cooks are working from a rather tumbledown pile of 
evidence.  Since no period "piece" or recipe is truly completely known, 
simply working from the limited information regarding a specific recipe and 
asuming which elements of method must be applied, can only be referred to as 
having been done in period "style".

Cooks are working from a lot of not very detailed and not terribly specific 
recipes over the course of the entire "period" of the SCA.  This gives us a 
huge volume of ingredients and instructions covering a vast amount of time 
and a number of different places. The repeated argument seems to be that 
working from this list of period ingredients, and a particular set of mixing 
procedures and a particular set of cooking methods will lead to a dish that 
can be called "period".  I'm one of those that has come to agree that 
recipes created using choices made from all that information are not 
guaranteed to be something that anyone from a particular time and place 
would recognize. And if nobody would recognize it, it isn't period at all, 
despite every element being justifiable.   It would be like picking the 
correct words out of documentable prose or poetry in one language and 
fitting them into the framework of a poetry style from a different country 
and another century.  Every element may be period, but no one from any 
particular time and place would recognize it.

This isn't to say that anyone couldn't come much closer to this idea by 
studying, say, only english recipes recorded in some short time frame and 
then attempted to cook in that "style".  Nor is it saying that a simply 
prepared dish, roast chicken for instance, wouldn't be recognizable. Of 
course it would be and including such no-brainer cooking basics makes large 
scale feast cookery more manageable, giving you more time and space to deal 
with the translated and redacted stuff.

Think of it this way.  If a complete "recipe" of a period poem would be:

5 lines
lines 1, 2, and 5 rhyme and have 8 syllables or beats each,
lines 3 and 4 rhyme and have 6 syllables each
The style was used at court in England after 1450 but became unfashionable 
by 1550.
The style was used by courtiers to write about their lovers, the topic 
usually being unrequited love.

A bard, armed with this information and able to look up actual recorded 
poems of this style as well as historically parallel prose in order to 
determine a range of appropriate vocabulary and similes could come up with 
something that might well be recognized as acceptable and even impressive 
were the modern author able to step back in time.

However, cooks rarely, if ever have such complete information, and the 
similar recipes they look up are rarely going to be any more complete.  It's 
as if the poet only knew this much:

5 lines
2 sets of rhymes
Lines as much as 8 syllables long.
The style was used in 15th century England at court, by lovers.

The bard doesn't know if the 5 th line should rhyme, or where it should fall 
in the overall pattern, or how to apply the "as much as 8 syllables" other 
than "to taste", or an appropriate topic.  The bard may collect more poems 
that meet these criteria and try to suss out more information-but the 
conclusions may well be incorrect because of the limitations imposed by the 
sample.


Bonne





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