SC - Armored turnips

[RichSCA@aol.com]

Balthazar and others interested in my musings,

I offer these, my viewpoints, for consideration and discussion if desired.  

When any one person reaches the end of knowledge on all the historical texts and information on recipes, foodstuffs, transfer of foodstuffs among cultures, agriculture, cooking technology, humoral theory, trade and commerce of foodstuffs, medieval languages (for translating), husbandry and actual food presentations then I suspect we will find more and understand still more pieces of information as do anthropologists and archaeoogists annually.

When I look at the wealth of information translated to American English since "Fabulous Feasts" was published and realize that I am in the current "Rennaissance" of historical medieval cookery.  In those 25 odd years, we have been awash in new information made available to us mom-lingual gringoist types :o)  Those who read German, Italian, and/or French have even more to choose from.

It is my own little viewpoint that one should never be "affraid" of doing something in cookery as it will surely affect what your product ends up being.  One should make bold assertions when making food and presenting it to others . . . those assertioins should be made with confidence and knowledge. One must also present the food as what it truly is, and offer the justification/explanation of what was done when asked.  If you used Knox gelatin because it was more convenient than rendering out of sinew, then do it boldly and explain why.

"Okay to improvise" is fraught with subjective possibilities.  It is a continuum again.  The more you know about the whole picture of fiedls affecting historical cookery, the more confident you can be that you are approaching a food that is closer to authentic/accurate improvisation.  It's like degree of confidence in statistics.  One knows that, unless there is a written account as evidence, any substitution will cause deviation from an accurate recipe that is found from the time period in question.  It will be the cook's personal intimacy with the cultural world of the cook who created the original recipe that will determine how confident we can be in that variation as representative of the culture.

The only caveat I have in making changes is that they be represented as such.  Make the change, proclaim it on the menu, and move on.  Decide my motives, my level of participation in histoirical accuracy, the resources available to us (no cheating on this one since 5 translated cookbooks are online) and other resources available to spend on cookery (time, energy, emotion, MONEY) and make responsible decisions based on all of those facts.  Bbe honest with self and others when presenting the information and foods that result from my efforts.

Just my own personal ethic on this topic.  It changes often, but stays pretty much in the ballpark :o)

niccolo difrancesco

sca-cooks at ansteorra.org wrote:
> In a message dated 4/4/00 8:31:20 PM Pacific Daylight Time, grizly at mindspring.com writes:

>  My approach is to urge persons involved in historical cookery, 
especiallyin SCA, to challenge themselves whenever possible to take a step toward the more accurate end.  To whatever means realistic within budget, time constraints, knowledge and resources, we shouyld challenge ourselves to approach historical accuracy whenever we can<<

*****Question:  What happens when we reach the end of our historical documents?  When we have exhausted all of the ancient information, and have learned as much as we can from those texts?  Then does it become okay to improvise, or do we become stagnant, afraid to make a decision because we have no more historical proof?  Just asking.
Balthazar of Blackmoor***********