OT - Re: SC - Re: saffron
Bronwynmgn@aol.com
Bronwynmgn at aol.com
Thu Apr 6 14:54:17 PDT 2000
>CBlackwill at aol.com writes:
>
><<
> I wonder if the Lord of the Manor ever got tired of eating the same recipes,
> and ordered his cooks to "do something different, for Pete's sake!" Do you
> suppose they would have made substitutions then? Chervil instead of Dill?
> Capon instead of Duck? Do you suppose they would have kept their jobs (or
> their heads) if they didn't?
>
> Just curious,
>
> Balthazar of Blackmoor
> >>
Very likely there were such variations--to some extent one can check
them by seeing the variant versions of the same recipe that appear in
different places. The problem with modern cooks taking a recipe and
then making their own variants is that we know a great deal less
about medieval cooking than a medieval cook did, hence do not know
just what variations would or would not have seemed appropriate to a
medieval cook. Varying a period recipe, especially doing it to fit
our tastes, is likely to mean changing it in ways that make it more
like a modern recipe, hence less medieval.
I think, by the way, that "or their heads" reflects a historically
implausible view of the Middle Ages. Doing your job badly was not a
criminal offense then, any more than it was now. You might consider
that the total fraction of the population in prison in medieval
England was a great deal lower than in modern-day America.
David/Cariadoc
http://www.best.com/~ddfr/
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