Why do you do what you do? (was Re: SC - Re: Substitution VERY LONG (Balthazar comments)

[grizly@mindspring.com]

The problem with sub stitutions, as has been said before, is that we basicly
don't understand what and why a Medieval Cook might have substituted.

Problem the first:

We are so used to a wide availability of different foods in all seasons,
that it is often difficult for us to remember that they might not have had
access to, say, strawberries to mix with their apples. This includes their
meats. Harvesting of certain items was done at certain times of the year,
and they had no choice. While we can get veal calves or lamb year round,
this does not mean that they could, so in order to serve something out of
season, we need to know that they had it available out of season, at least
occasionally.

Problem the Second

Their health theories, regarding the balance of the humors, are very
different from our modern theories regarding the balances of flavors and
nutrition. If we were to substitute, for, say, a sweet spice which we didn't
have, we would perhaps substitute another sweet spice- cinnamon for nutmeg,
for example. They might well have had a completely different idea. If the
original spice was three degrees of warm in order to compensate for a food
which was considered three degrees of cool, they'd have substituted
something else which was considered three degrees of warm, rather than
something which was considered two degrees of damp. Their basic idea was to
either provide a "balanced" food, which might be readily "digestible" by
everyone, or to provide a group of foods, in which one might be damp, one
might be cool, one might be dry, and one might be warm.

The reason for sticking to the exact recipes and menus they produced is to
get an understanding for how they balanced their foods and menus, and how
far they might have allowed a particular food's humor to be out of balance.

We do the same sort of things today, just from a different point of view.
How many of us enjoy a cold beer with a bowl of hot chili? Or a dry red wine
with a beef roast? As good as that tastes to us, a Medieval person might
well have wanted a different, sweeter wine, to balance the perceived hot,
dry nature of mature beef.


Phlip

Nolo disputare, volo somniare et contendere, et iterum somniare.

phlip at morganco.net

Philippa Farrour
Caer Frig
Southeastern Ohio

"All things are poisons.  It is simply the dose that distinguishes between a
poison and a remedy." -Paracelsus

"Oats -- a grain which in England sustains the horses, and in
Scotland, the men." -- Johnson

"It was pleasant to me to find that 'oats,' the 'food of horses,' were
so much used as the food of the people in Johnson's own town." --
Boswell

"And where will you find such horses, and such men?" -- Anonymous