SC - Dying Appliances WAS: *GRUMBLE*

[Sue Clemenger]

Balthazar asked:

>But where is the problem with substituting one hot/dry ingredient
>for another?  How about pork for beef, or duck for chicken?

I doubt that we will ever know all the intricacies of humoral
theory as it evolved. 2,3,4 humours, who's to say which
one we should use, right? Ultimately, yours is a good
question (though I would not have used the example you
chose) and one of The Great "Religious" Debates of SCA
Cooks.

>We all know these items are period, right?

No, we don't. And part of this is the point that some people
were trying to make. *WE* don't all know that these
items are period. What happens if someone, in their desire
to recreate a meat dish, browns the chicken of a dish ahead
of time prior to using it in a period recipe? The practice
isn't stated in the recipe, but for color only, because most
people like their food to *look* cooked, they did it.

Has the humoral balance of the dish changed because of the
cook's actions? I would say yes, based on Platina alone, but
I am no expert in this matter.

>And once we have a decent grasp on that knowledge (which I am sure some of
>the more scholarly folks on this list do)....what then?  Would it then be
>safe to "step out on that ledge"?

This is the place where we get into the crux of the religious
war, I think. What is a decent amount of knowledge? Look at
it in terms of my mundane profession of technical writer. I
have to learn the rules of grammar and the English language,
a slippery beast whose rules have changed even in my
lifetime. I am very good at what I do, but do I possess a decent
amount of knowledge? Probably, as my company does not
suffer fools gladly. Is it enough knowledge?

I am a good writer and get paid good money for it, but I will never
know all the rules, especially because they are changing as I
write about thing. Cooks in the periods we study didn't
know all the rules of humoral theory and those too were changing
throughout time (and like grammar, the so-called experts didn't
even agree).

Do slippery rules mean I can be creative with what I write? Maybe.
If I change something, say a line in the text I write, because I
don't like the way it is written, I have many things to consider. Is
it written a certain way because NT users need it like that?
Do I need to reorder the words so I international customers will
receive a better translation once it goes through the localization
group? The answer to these oddball questions and the cooking question
you have posed to us, Balthazar, my friend, is quite simply  "it
depends."

The argument is on a continuum, not the DMZ that I fear so many
people will make it (being a religious war, you know, leaves
no room for in between). On one end, you will have cooks who
feel that any substitution is an affront, arguing that there are
plenty of recipes in the corpus we have to create without taking
our lives into our own hands and making something decidedly
new in a period fashion. On the other end, you will have the cooks
who believe that period cookbooks were meant as guides to the
cooks only, serving as reminders of how to cook dishes rather
than exact instructions.

Somewhere in the middle you will have a whole crew of people.
I suspect, the vast majority of  the members of this list. And
much like grammar rules in the English language or humoral
theory over the time period we've studied, this too will change.

Not an answer. Barely even an opinion. :) But I'm pre coffee this
morning so I beg your forgiveness.

Ever in Service,

Jasmine
Iasmin de Cordoba