SC - Practical Anthropology: Reducing Bones

[Jeff Gedney]

The Issue, Balthazar, rests on knowlege and certainty.
A supposition adds a degree of uncertainty to any postulate.

If we are trying to be accurate, we should eschew supposition as far 
as possible.
This means trying to stay with substitutions we KNOW to have been made.
That is, IF we are trying to be accurate.

Many of are trying to do that, and so, the issue is not "do we know that 
substitutions were made?".  I think we have fairly well established that 
substitutions were made. 
the REAL ISSUE is "What substitutions do we KNOW were made?".
Any substitutions that did not appear in the corpus of period recipes cannot 
correctly be said to be KNOWN as having been done

Look at it like Archery...
If I am trying to consistently hit a target, I will try to eliminate or account for 
all the variables. Shooting in a dark room unnecessarily adds a level of 
uncertainty. 

If I want to cook as much like a period cook as I can, I'll stick to 
the recipes and substitutions that I KNOW come from the period corpus 
of recipes. 

Adding additional substitutions that MAY have been done, but which 
I cannot be sure of, removes a level of certainty, and the likelyhood that 
the meal I am making would have been _actually_ served in period to 
period eaters goes from say 90% to say 50%, and decreases more with 
each change I make that I cannot be sure was made in period.

Would a Period cook have departed form the period recipe as written?
Maybe. Maybe not.
I don't _know_ for sure. 
That is the point.

I DO know that at least one period cook used the Recipe as written.
Since that is all I can actually verify, that is as far as I can go and still
be sure.   
So If I want to serve a meal that I can prove was served in period, I 
have to stick to the period recipes and any substitutions called for in them.

If I want to serve food and don't care about making it "Documentably 
Period" (as you might say) I can make such substitutions as I feel the 
recipe merits. 

But such a meal cannot be said to be just like one served in period. 
It might be, but then again, it might not. I can't be sure.
It might be made in the same _style_ as one served in period, but that 
is not the same thing.

Depends on what level of uncertainty you consider acceptable for the 
menu you are doing.  


brandu