OT - Re: SC - Re: saffron

[Bronwynmgn at aol.com]

In a message dated 4/5/2000 9:40:06 PM Eastern Daylight Time, 
CBlackwill at aol.com writes:

<< >  Changing a recipe to accomodate your personal taste is
 >  no different than serving chimichongas or potato
 >  salad.  If a recipe says that it is good for haddock
 >  or pike, but does not mention salmon and yet there are
 >  other recipes for salmon in the collection, then don't
 >  you think that the cook would have mentioned that it
 >  was good for salmon too, if he thought so? 
  
 No, I do not think so.  Even medieval cooks had to know that people are 
 capable of making assumptions.  "Geee...If it's this good on Haddock, 
imagine 
 what it would taste like on SALMON!!!"  We do not (well, most of us anyway) 
 need to be lead by the hand our entire lives.  We are capable of making 
basic 
 assumptions without having it shoved down our throats. >>

One thing no one has brought up in this thread is the theory of humors.  Are 
you familiar with this, Balthazar?  It's a period medical theory whereby diet 
should be controlled subject to a particular person's composition - ie 
melancholic, sanguine, etc.  Each composition has an aspect of heat and 
moisture - hot and dry, cold and dry, etc.  Each food item also has these 
components, as does each cooking method.  So if a particular meat, say, is 
"exceedingly dry", then it might be boiled, rather than roasted, to balance 
it better.  The spices chosen to cook it with would also help to balance it.  
When you get into the depths of this theory, you start getting things like 
"this is cold in the 1st degree and moist in the thrid degree".  Each degree 
would require a different method, or combination of methods, to balance it.  
This may be one reason why period recipes specify that one never cooks thus 
and such without some other thing, or why you may substitute these spices, 
but never use this herb.  Doing so would unbalance the meal, and make it 
dangerous.

So, making substitutions of another item which you know to have been used in 
that time and place could, conceivably, render the dish unfit for consumption 
to the mind of a medieval cook.  They would never have considered doing such 
a thing.  This is one reason why I don't substitute, in general; I don't know 
nearly enough about humoral theory to have any clue whether I am making a 
choice that a period cook would, or if I am making something poisonous by 
choosing that item.

Brangwayna Morgan