SC - Period Dining Atmosphere

[RichSCA at aol.com]

So the question is not whether or not cooks throughout history made 
substitutions, but rather what would they have substituted for what. As in my 
chili dish the other night, I put in cinnamon instead of the peppers I did 
not have.   

What I hear "most" people saying is that until a person has a good working 
knowledge of period cookery any guess as to substitutions would be a "wild" 
one and possibly completely off track.  So instead of "But, whatever happened 
to the "educated guess"?" it is more of a "what would the palate and 
knowledge of the cooks drive them to use?"  

I can follow this line of thought, but I still "believe" that sometimes cooks 
just "made up dishes" with whatever was on hand... just like I do now and 
then.  Now, do I have any "facts" to support this belief?  No, but then I 
believe in UFOs, goodness of mankind and that my son might get married 
someday. :-)  

And does this belief enter into my philosophy of cooking?  Yep.  

Rayne

In a message dated 4/5/00 11:12:43 PM Central Daylight Time, LrdRas at aol.com 
writes:

<< 
 I base my opinion on this subject entirely on what I have learned so far 
 about  period cookery. Many times things that we think would make a logical 
 substitution just did not exist in medieval cookery. Roux is the major thing 
 that pops to mind. 
 
 Ras >>