SC - Fwd: From Adamantius

[Michael F. Gunter]

>
> Date: Thu, 27 Apr 2000 19:42:55 EDT
> From: Morgana Abbey <morgana.abbey at juno.com>
> Subject: Re: SC - Documented Substitutions (Long)
>
> OK, I'll try using some of the methodology I learned in college.
>
> Analize the sources:  Le Menagier, we all know, was written to be a
> handbook for an inexperienced wife.  Along with the recipes were
essays
> on clothes keeping, how not to get ripped off in the marketplace, etc.

> Now for him to feel it necessary to warn her about food adulteration
> means that it was happening.  (And we have other sources which confirm

> this)  So for him to mention possible substitutions in the recipes
> probably means the same thing.  People made substitutions in their
daily
> cooking.  From what I can see, the other surviving cookbooks are more
> like recordings of special events.  If people DID NOT substitute
things,
> he would have written a diatribe against doing so.
>
> Now I've also noticed something about the names of the dishes.  They
are
> either descriptions of the ingredients ("apple pie", "stew with
chicken
> and cabbage", etc) or rather vague words.  For all we know, these
could
> be the medieval equivalent of "Hot Dish."  (ask someone from
> Minnesota--think casserole)
>
> Archeological analysis of the garbage pits could tell us what they
were
> eating, and that may or may not help with how it was cooked.  It
probably
> wouldn't be the most exciting read in your life though.
>
> Would it make people feel better if we rename every recipe when we
make
> even the tiniest change?

Sigh. No, it wouldn't. It seems like an awful lot of trouble to go to.
On the other hand, why not simply cook what you want, make any
substitutions you feel like making, explain why you did so, and cite
your period source for the original recipe, and _puh-leeze_ stop being
so bloody hung up on whether the dish, with substitutions, is "period",
whatever the blue blazes that means anyway... .

I'm sorry, I don't mean to diss your perfectly logical approach, but I'm

responding to the cumulative effect of weeks or months of a hugely
repetitive discussion which seems designed to make people change their
minds about a perfectly logical, if conservative, approach to recreating

foods as we pretty well _know_ them to have been, and admitting that if
we are speculating on how the written acccounts might have varied with
period practice, then we are speculating. Guessing. Creating a
hypothesis, call it what you will. The particular substitution might
have been done in period. It might not.

I frequently make substitutions, usually with as informed an approach as

I can muster, but sometimes with an utterly whimsical approach. I just
don't know for sure, most of the time, if the particular substitutions
were actually made by period cooks, and won't presume to call what I
cook, from period sources, period dishes. If people do know that their
substitutions were made, then fine, and they should call them period if
they want to and if it fits their definition of the word.

Why is that not enough? I'm really not interested in crushing dissenting

opinion, but it does begin to seem like this discussion is going to go
on until somebody caves. All right. I give. My dissenting opinion has
been crushed and I have seen the True Way. I am saved, Halleluiah! I'm
off to make a big pot of rice with FD&C Yellow #5.

Adamantius, eyes glittering with evil thoughts of another cuskynole
thread... for those who weren't around for that one, I can only say in
my most gravelly voice, "Heh heh heh!!!"
- --
Phil & Susan Troy

troy at asan.com