SC - Is Arrowroot Period?

[Stefan li Rous]

Balthazar of Blackmoor said:
>  You must admit that there were many thousand 
> more cooks in the middle ages than there were cookbook authors. 

Yes, as there are today. And your point is?

> And the 
> potato was in widespread use in parts of Europe (read "Western Culture") by 
> the end of our period of interest.  Simply because it did not make it into 
> the culinary guides of the day does not mean it was not consumed regularly.  
> That is the crux of my arguement:

Now this I have to disagree with fairly strongly, at least for the potato.
The evidence just doesn't point to it. There are several books on the
history of the potato. If you wish I'll dig out the biblio info on the
one I just finished reading. Even when the potato is mentioned in some of
the late period herbals and cookbooks you must be careful not to assume
the text is talking about the white potato. Often times you find out whne
you dig deeper that it is the Sweet Potato which is meant. The Sweet Potato
took off much quicker than did the white or Virginia potato.

And yes, the potato was probably eaten quite a while before it found it's
way into culinary manuals and cookbooks. Basically the books were written
for the upper and later the middle classes. The potato was looked down
upon because it was thought to make people lazy and while it might feed
the slovenly lower classes, decent people didn't eat them. However even
the peasants don't seem to have started planting them until the 18th
century. Peasants are notoriously conservative. If what you plant means
whether you and your family starve or manage a meager existance, you
don't gamble on new, unknown plants. Potatos started being cultivated
for very specific reasons and they varied from area to area.
 
> P.S. Stefan...dou you have a section in the Florilegium for so-called 
> "period-style" recipes?

Nothing filed that way specifically because the recipes in any of the
files generally range from SCA creations, to period-recipes to redactions
without the original recipe to redactions with the period recipes, sometimes
in the original language. There are even some unredacted recipes in foriegn
languages. While as time goes on, I prefer more of the later types, some
recipes date from before I joined this list and learned some things. Sometimes
periodiod recipes are included because I have no period recipes and I'll take
what I can get until something better comes along. Sometimes I save a recipe
with no supporting documentation and then someone else posts supporting info
for that recipe later.

Recipes all up and down the authenticity range may be useful at different
times and places. Different people have different views. Ras and I have
had a number of arguments over this here. If I understand him correctly,
he thinks we should only cook food served to the Nobility and only that
which can be documented by period recipes. I on the other hand am willing
to accept that we don't have recipes for peasant meals and the nobility of
earlier or out-of-the-way cultures and am willing to accept more guesswork
using non-recipe evidence as the basis to try to re-create such period
meals.

- -- 
Lord Stefan li Rous    Barony of Bryn Gwlad    Kingdom of Ansteorra
Mark S. Harris             Austin, Texas           stefan at texas.net
**** See Stefan's Florilegium files at:  http://www.florilegium.org ****