SC - OT - need advice about vinyl inflatable beds

[Lee-Gwen Booth]

Gwynydd asked:
> I was having a discussion with a (non-cook) SCA friend and she mentioned
> that she felt that Haggis would have only been a peasant dish in period (her
> grandparents were Scottish and she says they never ate Haggis partly for
> this reason).

I don't think this would necessarily be true in period. Organ meats are
rich in needed vitamins and these is generally less organ meat in an
animal than muscle meat, making it rarer. Thus I'm not sure that it
would be excluded from the nobles dinner. A generation or two back is not
that close to period that we can consider things unchanged from medieval
times. The amount of animals available for butchering increased greatly
in the 18th and 19th century. This could well have inverted the demand
for organ meats between peasants and well off folks.

For a little bit more on haggis, check this file in the FOOD section of
the Florilegium. Meatless haggises were also made.
haggis-msg        (79K) 10/ 6/99    Scottish haggis recipes. comments on haggis.
 
> As well, while this friend is not an authenticity freak on any level, we
> were discussing what foodstuffs could ruin the feel of a feast - I said the
> bright red vegetables (capsicum, tomato), potato (although, in a soup, it is
> at least a bit hidden), chocolate.  She agreed with this list and added big,
> red strawberries because she had heard that strawberries as we know them are
> more a New World food and that the ones people in Europe would have been
> eating would have been the small wild strawberries.

The problem may be less with New World vs. Old World versions but with
modern hybrids compared to period fruits.

For more details you might want to check this file in the FOOD-FRUITS
section of my files:
fruits-msg       (206K)  8/ 4/00    Medieval fruits and fruit dishes. Recipes.

- -- 
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 ****