SC - Haggis and Strawberries

[pat fee]

  There was an incident, at another group's Imperial War last year.  A entry 
was made of a strawberry jam, I would have called it a compote.  As part of 
the documentation there was a quote from a on line dictionary that stated 
that a strawberry was found that was as "big as Queen Elizabeth's head" and 
the date was given as 1565.

   Now in my opinion, this is a error.  I looked up the reference but could 
not find it.  Maybe it was my bad computer skills or?  But in the same A/S 
tournament there was an entry of strawberry cordual.  In this documentation 
it was stated that the average size of strawberries, in the period, were 
about the size of the a women's thumb nail. The entrant had used the varity 
of wild strawberries available, and had gone out of her way to make the 
entry  as "period"  as possible.
  The first entrant was "upset" that her jam did not beat the cordual, and 
kept saying that it needed to be rejudged.  This was deigned by the person 
running the tournament, on the grounds that the judges were all A/S Knights 
equivalent to Laurels in the SCA.

  Lady Katherine McGuire


>From: "Lee-Gwen Booth" <piglet006 at globalfreeway.com.au>
>Reply-To: sca-cooks at ansteorra.org
>To: "Cooks' List" <sca-cooks at ansteorra.org>
>Subject: SC - Haggis and Strawberries
>Date: Mon, 21 Aug 2000 15:57:20 +1000
>
>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).
>
>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.
>
>Any opinions (particularly backed up with documentation!)?
>
>Gwynydd
>
>
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