SC - Feasts in Trimaris

[Philip & Susan Troy]

> Date: Tue, 29 Feb 2000 17:02:25 -0600
> From: david friedman <ddfr at best.com>
> Subject: RE: SC - Feasts in Trimaris
> 
> >I am a cook myself. How does one define cooking a meal 'right'? To some
> >gentles, it means producing an end product that people will eat with
> >delight. To others, it is producing a meal close to period as possible,
> >using means as close to period as possible. Others combine these two with
> >varying degrees of sucess.

Still others will act according to the requirements of the situation.
Ultimately when cooking a feast at an event site, there's a tendency to
adapt the period recipes to the kitchen facilities and cook-hours
available. That, and the desire to please the persons being fed, rarely,
in my own experience, leads to food being prepared badly and justified
as "how they did it". Chiquart, for example, mentions repeatedly in his
Du Fait De Cuisine the need to keep the kitchen and utensils clean.
Obviously his standards are as high as our own, and when cooking from
his recipes it seems unlikely we wouldn't emulate him. Do you really
have cooks who will warp a period recipe to create bad food on perceived
grounds of authenticity? As if the food is _supposed_ to be bad, so if
you don't like it take it up with this deceased author?   
> 
> This assumes that the two are unrelated. But period cooks had to 
> please their employers, which required them to cook things that 
> people would like to eat. So far as I know, there is no evidence that 
> period tastes were radically different than modern tastes. So the 
> fact that something tastes bad is evidence--not proof, but 
> evidence--that the cook has done a bad job of interpeting the 
> original recipe.

True. While tastes do vary within a broad range, such as from country to
country within a given time period, humans are pretty similar
physiologically. Even if I didn't like Indian curries, for example,
they're not poisonous or anything. There's really no reason to assume
radical variations in taste are time-dependent. 

> >If a cook realizes that
> >preparing a dessert with pepper will make it taste 'odd' or unpleasent to
> >the modern palate, let them leave it out. We're talking about feast here,
> >not ArtSci entries.

And since we're talking about feast, I would expect a reasonable balance
between the pursuit of authenticity and quality. A&S entries are meant
to be eaten by some judges, most of whom are pretty adventurous or they
wouldn't be judges in such a competition. However, it's perfectly
possible, and not even difficult, to adapt a period recipe for, say,
those who are unused to certain flavors, without deviating from the
written recipe at all, let alone cooking modern foods. If your period
recipe is well-chosen and well executed, in what possible way could it
be inferior to bananas Foster, given that this is an SCA event? The only
possibility that suggests itself is that its disadvantage is that it
might be unfamiliar food. For example, my nemesis, cuskynoles (awright,
everybody just keep it down, now) are a pasta package filled with fruit
and nuts, eminently period even if one does shape them, um,
unorthodoxly. They're dough, filled with fruit and nuts, boiled and then
grilled. What's not to like? Can you honestly point out something wrong
with this period dish, other than that it is period? Could it be that it
is a boiled pasta functioning as what we might think of as a dessert?
Pasta for dessert? Yeccch! But not unprecedented by many, many modern
cuisines. I suspect the problem with it is not the ingredients, or the
slavish devotion to authenticity of the cooks, but simply its
unfamiliarity. Which it probably has in common with modern Indonesian
food -- all other things being equal. Since the all-period feast is not
preferred, would folks feel better with modern Indonesian? No? Then what
does the time period have to do with it?

And pepper would not be a problem in a dessert (a concept, BTW, largely
unknown in medieval European cookery) if used properly. Again, if it
tastes bad it's probably because we're using more than period people
did. 
 
> And it is that attitude which fuels the widespread hostility to 
> authenticity--the idea that the only reason to do things 
> authentically is to win a contest, probably in the hope of getting an 
> award.

Well, I don't know if that's the only reason, and I wouldn't want to
speculate, but drawing a distinction between the level of authenticity
applied for feasts and for A&S competitions does suggest that feasts are
not considered a venue for research and education of the populace. And
that is a very sad thing indeed, given what the SCA was formed for.
What, exactly, is the feast _for_ if not for helping to enhance the
period atmosphere, the sense that we are period people interacting? Why
do we go to the trouble to make well-researched and carefully-made garb,
fight in nice armor, do all the heraldic display and performance, the
court schtick, all of that, only to suddenly say, "Enough period s**t, I
want a Stouffer's chicken pot pie!" Is it that we are here to learn
about medieval life _except_ for the food? 
> 
> Would you similarly argue that there is no reason to wear period 
> looking clothes rather than bluejeans and tshirts at the feast--since 
> we are talking about feast, not artsci entries?

Well, there really isn't any reason under that argument. But in that
case, why not simply have some fighting (or, for that matter, football)
and convene to a local pub afterwards? It's probably not a lot more
expensive, if at all, you can order what you want off the menu, and
there's no cleanup afterwards.

Adamantius
- -- 
Phil & Susan Troy

troy at asan.com