SC - A question of re-creation

[Philip & Susan Troy]

Lee-Gwen Booth wrote:
> 
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Bogdan
> So by giving more credit to those who mill/grow their own, so to
> > speak, we are encouraging poor re-creation.
> 
> While this may be true (and I freely accept that it is a valid perspective),
> I think that the grinding of flour or whatever is in fact an element which
> should be taken into account in the judging.  The entrant has tried to
> emulate the ingredients used in period as closely as possible.  That should
> count for something. Also, it seems to me that there are times when using
> the modern equivalent ingredient and trying to recreate the original
> ingredient could change the end product slightly.

I think there's an interesting tradeoff at work here, but ultimately I
believe we're putting the cart before the horse. Yes, one cook in a
period setting would most likely not have made his/her own salt or
ground her own flour, and one can argue that the total immersion or
total control approach to recreation is imperfect in that respect. On
the other hand, I don't believe an absolutely perfect recreation is
_necessarily_ what we're after in a case like this. Do we enter A&S
competitions or exhibitions to show how buff and kewl we are or how
perfectly accurate our artifacts can be, or, is the bottom line that
we'd like to show what we've learned and share it? Either answer, or
another, could be seen as valid in different lights, but I'd like to
believe the latter, and the advantage of the total immersion approach is
that it teaches all aspects of the process involved.

For example, if you make your own bread from wheat you've watched grow,
there are a huge number of questions you'd be prepared to answer, or at
least address, that are related overall to the breadbaking process. Is
it hard to grind corn in a hand quern? Does naturally aged (a.k.a.
bleached -- the horror!) flour behave differently in the amount of water
required or the whiteness of the finished loaf, from freshly ground
flour? I could go on, but I suspect an apprentice baker in period would
just keep repeating, "I took some flour and made some bread loaves. I
used water and berm and kneaded it in a cloth..." Which is not to
suggest a baker's job doesn't have its complexities, but someone who has
done this work should have some idea of what's involved, while someone
who has also ground grain, etc., prior to baking, will know this and
considerably more.

I don't think we can view Lady Constance's project so much as a
wonderful recreation of a period meal (although it seems to have been
that) or as a recreation of questionable accuracy of the work of a
period cook, but more in the line of a lifestyle research project. There
aren't a lot of better ways to understand the thinking and behavior of a
period person than to work as they worked, and I can't be too critical
of anyone because they learned to do [part of] the work of several.
 
Adamantius
- -- 
Phil & Susan Troy

troy at asan.com