SC - questions/kinda long, sorry

[Nick Sasso]

LrdRas at aol.com wrote:
> 
> In a message dated 6/15/00 2:13:16 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
> I am sure that Puck's sauce was excellent. I would never have had him cook at
> a feast of mine if he were not. What I question is the idea that sauces and
> spices during the SCA period were used to 'enhance' the flavor of the main
> ingredient. Such a concept is a modern culinary concept. The cooking of
> Southern India is most like medieval cookery so far as overall flavor. The
> use of spices and sauces to take many flavors and combine them to form a
> SINGLE new flavor. That is what I see medieval cookery as trying to achieve.

I also add to my conceptualization that sauces were to add variety to
then simple meat preparations.  Boiled beef is often boiled beef. 
Adding a mustard sauce, prune sauce or garlic sauce makes it different
from the boiled beef I had last week.  Not at all that their cuisines
were boring . . . they had a splendid managerie sauces to prevent that.

niccolo