SC - Kuskenole - was, Authenticity, philosophy, and advocacy

[Philip & Susan Troy]

Phillipa writes:
>>>>Even though my persona is not Jewish, I am very 
interested in how and what the Jews of the Middle Ages 
and Renaissance cooked. The dishes they prepared.

My theory is that they ate very closely to what the 
non Jews ate except that they "koshered" it up.  ie: 
redid the recipe to fit their dietary needs.  I do feel that 
they would have chosen from the foodstuffs locally 
available and made kosher versions of treif dishes.<<<<

You might excercise some caution here in any recipe
assumptions of Jewish cookery in the Middle Ages.
The current orthodox Jewish dietary laws were put
into effect around the early 16th century in central
European gettos.  This is much, much stricter than
the enforced laws in the previous centuries.  The
change came about when the Jews in the Germanic
states were elvolving even their own language (Yiddish)
from German.  The farmers supplying the ghettos were
suspected of cheating their Jewish customers, adultrating
or deliberately contaminating the food.  In an angry reaction
to these non-jews (goyiem or "cattle"), the Jewish elders
set up the current system of supervised harvest and slaughter
still in use today.  Obviously, before this the Jews would
not have eaten grossly forbidden food items like blood or
bacon, but they likely slaughtered the animals like anyone
else did and didn't have all the ritual regarding utensils and
such we have now.  Probably, earlier practice was similar to
many followers of Islam who ocassionally take a nip of wine.

If you do adjust period recipes, keep in mind the current
kosher practices are not the same.

Akim Yaroslavich
"No glory comes without pain