SC - your opinions, please

[Stefan li Rous]

Branwen of Stormsport asked:
> i haven't written the list since suscribing, and i am merely a young
> woman who loves the art of cooking.  please understand that i would  ask
> your two-cents of the following:

Welcome to this list! Please feel free to ask questions.

>  The oil spit when he dropped in the meat, then began sizzling.... I
> asked what our meal was called.  It had tasted so good.  'The usual', she
> said, 'fried dormouse.' "

Dormouse was apparently eaten. I'm not sure how common it was, though. For
some more info, check this file in the FOOD section of the Florilegium:
exotic-meats-msg  (57K)  1/31/00    Period and SCA exotic meats. Swans,
ostrich, 
                                       crawfish, dormice.

> question 1--- did they actually have an equivelent to hamburgers?!  or is
> this just writer's license?

Chopped or mashed meat? yes. Although it is my understanding that the
texture is slightly different than the mechanically ground hamburger
we are used to.

> now, in my celtic cookbook, a good number of the recipes have potatoes in
> them...can turnips be substituted?  

Just changing the ingredients in a dish to "period" ingredients does not
guarentee that the resulting dish would be anything a medieval person
would recognise. It is often better to start with the period recipe and
work from that direction, rather than back towards it.

I *think* all the ingredients other than the turnips would be considered
"period". But I'm not sure of any recipes where they would be combined
this way and baked.

- -- 
Lord Stefan li Rous    Barony of Bryn Gwlad    Kingdom of Ansteorra
Mark S. Harris             Austin, Texas           stefan at texas.net
**** See Stefan's Florilegium files at:  http://www.florilegium.org ****