SC - Help!!!

[david friedman]

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At 1:15 PM -0400 6/9/00, Elaine Koogler wrote:
>I'll have to go looking for it, but I suspect that Cock-a-leeky soup 
>is period...at
>least I believe it is.

I don't want to pick on Kiri in particular, since what she is saying 
here appears in a lot of other posts, and conversations, in the SCA. 
But "I suspect ... is period ... at least I believe it is" generally 
means that someone else told you it was--and, in my experience, SCA 
oral tradition is a very unreliable source of information. If you 
encounter a recipe in the SCA or the mundane world and don't know 
what period source it came from, your working assumption should be 
that there isn't one.

This isn't limited to recipes. I have been in the SCA long enough so 
that some of the traditional accounts one hears are of events I was a 
part of--and that isn't how they happened.

Two things, in my view, are going on. One is  that verbal 
transmission is a noisy medium. One person says "I think it is the 
sort of thing they might have had in period," and by the third or 
fourth person it goes through it has turned into "it is a period 
recipe." The other is that, within the SCA, being knowledgable, both 
about SCA history and about period history, is a source of 
prestige--with the result that some people exaggerate how much they 
know, and other people believe them.

Kiri also writes:

>Another possibility is to use some of the Norse/Viking recipes, if you have
>access to them.  After all, much of the northern part of Scotland 
>was populated
>by folks from the Northern lands!

Unfortunately, we don't have any period Norse/Viking cookbooks 
either, so that doesn't solve the problem.

After writing the above, I decided to see what I could learn on the 
net about the history of cock-a-leekie. I found one page that said 
the recipe was more than 300 years old, which would put it in the 
seventeenth century; no source was given. I also found the following 
assertion (about cock-a-leekie):

As early as 1598 Fynes Morrison recorded that it was served at a 
Knight's house with boiling fowl (thus the "cock") and prunes.

Further search found the following passage from Morrison, which I 
suspect is what is being referred to:

'I myself,' says the traveller Fynes Morrison, in the end of Queen 
Elizabeth's reign, the scene being the Lowlands of Scotland, 'was at 
a knight's house, who had many servants to attend him, that brought 
in his meat with their heads covered with blue caps, the table being 
more than half furnished with great platters of porridge each having 
a little piece of sodden meat. And when the table was served, the 
servants did sit down with us; but the upper mess, instead of 
porridge, had a pullet, with some prunes in the broth.'--TRAVELS, p. 
155.

If that is the right passage, what we have is evidence that Lowland 
Scots at the end of our period sometimes ate chicken stewed with some 
prunes. But that doesn't imply it was cock-a-leekie--for one thing, 
there are no leeks mentioned.

On the other hand, the quote from Morrison does give a a little 
evidence on Scottish cooking in period.

David/Cariadoc
http://www.daviddfriedman.com/
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At 1:15 PM -0400 6/9/00, Elaine Koogler wrote:

<excerpt>I'll have to go looking for it, but I suspect that
Cock-a-leeky soup is period...at

least I believe it is. 

</excerpt>

I don't want to pick on Kiri in particular, since what she is saying
here appears in a lot of other posts, and conversations, in the SCA.
But "I suspect ... is period ... at least I believe it is" generally
means that someone else told you it was--and, in my experience, SCA
oral tradition is a very unreliable source of information. If you
encounter a recipe in the SCA or the mundane world and don't know what
period source it came from, your working assumption should be that
there isn't one.


This isn't limited to recipes. I have been in the SCA long enough so
that some of the traditional accounts one hears are of events I was a
part of--and that isn't how they happened.


Two things, in my view, are going on. One is  that verbal transmission
is a noisy medium. One person says "I think it is the sort of thing
they might have had in period," and by the third or fourth person it
goes through it has turned into "it is a period recipe." The other is
that, within the SCA, being knowledgable, both about SCA history and
about period history, is a source of prestige--with the result that
some people exaggerate how much they know, and other people believe
them.


Kiri also writes:


<excerpt>Another possibility is to use some of the Norse/Viking
recipes, if you have

access to them.  After all, much of the northern part of Scotland was
populated

by folks from the Northern lands!

</excerpt>

Unfortunately, we don't have any period Norse/Viking cookbooks either,
so that doesn't solve the problem. 


After writing the above, I decided to see what I could learn on the net
about the history of <fontfamily><param>Geneva</param>cock-a-leekie. I
found one page that said the recipe was more than 300 years old, which
would put it in the seventeenth century; no source was given. I also
found the following assertion (about cock-a-leekie):


As early as 1598 Fynes Morrison recorded that it was served at a
Knight's house with boiling fowl (thus the "cock") and prunes.


Further search found the following passage from Morrison, which I
suspect is what is being referred to:


</fontfamily><fontfamily><param>Courier_New</param>'I myself,' says the
traveller Fynes Morrison, in the end of Queen Elizabeth's reign, the
scene being the Lowlands of Scotland, 'was at a knight's house, who had
many servants to attend him, that brought in his meat with their heads
covered with blue caps, the table being more than half furnished with
great platters of porridge each having a little piece of sodden meat.
And when the table was served, the servants did sit down with us; but
the upper mess, instead of porridge, had a pullet, with some prunes in
the broth.'--TRAVELS, p. 155.


</fontfamily>If that is the right passage, what we have is evidence
that Lowland Scots at the end of our period sometimes ate chicken
stewed with some prunes. But that doesn't imply it was
cock-a-leekie--for one thing, there are no leeks mentioned.


On the other hand, the quote from Morrison does give a a little
evidence on Scottish cooking in period.

David/Cariadoc

http://www.daviddfriedman.com/

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