SC - questions

[Phil Anderson]

Balthazar writes: 

> > I'd like to suggest a rule of thumb: [...]
> 
> This sounds good, but then we have to ask "who's idea of "reasonable" are
> we talking about?"

I suspect this topic has moved on in the last couple of days, but I'll 
try to answer anyway: 

That's a fair question, but unfortunately the answer is rather fuzzy - 
"reasonable" can vary quite a bit depending on the circumstances 
and, as you note, individual views of "reasonable" vary... 

In general, I actually tend to expect a higher average standard of 
authenticity in food at a formal feast than in garb: _everyone_ has to 
come up with garb, whether interested in sewing or not, whereas 
only those with _some_ interest in cooking are likely to be running 
feasts. Further, no one is likely to need to organise a feast at their 
first event, but they will need clothes at that stage. 

Now, sure, sometimes feast stewards may not have access to any 
suitable sources or, more likely, may not know where to look. In 
such cases, it's not fair to judge harshly no matter how keen I am on 
authenticity. But I do expect them to make an _effort_ to find out 
something about mediaeval food, even if it's only as far as "potatoes, 
tomatoes and sweetcorn are American". 


> I have done very, very reasonable attempts at medieval
> food in the past, but would be willing to bet they would not fly on this
> list, since none of them are "documentable".

I'm genuinely curious as to how you decided what to cook. What did 
you know about mediaeval cuisine at the time, and what did you try 
to find out before setting a menu? 


Personally, I'm not a very experienced cook, but when doing my first 
feast I did have the advantages of knowing there were sources 
available, having a local library with several decent books with 
worked-out versions of mediaeval recips, being Internet-savvy and 
having some book- buying money. I'm not at the stage where I would 
feel comfortable trying to replicate proper period menus, but I have 
no need to ever serve an individual dish not based on period 
references. 


>  Does 'reasonable' mean they have to be extracted from the
> current body of extant texts?  If so, that doesn;t sound
> reasonable, it sounds 'authentic'. 

For those who have straightforward access to relevant resources, 
and actually know about those resources, I would say that  "based 
on period sources" is reasonable. These not need be actual recipes; 
literary references or artworks are also evidence of what was eaten 
in period. 


(I'd note that "straightforward access to relevant resources" possibly 
covers _every_ SCA cook in my country; our groups are based in 
cities with decent libraries and have lots of people with Internet 
access. I do my best to help with the "know about those resources" 
bit...) 


> There are folks on this
> list who will demand more than some are willing or able to give.

I'm not at all sure that that's the case. It's no more difficult to read a 
recipe from, say, _Pleyn Delit_ or the online _Miscellany_ than from 
a cookbook of modern recipes. Sure, some people here would 
_like_ to see people working from originals, but I doubt that any will 
say that using collections of pre-worked-out mediaeval recipes is 
unreasonable. 


I also think that people here are happy to make allowances for feast 
cooks who simply don't have access to such resources, but that's 
now a shrinking proportion of the populace. 

> Let's
> remember that everyone's level of interest in the SCA varies.

Indeed, and I wouldn't dream of expecting everyone attending a pot- 
luck feast to provide dishes from period sources. But surely those 
actually cooking feasts are presumably interested in mediaeval 
cooking. (If it's common for uninterested people to get stuck with 
"We need a feast and _you_ get to be the cook", then that's a 
different matter, and very unfortunate.) 

Edward Long-hair Southron Gaard, Caid