SC - Period Ingredients Master List

[Bethany Public Library]

Hi-de-ho there, neighbors! If I may be so bold as to butt in on the
conversation:

Wouldn't it be easier to go to the glossaries of the primary-ish sources we
individuals own and copy the Glossaries, excerpting the bits that don't
apply? It would make life run much more smoothly, it would provide a
resource for those ingredients, and we'd be reasonably certain that the
ingredients would be "period" (how I HATE that expression!).

This could be done rather quickly if one had a flat-bed scanner and a
program that would allow one to import scanned text (and especially if it
could then be sorted into a database). I use, at work, an extremely old
version of a program called Visioneer Paperport that scans and converts to
Microsoft WORD (haven't tried importing to WORKS or ACCESS, but it could
work in theory). I have scanned book text before, and got reasonable
results. It requires a bit of tweaking to get it straight (differing
typefonts produce a few characters the 'puter "thinks" it recognizes as
symbols rather than letters or numbers) , but it's less time-consuming than,
say, typing the whole thing in and hand cross-referencing it.

I AM NOT VOLUNTEERING FOR THE JOB. But it seems that this would be a good,
logical and record-specific way to approach the whole project. It would be
quicker by far, and would cite a reference for further study. After all,
someone has already done the work for you in those sources. Why not utilize
that work? Of course, I make no promises regarding copyright (If His Grace
Cariadoc has an opinion on that, it would be good to hear it before
starting), but I bet if web-readers were referred to the print sources for
the specific recipes, in paper format, the authors would be happy to boost
their sales and allow the use of the references based on the author's
intellectual property. The Project would also have a rather farther-reaching
scope, not just limited to our narrow SCA usage. Other scholars would find
it very useful for archaeological, sociological, and historical research.

Aoife, acting like a librarian---if you do record-management right once
(even if it's a nightmare), you'll never have to do it again!

My good e-buddy Stefan penned the following:

Date: Wed, 29 Mar 2000 01:07:35 -0600
From: Stefan li Rous <stefan at texas.net>
Subject: Re: SC - Period Ingredients Master List

Lady Brighid ni Chiarain said:
> And it came to pass on 28 Mar 00,, that CBlackwill at aol.com wrote:
> > Does anyone know if there is currently a Master list of "period"
> > ingredients we can access to make our jobs a little easier?
>
> Wouldn't such a list would have to be subdivided by time and place?
> Olive oil is "period", for example, but it would not be appropriate for
> cooking a 15th century Anglo-Normal feast.
>