SC - Chocolate documentation?

[CBlackwill@aol.com]

The bukenade variants give VERY exacting variations on a theme.  They are actually documentably supported.  Primary support documents are wonderful things to have!  Hard to miss when you have a solid foundation to walk on.  Balnc Manger is another recipe rich with variation and direction based on tim and culture.  If you cannot find one you like/can use, then you've not been looking hard enough :o)
These variants irrefutably support the contention that there was variance and substitution in these two recipes.  Rock solid.  As you go father and farther afield in generalizing this logic, though, the more tenuous the argument and more additional support would be needed i making a scholarly assertion.

If you're making dinner for friends, have at it!  If making assertions on a historical or authoritative basis, then one needs t oine up the little duckies and work to develop a logical premise and cinclusion that can be reviewed and criticized by peers.  Then, mosifications and additons can be made, etc.

Depends on what your stated purpose is.

niccolo difrancesco


sca-cooks at ansteorra.org wrote:
> As an experienced modern cook you probably won't translate a substituion from one category of food to another.<<<SNIP>>>  You wouldn't substitute cornmeal, as you've never seen any evidence of that being a reasonable idea.
   I agree we shouldn't substitute from modern experience because we are cheating ourselves of knowledge. But surely in SCA cooking experience and knowledge can be put to limited use and the ability to transfer a reasonable variation of ingredients in recipe within the same category will eventually develop.
   How about all those bukenade recipes you mentioned?  Amongst them there are both mutual and exclusive ingredients. Doesn't the existence of these variations demonstrate that variety was accepted/expected in bukenade, within the range described by these recipes?  If the outside issues of cost, time, kitchen constraints or inredient availability can be solved by doing without something we don't have, and adding something that is listed in the other recipes, then why not? so long as the change is noted in any documentation or handouts.

Admmittedly, there aren't many such situations in which we have multiple variations on recipes.    Bonne>>>>>