SC - Documented Substitutions (Long)

[Bonne of Traquair]

>
>If this is true, then why don't all the recipes offer substitutions?
>Instead of just specific ones.  To me this only shows that certain recipes
>had "acceptable" substitutions, not all recipes.
>
>IMO
>Murkial

For the same reason that modern cookbooks do not all offer substitutions 
every time they might: It took/takes time to transcribe recipes, additional 
information took/takes space which was even more limited then than now, and 
the cook was/is expected to bring their experience to the kitchen.

While you can't sub. anything you want because you don't have the medieval 
cooking experience, I beleive a look through the same collection for a 
recipe of the same category to see if more advice can be found would be 
reasonable.  Searching through collections that have some connection to the 
this would not be as good but would not be invalid.

If neither action produces useful information, then you have to make a 
decision. Either scrap the plan and move on to something else, or substitute 
as you see fit and see that anyone that needs to know is informed. If it's 
for SCA purposes, anyone who expects it to be 'period' should learn that is 
isn't and to what degree.  If it's tues. night supper at home, no one 
_needs_ to know, though some at the table may be interested and sometimes 
it's useful to have something to bring up in substitution for more high 
school gossip you are sick of hearing from your teenager.

bonne




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