SC - Unhistoric things we serve WAS:Shepherds Pie

[grizly at mindspring.com]

sca-cooks at ansteorra.org wrote:
> In a message dated 5/9/00 7:00:42 PM Pacific Daylight Time, grizly at mindspring.com writes:
> I had presumed that an item of ubiquity in cuisine would have been 
mentioned in one of these texts somewhere.

<<<< I wouldn't be so quick to make that presumption, personally.  After all, these were "cookery books" and such that they were writing, and not all-encompassing cyclopaedia.  I have never come across a cookbook in which the author included a recipe he/she does not like.  Perhaps these gentlemen simply found the potato and (poisonous?) tomato to be unfit for a tome on court cuisine?  Or, maybe they simply weren't widespread enough to be "popular"?  Who knows, really, what motivated these people when they wrote their manuscripts?  Not me.
Balthazar of Blackmoor  >>>>>>>

I was keying on the word 'cuisine'. To me, that suggests the poular professional food culture.  To suggest that serfs, peasants and/or beggars ate something is hard to document, let alone find preparation instructions.  However, cuisine is what we find documented by the cooks and writers.  I realize that is a simplistic organization of food in cultures, but it is a strting point.  Given the range of bizarre foods one finds in various texts, some being singular references, it doesn't seem too logically removed to assume the ONE of the Italian texts would have included at least one reference to the fruit as an ingredient if not a dish in itself.  

One recipe would indicate that it was a food source that was attmepted by at least one person.  Widespread usage would likely need more support than that.  Several recipes in one source would lead me to infer that something was frequently used in a time region/location.  I would then be encouraged ot locate other sources to track the spread of it into other cuisine or sourcework.  Recipes are not the sole source of documentation for foodstuffs, but for me they are a good starting barometer of what could be 'cuisine' versus novelty/less than noble.  This is all just broad guidelines that I use to begin my thought processes.

niccolo