SC - Emeril tries Medieval- LONG

[Alderton, Philippa]

OK, folks, I'm posting this to several Lists, as well as to the Emeril Live
email. The Lists I'm posting this to have all had some discussion about the
Emeril Medieval show, mostly pretty negative. I had jokingly posted to
MK-Cooks that I was looking forward to this intensely, as I'm half in love
with Emeril ;-) and his cooking, and expected to end the show either 3/4 in
love, or not speaking. For the record, I feel just as I did before about
him. He made mistakes, but I suspect he was being advised by a commercial
operation whose forte is not Medieval Food, but Medievaloid Entertainment,
and if you think about it, how many of us have our recreations down, to the
last t's dotted and the i's crossed ;-)

First, we discovered today that the website had plagiarized His Grace, Duke
Sir Etc Cariadoc's website for the translation and the redaction of the
Potage From Meat. His Grace called them, and it was immediately removed from
the website. Bummer-that's the most period recipe that was there! In
addition, some of us have been trying to email the show with our comments,
and we discovered that there was no way to contact them that way- some of us
just threw temper tantrums, I emailed the website and mentioned this- dunno
how many others did, but today there's email access to the Emeril Live show-
they're responsive, even if they don't email us back.

So- to cases.

Emeril was advised, I suspect, by the Medieval Times, which is a commercial
operation, run for entertainment purposes, along the lines of the RennFaire
circuit. MT is interested in producing a knight-and-pony show for pay- their
interest in Medieval Cookery is nil- just look at their menus ;-) They do,
however, put on a good entertainment, and help give folks inklings of the
Dream.  Not my cup of mead, but good for those who wish to sit and be
entertained.

So, they had Emeril in an interesting, if OOP outfit, cooking mostly OOP
foods, with a few OOP ingredients, but still, I say he did well.

The bread recipe-There are only 4 bread recipes which are known at the
moment which are completely in Period, and they weren't written down by
bakers- how is he supposed to know this? He at least got part of it right,
and produced a white bread, which was preferred by the nobility. The Baker's
Guilds held these recipes secret, and as near as we can tell, they're secret
to this day.

He did well with the Potage. Despite the plagiarism issue, he cooked it up
in a manner acceptable to those of us who do this sort of thing- and he
actually produced a period recipe, thanks to Cariadoc. Even used bread
crumbs for thickening- very period. Better than most have done on ANY
cooking show.

The meat pie. Dunno where he got it from, the recipe wasn't on the site, but
he got the mixture of fruits and meats with a gravy added later right, if
not documentably so, and called the crust a coffin, again accurately,
although he didn't make a coffin crust. Not bad, for a newbie!

The Maid of Honor Tarts. Documentable to the 17th or 18th century, or so,
but reputed to go back to Henry VIII. Again, he's not a scholar of Medieval
cooking, and he doesn't deal with our criteria for accuracy. At least, he
tried.

Paprika. He used that as a spicing in one dish. How many of you knew that
it's a capsicum pepper, thus New World, thus OOP until we can find some docs
for it? And now, how many of you are aware that there is an unproved
possibility that the Chinese traded with the west coast of the New World
many centuries ago, and they may have had it in our period?

Potato starch. He added that, too. How many times have we been asked about
potatoes on Cook's List? After all, the Irish have had them for centuries!
Just not enough centuries, and there's strong reason to believe that the
sweet potato (not the African yam) was the first to be cultivated in Europe.
And think about it- some of our period translations suggest adding "corn
starch". How many of us know that corn is a generic name for grain in
period, but does not refer to "maize", our New World "corn"?

Eating utensils. This is direct influence of the MT folks. They're the ones
who serve their OOP foods with no utensils. They're obviously unaware (or,
more likely, uncaring) that the Romans knew forks, that spoons and knives
were used in Europe thriughout period, and that forks were returned to Italy
about 1100 or so, by the Byzantines? The northerners resisted them for many
years, as "effeminate".

Frankly, I think he did very well, under the circumstances. At least he
didn't try to tell us that period food tasted bad, that they used too many
spices to hide the taste of spoiled meat, or try to put sand in his bread to
imitate stone ground wheat.

Thanks for trying, Emeril- you did good.


Phlip

Nolo disputare, volo somniare et contendere, et iterum somniare.

phlip at morganco.net

Philippa Farrour
Caer Frig
Southeastern Ohio

"All things are poisons.  It is simply the dose that distinguishes between a
poison and a remedy." -Paracelsus

"Oats -- a grain which in England sustains the horses, and in
Scotland, the men." -- Johnson

"It was pleasant to me to find that 'oats,' the 'food of horses,' were
so much used as the food of the people in Johnson's own town." --
Boswell

"And where will you find such horses, and such men?" -- Anonymous