SC - help on documentation

[Jenne Heise]

> First:  My grandmother taught me to cook.  Many of the things I make best
> are done without a recipe.  This has been handed down from generation to
> generation for a long time.   I must assume that most everyone in the middle
> ages did not have access to cook books and cooked in this same way.
> Therefore, my question is this:  If I have a dish for which I can not find
> documentation but can find documentation to support it's ingredients, it's
> spices, the way in which it was cooked, etc.  Would this suffice as
> documentation?  

Well, it depends on who you are documenting it for. Most people _eating_
the feast probably won't mind, at least according to the feast survey.
However, I wouldn't bother submitting it to an A&S competition unless a)
the judge is really a brewer or b) you are a masochist. I, personally
consider that if you can document a) the existence of the dish and b) the
method of preparation and c) the combination of ingredients as well as the
ingredients themselves, that is sufficient. For instance, if someone says
to cook greens by booiling and then stirring in oil, andyou know they ate
cooked purslane and cooked fennel, and that someone mentions a dish of
purslane and fennel, then that's fine. Any lower level of documentation is
jsut into the 'is it plausible?' question. Others on this list feel that
anything other than a replication of an existing period recipe is not
sufficiently documented.

Oh, by the way, here's some cabbage recipe:

>From the Domostroi: "Chop cabbage, greens, or a mixture of both very fine,
then wash them well. Boil or steam them for a long time. On
meat days, put in red meat, ham, or a little pork fat; add cream or egg
whites and warm the mixture. During a fast, saturate the greens with
a little broth, or add some fat [oil?] and steam it well. Add some groats,
salt and sour cabbage soup. Cook kasha the same way; steam it
well with lard, oil, or herring in a broth." 

- -- 
Jadwiga Zajaczkowa, mka Jennifer Heise	      jenne at tulgey.browser.net
disclaimer: i speak for no-one and no-one speaks for me.
"I do my job. I refuse to be responsible for other people's managerial 
hallucinations." -- Lady Jemina Starker