SC - Dayboard?

[Jenne Heise]

> If you are working from a period recipe, it generally specifies the 
> ingredients (although rarely the quantities), so if you "alter 
> ingredients as ... needed," one consequence is that you are moving 
> farther from an accurate reproduction of a period dish than if you 
> follow the original instructions--which you had available before you 
> made the feast.

Hm. It seems to me that a number of recipes call for either 'spices' or
spice mixtures, and that sometimes the cook gives the recipe for the spice
mixture in the same work-- in which case to be absolutely sure that you
are reasonably accurately reproducing the dish as that cook wold have made
it you should use his recipe... but if he doesn't give you the recipe or
specify the spices, I would think that considerable variance would be
possible within the realm of reproducing the dish.

Of course, if you are lucky and disaster would stricke (you're out of
almonds, or the soup from Le Menagier burns), the author provides a period
alternative.

Jadwiga Zajaczkowa, mka Jennifer Heise	      jenne at tulgey.browser.net
disclaimer: i speak for no-one and no-one speaks for me.
"And you, to whom adversity has dealt the final blow
With smiling bastards lying to you everywhere you go
Turn to, and put out all your strength of arm and heart and brain
And like the Mary Ellen Carter, rise again."