SC - rare foods at feasts-rant

[Olwen the Odd]

> > If you are working from a period recipe, it generally specifies the
> > ingredients (although rarely the quantities), ...
>
>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.

BINGO!  Which is why many cooks here do not understand some cooks need to 
cook from complete speculation as opposed to informed speculation based upon 
the published recipes. If the book you have does not define 'spices' (either 
in a similar recipe, a specific spice powder recipe or in general notes), 
then you can read closely related texts to see what is going either in the 
same time frame but other places, or the same place a little earlier or 
later.  All of that would be within the range of acceptable speculation. 
What would not be acceptable would be assuming that 'spices' for a modern 
and/or victorian dish having the same name or basic idea are going to be the 
same as in the medieval dish. Even if modern and victorian agree, that 
doesn't mean the mixture goes back any further.


Don't be fooled by me though, I have sprinkled miscellaneous spices 
available in period over a hunk o'meat and cooked it sans any documentation 
for that particular combination or method. My two feasts contained items 
with periodicity levels ranging from 'pretty d*mned sure Cariadoc et al 
would be proud of me' to 'well, they did eat roast poultry' with 'this would 
be better if _________' being the most common.


>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.

In the first case, while experimenting at home and discovering someone used 
up the almonds, do what you will, but don't go around telling people that 
what you did was an accurate attempt at reproduction.  At a feast however, 
you would have surely planned to buy and bring the almonds, and were they 
forgotten and could not be retrieved in time, skip the dish rather than 
substituting whatever could be found.  Or, if you have any references with 
you, skim to find something else to use up the ingredients and fill the hole 
in the menu.


In the case of the soup from Le Menagier burning, I beleive he is indeed an 
author who provides advice on what to do about it.  But if not, the best 
thing to do is to get the soup poured off into another container ASAP 
without scraping the scorched bit into it, so the scorch taste has as little 
opportunity as possible to take over.  Most of the time, that will do the 
job, and adding a bit more of an existing ingredient can take care of the 
rest--no need to go out on a limb with unexpected ingredients. Or again, if 
it is that bad, don't serve it.

Once, someone scorched the cheese goo, their solution was to pour the sauce 
over the brocoli and broil it, so that people would assume the scorch taste 
was from that process. Of course, the 'original' Savory Toasted Cheese 
recipe from Digby gives instruction in broiling the cheese, so the 
uninformed cook was inadvertently being more authentic.

Bonne

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