[Sca-cooks] Misha's Food question was: regional potluck)

[Elizabeth A Heckert]

On Tue, 14 Aug 2001 16:00:47 EDT XvLoverCrimvX at aol.com writes:

>FOod content:Does any one know if either pierozhki (Russian meat or
>veggie filled pastries) or Chinese fried rice is period?

   Firstly, is it a pastry dough or a pasta dough?

    I ask because  Pierogi are big up here in southcentral Pa, Misha, and
they're Polish.   They are noodle pockets that are filled.  Since a
Pierogi is usually potato-filled, that definately puts it outside of SCA
'period'.

    If the two words are related, and the infintesimal amount I know
about Eastern European languages leads me to think they might be, then I
would be inclined to say no.  While I know next to nothing about Chinese
cookery, I am inclined to say no to "fried rice", but for the following
(long and drawn out) reason.

    When you start investigating the history of cooking, just like
anything else, you have to set some parameters for yourself.  The SCA has
a general guideline (although I think officially it refers to clothing)
of pre-seventeenth century.  Now I stretch it, personally, to include
both Digby and Markham.  Both gentlemen published books about cooking
post 1600--Digby about 1650, and Markham 1610.  I don't stretch it to
include any New World edible, even though there's a lovely bronze turkey
sculpture in Italy that dates to the 1570's.

   The problem you are coming up against is history vs. tradition.
European cooking underwent a massive change after about 1600, for a
variety of reasons; famine, Catharine De'Medici and New World edibles
were only three of those reasons.  Then European and eventually
world-wide ethnic groups emmigrated to the US.   This changed cooking yet
again.

    Now I realize that you know all of this!  But you have to consider
that when someone is talking about a *traditional* dish, they are talking
about a recipe that can be thousands of years old, but is often only
about two hundred.  Why two hundred?  Well, a generation is often defined
as about forty years.  That's five generations, or your great-great
grandparent.  Because it is possible to have a great grandparent still
living, transmission of the recipe in an original form is possible.  Past
that, it's hard to say what happened to the recipe, 'cause our memories
are faulty.

    Why do I think *Fried Rice* is traditional?  Because there is a
hundred year (on the west coast at least) tradition of Chinese
restaurants in this country.  Stir-frying cold cooked rice may be an
ancient technique, but what did the Chinese of the fourteenth century add
to it?  I had a room-mate in college from Hunan province.  I learned how
to stir-fry from her, and she got me to eat kidneys, and like it!  But
was Hunan province always a home to spicy cookery???  These are the kinds
of questions you have to ask yourself about a *traditional* recipe.  The
answers will have you concetrating on political history and archeology.
And the problem with *that* is the Russian (sorry, I'm too old to
remember the new names!) and Chinese tongues.  Most of your research
materials will *Not* be in English!  (Speaking as a fledgling Viking
researcher, mutter, mutter!)

     There are several pearls of great price right there in your home
group, Misha!  (And I don't necessarily mean companions of the Pearl
either)  They are:  Betty Eyer/Lady Magdalena de Hazebrouk, Caer Mear
seneschale; Tom McDonald/Master Thomas Longshanks; and Terry Palmore/Lady
Naomi Mcalpin.  These three gentles are serious students of cooking
history, and Q knows all of them; she can introduce you if you haven't
met them.  At the collegium, Q and Tom were talking about getting
together to do some cooking workshops--remind her of that if it hasn't
been settled yet.

    Elizabeth

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