SC - Almond Butter Take 2

[WyteRayven@aol.com]

> One of the benefits of a period feast is that you learn something 
> about the middle ages, and you learn more if it is a feast that could 
> have been put on in period than if it is only a feast made up of 
> dishes that could have been served in period.

Which is, of course, not what he is asking, since he isn't asking whether
he should choose dishes from period recipes or dishes not from period
recipes, but whether all the dishes should be from the same time/place.

In some ways, you do learn more if you eat all dishes from the same
time/place, especially if they are presented using some information about
how they were to be served together, than if the cook dumps a whole bunch
of dishes-from-period-recipes together on the table, with something from A
Soup for the Quan cheek-by-jowl with something from Platina, with some
comfits from Markham thrown in. This is why _The Medieval Cookbook_, which
divides the period into sub-periods, then uses dishes from cookbooks
outside of a given place/time to illustrate the food of that place/time,
is so annoying.

None the less, you do learn something from a feast of mixed periods, and
you can certainly get a mixed feast that is very good.

Now, themed events are a special case. If I am considering going to a
Japanese or Russian event and see that the feast is entirely from Platina,
Le Menagier de Paris and the Harlean manuscripts-- I will assume that the
event organizers have no real interest in doing a themed event, wouldn't
know persona if it bit them on the ankle, and are wasting everyones' time
claiming to do a themed event, because they are deliberately misinforming
and miseducating people about the culture they are basing their theme
around, by presenting food from another culture as if it belonged to the
theme culture.

 -- 
Jadwiga Zajaczkowa, mka Jennifer Heise	      jenne at tulgey.browser.net
disclaimer: i speak for no-one and no-one speaks for me.
"Our kingdom is a garden and such gardens are not made/By singing "Oh how
beautiful!" and sitting in the shade..." --Kipling, "Glory of the Garden"