[Sca-cooks] Corn Bread

[grizly at mindspring.com]

Apart from the arguments you bring,  there lies a very practical question that needs be answered :   How the HECK would the have leavened the thing?

Modern Cornbread uses chemical leavening which cannot be argued as available to even ate period Spaniards.  Yeast would be an inadequate leavener without a wholly different recipe than modern White Lily Cornbread mix.  That's the crux of my question of this recipe.  Without reasonable answer for this question, the assertion holds no logical credibility . . . . either you leaven the batter, or you have simply maize polenta, a completely different critter.

AS TO STEWS:  with so many various versions of braised/simmered meat dishes in the medieval/rennaissance corpus such as egurdouce and monchalet, it seems a bit tenous to argue that modern stew dishes would have been made since they are 'simple and obvious'.  We have lots of BG recipes . . . nothing resembling carrots/potaotes/cubed chuck/gravy.  Let them be merry in the ignorance of the argument they make.  It is just as logically valid to claim that someone cooked hamburgers for the third King of Naples; so simple and obvious, but the didn't have the concept for a BigMac until much later for this item.

The key may be to challenge the logical construction of the argument by finding something absurd that follows the same exact chain of thought.  Then if the argument is truly about what was and wasn't, then it will forced into the realm of knowledge and information instead of speculation and inferencial reasoning.  It may be that this is a case of rationalising what they want to do and eat . . . in which case it isn't about learning more about food of 600 to 1600.  You may need to first buy the person into the value of knowing what is demonstrable over guessing what possibly could have been in the absence of a definite. reliable reference.

pacem et bonum,
niccolo difrancesco

sca-cooks at ansteorra.org wrote:
> Someone on our Kingdom list is arguing that old line: if they hadingredient X in period, they must have had cooked dish Y. In this
case, the discussion is centering around...

Cornbread

My experiences in Europe indicate that even today, corn, i.e., maize,
is not a commonly eaten food. This person is arguing that since
Renaissance Europeans made bread, they must have made cornbread once
they discovered corn.

I think that this is not a logical argument. Can anyone point out the
pros or cons of this discussion? If i'm wrong, i'm willing to admit
it.

Another person says that since they have a late period Spanish
persona, they can freely eat tomatoes, potatoes, and corn.

IIRC, there is some evidence in the 16th c. for tomatoes cooked as a
vegetable in Italy (and maybe Spain), and sweet potatoes (but not
*white* potatoes) eaten in Spain in period. However, i don't recall
maize coming up on this list as a food eaten in Spain or other parts
of Europe in the 16th c.

I welcome all information - particularly about corn, i.e., maize.

Anahita

The discussion has also been about chocolate and stew, which someone
in the thread insisted that just because there's no evidence, it's so
simple and obvious, it must have been eaten since humans first
figured out how to cook in pots (not a quote).
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