[Sca-cooks] RE: Butter and Brie and Yams, Oh my!

[david friedman]

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>Oddly enough, I've been bemoaning the fact that it is very difficult to
>stroll into the local Safeway (or even your local Farmers' Market) and get
>produce that isn't some hybrid genetic engineered mutant.  Even the organic
>stuff isn't really a variety that would have been found in Medieval Europe.
>Everything labeled "yams" seems to be some variety of sweet potato, and now
>cheeses aren't really what they say they are, and even that staple, butter,
>is in dispute!
>
>I'm so depressed!
>
>Alys Katharine's comment about the holly has got me thinking.  How is it
>practical to prepare a totally documented feast for an event?  Maybe for
>some small cooking A&S thing, but to feed 200+?  How do cooks display their
>Magnus Opus, their SCA doctoral work?  No matter how carefully prepared it's
>always going to be flawed by modern yeast strains in your bread, modern
>hybrid veggies, etc.
>
>What's a part-time hobbist to do?
>Wrynne

Avoid making the best the enemy of the good.

Whatever scale you are working on you can never do a perfect
reproduction of a period meal--or anything else. Thirty years ago,
doing a feast where all of the recipes were from period cookbooks
represented a large improvement on the then SCA state of the art. Ten
or fifteen years ago, doing a feast where all of the recipes were
from a single period cuisine, with a menu based on perod menus,
represented a large improvement on the then SCA state of the art, at
least in areas I was then familiar with. Currently, I suspect that
doing the same thing with serious attention given to all available
information about how things were cooked (not just the information in
the recipe itself but whatever else can be found) and served, and
with the use of the closest thing to period varieties available,
would probably be a large step forward.



The objective isn't "perfect." It's "better."
--
David/Cariadoc
http://www.daviddfriedman.com/