[Sca-cooks] Peasant food - was Question to the group....

[Philip & Susan Troy]

Dunbar, Debra wrote:

> DISCLAIMER: The following is my opinion based on my mundane research of
> folklore, much of which is primarily passed down orally and difficult to
> find first source documentation for.  So don't flay me here, folks!

No flaying here. Y'see, what I see happening here is somebody doing the
best they can with available research materials, and that's fine. In
general, all research is inherently a good thing, but sometimes it's
possible to do better if you have additional information. What can cause
problems is if, upon doing the best you can with what you've got, you
begin to equate "best you can do" with perfect and speculation with
proof of fact. I'm not entering your head and not saying this is what
you've done, but it's a common enough problem in most research circles.

For example, it seems like what we absolutely, honest-to-gosh,
take-it-to-the-bank _know_ is that, say, bigos is old, at least 200
years, probably more.

We believe, either from archaeological finds, old written recipes from
other cultures like, say, the Romans, that it's a really safe bet the
Poles have been eating cabbage for the last 1000 years or more.

At risk of dropping a logical link or two, but cutting to the chase, we
can therefore speculate that it's to some degree likely that the Poles
have been eating bigos for some mumbledy-hundred years. And it _is_
likely. But we don't _know_ it, because to know something without proof
is an issue of faith and don't get me started on transsubstantiation again.

Now, speaking only for myself, I have no problem with informed
speculation, as long as it's identified as such, and not confused with
documentable fact. It's  kind of the research equivalent of
circumstantial evidence: better than nothing, usually, but not as good
as an eyewitness account from a reliable witness, which is kind of what
a primary source is.

Now those who've questioned the issue of immutable peasant customs
really aren't trying to crush your argument, they're merely (at least as
far as I can tell) trying to state their view that it is a better
alternative (although not necessarily the only good one) to work from
what we actually know, and can prove. As with His Grace's repeated
suggestions that instead of changing a period recipe to suit your needs,
you should simply find another that suits them already, we have a pretty
respectable body of real knowledge about medieval cookery to work with,
and many might say we should exhaust its unexplored avenues before going
into the stuff we don't really know about, for sure.

My request for hard evidence was not a challenge to anybody's research,
just an attempt to figure out where things stood in our body of actual
knowledge of the subject, and since you obviously know more about this
particular subject than I, I figured it would be a good bet to ask.

And then, of course, there may be new evidence available on issues that
had previously been only the subject of speculation. That's where the
real fun begins, IMO.


Adamantius
--
Phil & Susan Troy

troy at asan.com

"It was so blatant that Roger threw at him.  Clemens gets away with
things that get other people thrown out of games.  As long as they
let him get away with it, it's going  to continue." -- Joe Torre, 9/98