[Sca-cooks] 2002 Cook's Symposium

[Sue Clemenger]

It's like that with a lot of things...at least, I've also found it to be
true in the other areas I know a little about (costuming and period
needlework).  It just about makes flames shoot from my nostrils to see
multiple museums (that really, really oughta know better!) refer to a
certain dress in a Bronzino painting as Eleanor of Toledo's burial gown,
which still actually exists, and _isn't_ the same as the gown in the
painting, or to read my lovely copy of the MoL book on Textiles and
Clothing, and wince at the bit where they turn a Hereolfsnes (sp?) tunic
(for a man, no less) into a fitted gown for a woman.  *sigh*
I guess that's just what makes scholarship and research and reenactment
so fascinating and simultaneously so frustrating.....
--Maire, stopping before she climbs up on the soap box....

Phlip wrote:
>
> Ene bichizh ogsen baina shuu...
>
> > I read it in the latest issue of _Serve It Forth_.  It sounds as if the
> > author was pretty unsuccessful in her attempts to "reconstruct the
> > desired cuisine from sources other than cookbooks," to quote the review
>
> <Major snip>
>
> Well, that's pretty much what I had heard, but I had wanted to see for
> myself, so a List Member has given me an opportunity. Unfortunately, I won't
> have time to read it until I finish proofing Paul's new book, and I thought
> that would be my next project.
>
> I suppose her heart was in the right place, but it makes it very frustrating
> for those of us who are seriously trying to understand "the way THEY did
> it." It's even more confusing, and difficult, when you run into resources
> like the Oxford book, which range from very, very good, to totally
> off-the-wall, and then try to sort out the wheat from the chaff.. Certainly
> an exercise in critical thinking ;-), but sometimes it's easier to throw out
> the baby with the bathwater, the bath tub, and the baby clothes, and just go
> back to the original sources.