[Sca-cooks] Period Junk food

[Phil Troy/ G. Tacitus Adamantius]

Also sprach Nicholas S. Malone:
>I don't really care who if anyone takes me seriously. They can take me
>or not and move on or over, that's completely up to them. Besides the
>only people who ever get caught with this sort of bait are persons who
>take themselves and/or the SCA too seriously. In the last month there
>have been as many non-cooking posts and comments as there are those on
>topic, which this happens to be, on topic that is. Just because I want
>to do fun in a feast and fit the event host group's personality, and
>maybe bag a blowhard or too, doesn't make me evil. I made me evil!

Evil really isn't the issue. It's more about the message you're
trying to send. If you want to educate, educate. If you're just
goofing around and having fun, fine. Doing both is even better than
either.

See, what baits this laurel (as well as others, I suspect) is the
entire mentality of doing what is "permissible" or "acceptable" in
the SCA, as if you're not allowed to do stuff that's not period.
People that worry excessively about that often spend an awful lot of
their time trying to present non-period stuff as period, because they
found some tiny shred of evidence that might suggest that something
_vaguely_ like that Ho-Ho _might_ have existed, if the translation is
correct, which it frequently isn't.

So, essentially, the equally silly flipside of going around telling
everybody you meet in the SCA that they Can't Do Thing X (something I
have not encountered much, myself, in the past 19 years of SCA life),
is to say, "Yes, I can _too_ do Thing X, and here's my [largely
spurious] documentation to prove I can do it!" Whereas the more
appropriate response would be something like, "My Lord or My Lady,
with respect, there's a very long piece of rope hanging from that
high spot on the wall over there, should you need to void your
bladder..."

The issue here is one of rudeness, I think, and if it were really
about broadening the horizons of the Stuffy Purists, the standard of
research for this job would need to be higher. So, for example:

>>>Just to bust the period police's chops

Again, these people (if they exist at all) are simply rude. What kind
of rude doesn't matter. It's not their interest in periodicity that
matters here, it's their desire to use their alleged education as a
tool for dominance. Treat them like any other ill-mannered slob; your
life will be richer for not having to agonize over how to deal with
them.

>>>  and to bait some laurels I wanna
>>>do all Junk food.

I gotta go with Chirhart here. If it's genuine period food, why will
that bait anybody? My question is, having seen a number of recipes
used by SCAdians to document certain foods after being changed beyond
all recognition, how good is the documentation _really_?

>>>I have solid sources for Chicken Nuggets,

See above. How solid? The standard recipe often used by SCAdians that
is often referred to as Period Chicken McNuggets is adapted from a
recipe that does not call for frying boneless chicken in a batter or
other coating, let alone ground and reformed, pseudo-chicken-breast.
The closest I've seen is the [probably Mediterranean] recipe in the
Harpestrang MSs found around Northern Europe, which calls for chicken
legs to be boiled, the meat picked off the bones, teased into
threads, then wrapped back around the bones, coated with a batter and
fried (I'm doing this from memory, so bear with me if I'm mistaken).
There are also sweet-and-sour sauces for chicken, generally boiled,
IIRC.

Or is there some other recipe I haven't seen, which comes closer than these?

>>>  Hot Pockets (stuffed huntmans loaves),

Middle Eastern sources have these, I believe. Not sure about
European, unless you look at chewets, which are small, fist-sized
pies, said to be named for the little cabbages they vaguely resemble
in shape.

>>>  Corn Dogs (sausage dumplings, fried and a little longer than period)

This is documentable? Hook me up, man!

>>>and  HoHo's (can't do chocolate but I can fill rolled cakes)

Maybe I need to know more about what a Ho-Ho really is to get the
joke... I see on the Web that a Ho-Ho is similar to a Ding-Dong,
which I believe is similar, in turn, to the Drake's Ring Dings
generally found in my neck of the woods... so what, in period, is
even remotely close to any of these, even without the chocolate? No
chocolate, but also no cream cakes (mostly yeast-leavened doughs for
cakes), no buttercream, AFAIK, no vanilla... the closest I can think
of might be to fill a yeast dough sheet with something like mince pie
filling, or even just to make cuskynoles... but more about those
another time ;-).

>>>Does anyone have good sources on period recipes that can translate as
>>>"Junk Food"?

So, I guess here's my bottom line, and the point of this long post:
Since there are actual, period foods that resemble modern junk food,
but which don't "bait the laurels" as much as some of the more
spuriously-documented junk-food stand-ins, it sounds as if your
primary goal is to tick people off, and I wonder if it will be
successful even on that level. Maybe I just don't know the kind of
people that you've run across, and you're right, but if there really
is a problem and this is your way of dealing with it, I think I'd go
about it differently, is all.

Let's see now. Actual, genuinely documentable period foods that are
close to modern junk food:

We've got batter-dipped, fried cheese [mozzarella sticks?], fried
pork rinds and/or cracklings, air- or smoke-dried sausage [Slim
Jims?], various pickles, funnel cakes, apple fritters, macaroni and
cheese (actually more like fettucine alfredo in this case, but the
components are there, more or less). Curd fritters (aren't those
Deep-fried Vikings?), fried [dried, mostly] fruit pies. Waffles,
pancakes, pissaladiere (a Nicoise pizza variety of potentially period
origin). A bunch of other stuff exists; this other stuff is just off
the top of my head.

Adamantius