[Sca-cooks] Katherine's vegetarian food article

[david friedman]

About a month ago, Lady Katherine Rowberd wrote:

>I recently wrote an article about catering for vegetarians at SCA
>feasts, and would appreciate some feedback on it.  One thing it attempts
>to do is explain clearly what vegetarian is, and what the different
>forms of vegetarianism are, and what cooks need to consider to cater for
>each kind, and that fish are *not* vegetables, despite many common
>misconceptions :)
>
>The article's at http://infotrope.net/sca/cooking/veg/ and I'd
>appreciate both general comments and contributions to the table of
>suitable recipes at the bottom of the article.

 From the article in question:

"Of course, our knowledge of medieval cookery comes mostly from what
was written in books, and it's easy to see that the books were
describing the food eaten by the nobility, especially at feasts or
when entertaining. It is probable that everyday food, especially
among the lower classes, was much less meat-heavy. It's also probably
safe to assume that the simplest dishes were not written down, much
as we don't bother to publish many recipe books with instructions for
cooking ramen noodles or making toast."

This is a bit of an overstatement. You should have a look at _Le
Menagier de Paris_; the cooking section is in translation on
Cariadoc's web site. The author is upper middle class, but not
nobility, and mentions some dishes with the comment: (rough quotation
from memory) "this is too elaborate a dish for our household, or even
a simple knight's." And for "safe to assume that the simplest dishes
were not written down", consider this (not vegetarian, just the first
really simple one I came across):

"Item, at supper, meat salted in the morning, cooked in water and
scallions, be it beef or mutton."

This is from Le Menagier; I'm sure I could come up with equally
simple things from some of the other period sources.

Other points:

In your table of recipes, you have question marks on where several of
the ones from our Miscellany originally come from. Look at the
section near the beginning of the Miscellany with the description of
the original sources; Platina, for example, is 15th c. Italian and
"Goodman" (of Paris) refers to another translation of Menagier and so
is 14th c. French.

I'm a little unhappy with the idea of suggesting serving tofu and TVP
at medieval feasts, even though you say it isn't authentic.

It might be worth going into more detail on the subject of what the
medieval fasting rules were. As you say, fish, which wouldn't be
acceptable to a vegetarian, was legal even in Lent; but there is a
distinction you see in the cookbooks between fast days in Lent, when
eggs and dairy products were not legal, and fast days out of Lent,
when they were.

If you are looking for more vegetarian recipes, look in the
Miscellany section on meat/cheese/egg pies, many of which have the
cheese and/or eggs but not the meat; or the section on desserts etc.
which includes things like fritters and sweet pies (Platina's Torta
of Red Chickpeas, for example, I believe to be intended as fast-day
food); or the Cooked Dish of Lentils or the Isfanakh Mutajjan from
the Islamic section.

Elizabeth of Dendermonde/Betty Cook