[Sca-cooks] Is cooking like costuming?

[david friedman]

I haven't been able to find the post this originally appeared in, so
am responding to it at second hand. I apologize if I am
misunderstanding due to not having the full context.

>  >  Whenever we redact a recipe that doesn't have exact quantities
>>specified...or we redact one that uses huge quantities of spices/seasoning=
>s
>>that would make it inedible today (changes in tastes/differences in the
>>strengths of the seasonings), we are modifying the period recipe, imposing
>  >on it our modern tastes.
>>
>>I know I'm carrying this point to its extreme, but it's a logical
>>extreme....
>>
>  >Kiri


1. Can you give an example of a recipe that uses huge quantities of
spices/seasonings that would make it inedible today? The only things
I can think of that come close to that are some ingredient lists in
_Ain i Akbari_ that produce very salty dishes.

2. When we interpret a recipe that doesn't have quantities (the usual
situation), we aren't exactly "imposing" our modern tastes on it, or
"modifying" the recipe, since we aren't choosing to alter from what
the original would have been to what we would like. We are using our
modern tastes in making the best guess we can at the original.

It is true, of course, is that one person's honest attempt to come as
close as possible to an original recipe might end up being further
from the original than the dish cooked by someone else, who was
deliberately changing things to fit his tastes--but happened to make
a closer guess on the things he didn't deliberately change.
Similarly, someone shooting an arrow and trying to miss the target
might end up in the bullseye, while someone trying to hit the target
missed it.

That's relevant if we think our criterion is "how close is this dish
to the original." It's not relevant if the question is "was this dish
the result of doing the best the cook could to reproduce the
original?"

To put it differently, what describing something as "periodoid" means
is not "We know they didn't do this in period" but "We have little
reason to believe that they did do this in period."
--
David/Cariadoc
http://www.daviddfriedman.com/