[Sca-cooks] what are your thoughts on period-style food?

[Philip & Susan Troy]

Weaver8002 at aol.com wrote:

> --
> [ Picked text/plain from multipart/alternative ]
> In a message dated 01/01/2002 9:56:45 PM Eastern Standard Time,
> sca-cooks-request at ansteorra.org writes:
>
>
>
>>"Been there, done that, now I want to expand beyond the narrow
>>confines of slavishly following period recipes."
>>
>
> How does one "slavishly follow" a recipe that gives you 3 choices of meats
> and doesn't tell you what herbs to use?
>
> The cooks guild in Bright Hills once sent out 4 recipes with instructions for
> everyone to pick one, make it and bring it to the next meeting.  I picked the
> meat dish as did 4-6 of the others.  Each of us made a deistically different
> dish.  Seems to me that, if one wants to play fast and loose with a recipe --
> the unredacted medieval recipes give you lots of leeway.

I agree, but the above is a line I hear pretty frequently, although
slightly exaggerated, I believe, in the context of this discussion. The
implication seems to be that the speaker has learned everything there is
to be learned from period recipes, and had exhausted the educational
possibilities of simply following the rather vague directions as they
think best. Which is why I think this is hooey. But actually, Lady
Katherine said no such thing, except the words (and I could be mistaken
about this), "slavishly following period recipes." Which, in the context
of her question, made sense.

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