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

[Kirrily Robert]

Adamantius wrote:
>> Take beef or mutton and hew it fine and put it into a clean potte with
>
><snip>
> "might", of course, being the operative term.

*grin*, yes, that was my point.

>> Either way, I feel fairly comfortable making up period-style recipes as
>> long as they use period ingredients and techniques, aren't a mad
>> mishmash of incompatible styles, and aren't trying to be "unusual" in
>> any way, and aren't trying to pass it off as a documented actual
>> medieval recipe.
>
> Well, that last bit is the key. Speculation is fine so long as it is
> clearly identified as such. Unfortunately, half the time, a third party
> will go and say, "Yeah, well Lady Katherine has a period recipe for beef
> stew that is to die for," and someone will ask where the recipe comes
> from, and varying degrees of huffiness tend to result.

Yuh.  But this happens in all fields of endeavour in the SCA, and people
deal with it reasonably well.  If someone said "Lady Katherine has a
beautiful Tudor gown" then I'd expect any interested party to ask me
about it rather than just making assumptions.  If someone said "Lady
Katherine taught a really fun bransle at dance practice," ditto.  And
again if someone said "Lady Katherine illuminated an amazing scroll".
In each case, the thing I was doing might have been based precisely on a
period source, or might have been something I made up in a period style.
And in each case, I'd tell people what I'd done and I wouldn't pretend
it was anything other than what it was.  But for some reason, the cooks'
community seems to be less open to this than other interest groups within
the SCA (at least in my experience).  I'm just wondering out loud why that
is.

> Also, we often
> can't tell why a medieval cook does what he does. Does he parboil the
> meat first because of the medical implications, say, the removal of
> choleric humors, or is it just to make it tender?  I've been cooking from
> medieval recipes and have stopped using other people's modern
> adaptations as a rule, for about fifteen years now, and I still can't be
> sure if a recipe I create is in a period style.

*nod*, that's my feeling on the matter too.  The made-up recipe I gave
contained ingredients that I knew were in use in a certain period, and
the style of the words was kind of like a lot of recipes I've read, but
I really don't know whether it's something that they would have cooked
and eaten.  For all I know, it might have been a totally inappropriate
juxtaposition of ingredients or something.

On the other hand, I face the same problems with costuming, and I
consider it an intellectual challenge rather than a reason not to do it.
Would my persona have worn this kind of hat with that kind of gown?  I
don't know, but I can look at a range of sources and make an educated
guess.  And were I to enter the costume in a competition, or discuss it
at an A&S meeting, or explain it to another costumer, I'd simply
document my process and assumptions and nobody would mind.  So why are
SCA cooks more fussy about it?

>   If I'm just fooling around, which is pretty frequently, actually, then
> I don't worry about it, but if I want to do period food that I'm sure is
> period, then I would go with an extant recipe. And there are really
> quite an astonishing number of them that have survived.

Indeed!  And I definitely enjoy cooking from them.  But sometimes, I
have certain food that needs to be used up, or I'm limited by an
inability to shop, or by not having a cooler, or simply feel like
exercising the creative parts of my brain.

> I really don't like the catch-phrase "period". Chocolate is period.
> Vikings are period. Firearms are period. Vikings with shotguns and
> chocolate are just silly, but thinking of this game in terms of what is
> period, meaning, "what is permissible", leads to such interesting
> combinations.

Amen to that.  That's one of my pet rants, actually, which is why I
commented on inappropriate mixtures of ingredients in my original post.
I tend to prefer to say something is "known to have been used in Tudor
England" or "appropriate for a Byzantine household" or something, rather
than using the generic P word, but sometimes it's just easier to say
"period" when speaking generically, as I was.

> For myself, as a means of learning about period food, I will never get
> tired of the actual, surviving recipes. It's not like I'm going to run
> out of them in my lifetime, which is why my teeth itch when people tell
> me, "Been there, done that, now I want to expand beyond the narrow
> confines of slavishly following period recipes."

I don't think I'll ever get tired of working from pre-1600 sources and
trying to do it accurately.  I don't expect to reach a point where that
becomes uninteresting and I feel like I should progress "beyond" it.
But I do like a bit of variety from time to time.

>   I guess what it boils down to is one's motive for creating a peri-oid
> dish, and whether it is responsibly presented in our organization, which
> is theoretically education-oriented. I have no problem with doing it,
> but I always am sure to make it clear that it is a speculative work or
> even just a joke of some kind.

*nod*, that's my view too, pretty much.

Yours,

Katherine

--
Lady Katherine Rowberd (mka Kirrily "Skud" Robert)
katherine at infotrope.net  http://infotrope.net/sca/
Caldrithig, Skraeling Althing, Ealdormere
"The rose is red, the leaves are grene, God save Elizabeth our Queene"