[Sca-cooks] Recipes was Following a recipe... rambling...

[johnna holloway]

The problem is also one of taking an "old" recipe
be it medieval or early modern (from the 16th-17th
centuries) and adapting it not only for use for
6-8 servings in a setting of the intimate small feast
or small potluck but then taking that same dish and
expanding the quanities up to serve 50, 100 or 200 or even
400. This is where we see some very interesting factors
come into play, regarding quantity cookery, holding
temperatures in warming ovens and efficient use of all
the other equipment that modern rental kitchens offer.
It isn't the adaptation of the dish to serve 6-8 that trips
us up; it's taking that same dish and attempting to make it
for 250 within a very limited budget and with time constraints.
We ought to be allowed to state that not all dishes are suitable
for quantity preparation. Nor are all dishes the same when we
start substituting for cost and availability... lamb for mutton;
beef for veal; etc.
Johnnae llyn Lewis  Johnna Holloway


AF Murphy wrote:
> To follow a medieval recipe, from what I have seen, you need to know how
> to cook. The problem with that, as we have mentioned, is that we then
> bring our own assumptions to the kitchen. Even now, "cook until done"
> means many things to many people! How do we decide what they meant by
> it? Anne
Gorgeous Muiredach wrote:
> I was using that as the starting point to explain what it means to
me to
> follow a recipe.  Then throwing the idea out that we should discuss
what
> following a recipe is.