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

[david friedman]

>For documentational purposes, I think recipes are very necessary -


What does "for documentational purposes" mean? What is the purpose of
"documenting" things?

Your way of putting sounds as though it means "for the purpose of
proving to other people that your recipes are period, recipes are
very necessary," although that may not be what you mean. I would have
said "for the purpose of finding out what medieval cooking was like,
recipes are very necessary."

>but I
>also keep in mind that medieval people ran out of supplies (at times), had
>too many of something going bad (at times), had personal tastes that
>determined the amounts of ingredients... and found that they preferred their
>version. I think a certain amount of leeway is necessary - not documentable,
>but certainly no different than "Oh, yes, certainly Lady X's cook uses
>parsnips in his boogle-brindy, but that doesn't mean that *I* will! Him and
>his common palate... humpf!"

The problem, of course, is that although we can be reasonably
confident they sometimes made dishes that didn't fit any surviving
recipe, we don't know what things. There are an awful lot of possible
ways of changing a recipe, and the ones that seem natural to us may
or may not be the ones that seem natural to them. We do know that
they made things that did fit those recipes.

So far as "personal tastes that determined the amount of
ingredients," changing the amount of ingredients isn't a change in
the recipe unless the recipe tells you how much to use, and it
usually doesn't.
--
David Friedman
Professor of Law
Santa Clara University
ddfr at best.com
http://www.daviddfriedman.com/