[Sca-cooks] Tips on Redactions

[Philip & Susan Troy]

Gorgeous Muiredach wrote:


>> But why is a modern
>> cookbook necessarily a better choice than a period one?
>
>
> I don't think it is necessarily better, though I would have to agree that
> it has advantages.  The main advantage I see is that it is *generaly*
> closer to our own zone of comfort/knowledge.  It is easier to get a feel
> for how things go when you are somewhat familiar with the concept of what
> it should taste like.
>
> If you have too many foreign elements at the same time, chances are it will
> be easier to see what changes are good, and which ones don't work so well.

In general I agree with the idea that a modern cookbook is probably a
better tool for teaching general cooking techniques than a period one,
and leaves a person so exposed better prepared to deal with a period
recipe than a period cookbook would prepare one to handle a modern recipe.
Situation A) Someone who has a basic familiarity with "The Joy of
Cooking", say, can pick up something from The Forme of Cury and be told
how to draw up an almond milk or clarify sugar, right in the recipe,
especially with a basic modern background already installed. They might
have a little trouble with the vocabulary, but when told to hack
something into gobbets, can immediately do so.

Situation B) involves a person exposed only to period cookbooks, limited
more or less to the technology and terminology represented in those
books, and if called upon to produce a modern dish according to a
specific recipe, could have quite a lot of trouble. If told, right off
the bat, to cut a fine brunoise, not only would they probably have
trouble with the vocabulary, but wouldn't, I suspect, be very good at
the technique, either, without some practice.

Basically, I think modern recipes are, to some extent, or a greater
extent, designed to teach people how to cook [certain foods], whereas
period recipes are designed to remind professional cooks of what they've
already been trained to do, as a way of budgeting time and resources
while working.

    Of course, this can work both ways: period recipes can teach us a
lot about the prevailing technology of their age which, while different,
is no less sophisticated than ours. For example, we have the brewing
recipes in an age before thermometers, which are pretty clear and
consistent about adding a measured amount of boiling water (in other
words, a finite and defined amount of thermal energy) to a given mass of
malt, for a specific time. Fine detail on temperature shifts occurs when
the recipe might say, for example, "Now take one gallon of this mixture,
bring it to a boil, and add it back to the original mass." Or words to
that effect.

Conversely, modern cooks have not been taught, for example, that you can
get stiff, white egg whites by repeatedly running them through a
strainer... that you can thicken sauces and pie fillings with egg whites
without necessarily worrying about curdling... that yes, you _can_,
under the right circumstances, boil a piece of meat until tender, _then_
chop it finely and form it into meatballs _after_ cooking, without
adding a powerful binder.

   This is all the stuff you learn by looking at a period recipe,
realize that those things are _impossible_, and going ahead and doing
those things anyway, on the assumption that the original cooks/authors
would not tell us to do something impossible, barring translation
errors. A lot of the time it turns out those things are possible after
all, and these are the things for which modern recipe experience doesn't
prepare us.

Overall, though, I still think a modern culinary education is a better
preparation for period cookery than vice versa.

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