[Sca-cooks] Tips on Redactions

[jenne at fiedlerfamily.net]

> But, hey, if you prefer to use otheer people's
> interpretations, go for it. While you're at it, you
> can let them cook the food, and eat it as well- that's
> up to you.
>
> But, if you want to do your own redactions of period
> recipes, then you need to do them yourself. Calling
> AAA is NOT changing your own flat tire, although both
> should get the car down the road.

Frankly, I think you're confusing looking at someone else's redaction with
using someone else's redaction as the result. Y'all don't want people to
contaminate their thoughts with other people's ideas of period cooking.

Instead you'd prefer them to contaminate their thoughts with people's
ideas of modern cooking.

It's perfectly possible (and Fabulous Feasts is a good example) to read a
recipe in a period book, look at it and go find instructions to cook
something similar and cook that, and think it's medieval.

You can make the same mistakes -- and different ones too-- using modern
cookbook as looking at a modern redaction for assistance, IF YOU ARE NOT
READING CRITICALLY.

READING CRITICALLY is important, no matter what source you use.

THINKING about what people might have done in period is also important.

Take that roast-- if you're cooking it to medium-rare I assume it's a beef
roast. (Where'd you get a non-boiled beef roast recipe.) What evidence do
you have that medium-rare is done? If it was chicken or pork a modern
person would cook it to x degrees, or use the handshake test, or be really
really sure it was well-done because we don't eat medium to rare pork or
chicken. Did people in period cook their pork to death? (Probably not.)

> But did they? And even if they did, what other
> information might they have picked up incidently, that
> enhances their interpretation and understanding of Med
> foodways, that they didn't share, and you missed?

Think about adding coriander rather than currants. You get a dish that is
very different. If there's no indication that the word 'corinthus' ever
indicated coriander in period, the dish is in all probability quite likely
to be very unlike the medieval original.

> It's like that with Med cookery. If you start out by
> following other folks' redactions, you may very well
> pick up their bad habits. Better to develop your own
> ;-)

But refusing to seek any information about the project outside of the
text, such as context and other information that reference sources can
give you, IS a habit, and some people consider it a bad one.

-- Jadwiga Zajaczkowa
jenne at fiedlerfamily.net OR jenne at tulgey.browser.net OR jahb at lehigh.edu
"Are you finished? If you're finished, you'll have to put down the spoon."