[Sca-cooks] Cooking techniques- Was Funges Follies-

[Catherine Hartley]

Well, I agree that our ingredients aren't exactly the same, but the chemical
process that makes an onion caramelize is going to be the same today as it
was then. Maybe the onions had more or less sugar and were not chemically
the same (soil conditions, etc), so flavors are changed, but the process is
not a different one.

If you cook sugar long enough in period and today, humidity is going to
affect the outcome. Accepting that sugar was not as refined as today, there
are very accurate descriptions of the various candying phases among period
sources that can be considered "soft ball" or "hard crack" or whatever. I am
refering to this type of chemistry. If you try to temper a sauce with eggs
in period and today, you have to be careful not to curdle the egg. This is
referenced in period and in today's modern cookbooks. Why? Becuase heat
cooks eggs today just as in the Middle Ages, Renaissance or what have you.
If the sauce is too hot, the egg curdles (cooks) in the heat and is lumpy
instead giving a smooth liaision.

I believe that I am in agreement with most others, that we cannot recreate
*exactly* what was done then, only that period cooking is not so different
as to create the idiea that we can not understand the difference in our
palates. I am sorry if I was unclear in my statements. I am not a
professsional food historian by any stretch, but I have perhaps just a small
piece of a clue when it comes to adapting recipes with "modern ingredients".
And I still stand by the idea that while we can never hope to create exactly
what cookery was like "then", we can certainly approach an understanding of
the "period" palate in that we can make reasonable facsimiles. Of course
some will be me accurate if using the fire methods and heritage ingredients
and whatever...

I acknowledge period cooking over open fires and whatnot is different from
gas cooking in an oven or over a range, my point in creating the survey is
to show the difference in moist heat cooking today vice "in period" along
with dry heat techniques. And to discuss why they may be similar and why
they wouldn't be.

My surveying exercise (perhaps in futility - and may live only on my
computer to serve me) may work to show folks who may be intimidated by the
idea that period cooking is so different from today as to be un-doable, that
this is not the case. This type survey can also provide a reference for
folks who want to know, as far as we have sources readily available, when
was the first use of puff pastry or what not.

Caitlin