[Sca-cooks] Am I at least minimally clueful? (Period cookery questions)

[Terry Decker]

>
>1)It appears that there really is no analogue for MODERN-style recipes in
>"period".

Pretty much correct.  Formula type recipes come along fairly late in the
game and early cookbooks appear to have been written as aide-memoires for
skilled cooks.

>
>2)The implication I get from this is that most medieval cooks wouldn't be
>cooking from a recipe as most modern cooks seem to, but rather by
"intuition"
>and experience, examining what's available for ingredients and what sorts
of
>cooking techniques the cook's been exposed to that are appropriate, and
going
>from there by "feel".  Am I correct in that assumption?

Possibly, but we only know what was prepared from the recipes and
descriptions of the meal.  We really don't know how it was prepared other
than the bare details in the texts.  Thus an accurate recreation requires us
to follow the facts as closely as possible.  This doesn't mean that many of
us don't wing it every so often.  We just don't do it when we are trying for
historical accuracy.

>
>3)I get the impression that unlike (thankfully!) SCA cooks, in "period",
>cooks (for noble folk) were simple servants, and
>not-particularly-well-thought-of ones in most cases.  (They seem to be
>stereotyped as smelly, irritable people, presumably due to working in a hot
>kitchen all day while being harassed by children sneaking in to steal food
and
>so on). This is also correct, I assume?  Would that also imply that most
cooks
>were semi-literate or illiterate for most of "period"?
>
>Signed,
>El Hermoso Dormido, eagerly seeking culinary education...

In general, head cooks were highly paid, highly skilled technicians who
planned and prepared menus to please their patrons and maintain their
health.  They may have been illiterate or semi-literate, but they were not
fools or incompetents, as they had to command an army of kitchen staff,
handle large purchases, and often provide for 40 to several hundred people
at every meal.

I would suggest reading Rumpolt's comments on cooks and the ordering of a
kitchen.

Bear