[Sca-cooks] Re: (Period cookery questions)

[jenne at fiedlerfamily.net]

> The trouble with working with secondary sources is
> that you're working with someone else's interpretation
> of what people did, and they might, because of their
> research, think that flambeed toads feet were commonly
> used as a garnish for dinosaur pottage, whereas
> they've found the only three references,

Interestingly enough, most of the modern secondary sources I've consulted
about spices and cooking habits have made use of a wide variety of sources
and when I come to check them against other sources and the sources
they've used, they are often accurate--- unless they worked solely from
recipes that they had cooked. For instance, Maggie Black's book was so
wrong you could see the problems with her analysis without being familiar
with the sources she was referring to.

-- 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."