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

[Philip & Susan Troy]

Also sprach El Hermoso Dormido:
>What I'm really looking for in this thread is validation (or invalidation,
>as the case may be) of the likely authenticity of my "cooking reenactment"
>style that will result from my desire to approach the study of medieval
>cookery and food from the side OPPOSITE that of "recipes".  In other words,
>if I want to create a Spanish dish from the mid-1500's, say, rather than
>reaching for a copy of a medieval spanish recipe book, that I'd instead
>be thinking in terms of what ingredients were available, and how cooks
>in that time and place tended to combine and prepare them, and letting
>the dishes "flow" from that.  For me, I think this will result in a much
>more complete understanding of "medieval cooking" (and cooking in general),
>just because of the way I learn things.  Of course, if it is the case that
>'period' cooks generally DID refer to recipes as they made their dishes, then
>the point is pretty moot...
>
>My eventual goal isn't just to be able to make authentic medieval dishes,
>but to achieve a "mastery" of medieval cooking as a whole.  It also doesn't
>hurt that in July, we're having an "Iron Chef"-style competition, by
>which time I hope to have added enough skill and knowledge to whatever
>talent I may have to be able to show off a little with the rest of
>our team...
>
>(I don't want to have to go leafing through recipes when the Mystery
>Ingredient is announced - I want to KNOW( and/or FEEL) when, where, and
>how that ingredient was used, and, in what I contend is "authentic medieval
>style" (though I may be completely wrong, which is why I ask here), create
>an appropriate dish in an improvisational (but authentic) manner.

Oh. _This_ discussion again. It's been, what, two months since it
resurfaced last? ;-)

The problem is that you're not going to find a huge amount of primary
source material on how general cooking is done in period. While there
are snippets in some sources, say, about mincing and parboiling
onions before using them in a pottage, many recipes simply don't
follow these "rules" in any practical sense. Similarly, they don't
always seem to follow the prevailing medical advice of the period,
either, especially when contemporary medical theory varies pretty
greatly.

Certainly you can develop a sense of what would have been done with
certain foods, but the recipes are still probably the best guide as
to what was actually done with various ingredients. They can be
limiting, but they clearly represent things that were either actually
done, or what the cook/author thought could be done, with the foods
mentioned. It's kind of a shell game. You know the pea worth five
bucks is under one particular shell, and you're trying to gauge the
likelihood of there being another pea under another shell, maybe
worth more. (You can tell I don't gamble, huh?) Yes, it's possible,
but it's also possible you'll be wrong. If all you're trying to do is
win an Iron Chef competition, you could certainly pull it off, but
what you'd be learning and teaching, of real value, about period
cookery would be debatable. For one thing, you'd have to qualify
everything. "This is what I think, based on X, Y, and Z, _might_ have
been done with such-and-such." That is, assuming you're going to be a
responsible researcher.

On the other hand, I think a sufficient familiarity with a body of
recipes would work just as well at teaching some of those basic
"rules", not set down by any particular authority, but allowing you
to deduce, by statistical analysis, what was done with each
ingredient. For example, many French recipes of the period will call
for infusing saffron in wine or verjuice before using it (see Le
Menagier, Taillevent, Chiquart, etc.). You'd know this not because
some rule told you to do it (while another published rule might tell
you not to), but because 98% of the recipes you've seen _did_ that.

We've had virtual Iron Chef competitions on this list before, like
the shopping basket tests done in cooking schools. Generally we call
it Virtual Siege Cookery, and most of the participants seemed able to
produce approximations of recognizable medieval food without actually
referring to the recipes. But it turned out later that what they
planned often bore a striking resemblance to stuff for which we have
recipes.

You don't necessarily have to be tied to the recipes, but they are a
useful tool, probably the best tool we have, for learning and
teaching not only what _was_ done, but what _might have_ been done.

Adamantius