[Sca-cooks] Cooking with youngsters was Wow, a day of it's own!

[Bronwynmgn at aol.com]

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In a message dated 11/25/2002 9:28:02 AM Eastern Standard Time,
johnna at sitka.engin.umich.edu writes:


> A thick book with just a
> few illustrations of medieval feasts from illuminations is not the same
> as the juvenile glossy cookbooks that show step by step how to measure
> and cut up ingredients. The final product is there so that they can
> compare their dish to what the cookbook shows.


Ok, I can sort of understand that with kids, but it seems to me that it would
be just as good, if not better, to have an adult hands-on demonstrating,
helping, instructing, and encouraging.  I, at least, am very, very good at
misunderstanding picture directions (although pictures are better than words
only) and learn any hands-on skill much more easily with an actual living
demonstration.

>
> As to adults learning to cook before they tackle medieval recipes,
> having guided a few roommates through initial lessons and having had
> numerous conversations with cooks in the SCA over the past three
> decades, I still stand by my advice. I have seen loaves of bread that
> resembled brickbats; pie crusts that could have served for targets and
> cookies that were more lead sinkers than edible. Yet we would turn these
> people loose with medieval recipes prior to their being able to handle
> simple by comparison Fanny Farmer or Betty Crocker.

Sure, we all know people who can't cook for whatever reason, no matter
whether they are working from a words-only cookbook or a book with lots of
pictures.  I still fail to see how using a recipe from a modern cookbook is
any easier than using a simple, worked out redaction of a medieval recipe,
given the fact that a recipe of equal complexity was chosen from each book.
Nobody ever said you couldn't have Joy of Cooking or one of the other
how-to-cook books at your elbow to explain how to slice a carrot - or, even
better, and experienced cook.  I fail to see how anyone can really learn to
cook from a book with no hands-on training from anyone, and I for one wasn't
even considering that as an option.


> I have run across
> some very inexperienced cooks such as the 30 year old who was the head
> cook of a banquet featuring a large number of chicken dishes. I asked
> why she was buying all the chicken in already cut-up pieces at expensive
> prices (like $2.00 a pound) when whole chickens could be purchased for
> 29 cents a pound. She confessed that she had never cut up a chicken in
> her life and didn't know where to start.


Really, Johnna, how many people ever cut their own meat any more?  I can
manage without making too much of a mess of a chicken, but I grew up watching
my mom or dad do it.  There's no shame in not knowing how to do something
like that, and it has no bearing at all on whether she could adequately cook
the bird after it was cut.  Personally, unless the group she was buying for
was dangerously short of money, or the feast cost inordinately high because
of her purchasing, I'm far more concerned that she know how to tell if the
chicken is properly cooked, and be able to serve a tasty, well-done dish,
than if she cut it up herself.

Brangwayna Morgan