[Sca-cooks] Re: Dembinska book/"Food and Drink in Medieval Poland"

[Ruth Frey]

	<Doc wrote:>
> Just a note on this, use care with the recipes from that particular
> text.  I've read and been told that it's a "could've" book - as in
> "They had all the ingredients back then, so they could've made this
> dish."

	Well, it's better than that -- as far as I can tell, they're
all "coulda" recipes that are at least based on actual historical
recipes, and which were developed keeping scholarship in mind (e.g most
of the recipes were tested using Period cooking tools, heat sources,
etc. wherever possible).  So, it's better than the proverbial Medieval
Cheeseburger ("They had bread rolls, right?  They had ground beef and
cheese, right?  So, cheeseburgers it is!").  However, I have seen some
doubtful stuff.  The one recipe from that book that I've personally
made is the one for saffron wafers, which recommends beating egg whites
to either soft peaks or stiff peaks (can't remember which) -- a rather
iffy bit of technique for the Medieval era, from what research I've
done (egg whisks and heavily-beaten egg whites didn't really come into
use till the late 17th century or later, according to other sources).
	While an egg white emulsion would give you the nicest wafers
possible, theoretically, I compromised and just beat the egg whites well
with a fork (a few bubbles floating on top, but not at all an emulsion)
and then cooked up the wafers.  They turned out quite nice, with far less
work than the "coulda" recipe indicated.
	So, I'd be careful with recipes from that book in terms of
absolute accuracy, though if you're in a situation where a "coulda"
recipe is OK, they seem all right, as long as you make it clear to
folks that a "coulda" is what it is . . .But boy, it was frustrating to
get that book (it was a special order at a local bookstore, of course)
and find no original recipes at all!  Waaaah!  It seems a good 2ndary-
source overview of food in that part of the world, though, which is
*some*thing, given how hard it is to find anything from that time and
place.

		-- Ruth