Dembinska Re: [Sca-cooks] large dayboard feast: need advice from those who have done this before

[jenne at fiedlerfamily.net]

> 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."

Not that far out, but it certainly isn't up to SCA Cooks 'you have to
include the period recipe you adapted from' standards.

Basically, Woys Weaver and Dembinska sat down with lists of foods
mentioned on period menus, lists of period ingredients and references, and
other Northern European cookbooks, and tried to come up with recipes for
foods that were documentably served, using existing recipes (If you squint
hard and turn your head the right way you can tell which recorded period
recipes went into some of the 're-created' recipes).

I, myself, am doubtful about the background of the bigos recipe,
especially if you make it without the wild game, but it's a perfectly fine
recipe, and I suspect that if you hunted around for the antecedents
(that Weaver doesn't say which of the period recipes they _did_ look at
is one of the things that drives me nuts).

-- Jadwiga Zajaczkowa
jenne at fiedlerfamily.net OR jenne at tulgey.browser.net OR jahb at lehigh.edu
"I used to be one of them. Now I rather think I'm one of me." -- Terry
Prachett, _Thief of Time_