originals and redactions Re: [Sca-cooks] "All the King's Cooks"
Daniel Myers
doc at medievalcookery.com
Thu Aug 28 10:08:34 PDT 2003
On Thursday, August 28, 2003, at 12:18 PM, <jenne at fiedlerfamily.net>
wrote:
>> But this is the question that comes up whenever one approaches any
>> cookbook that features traditional or heirloom or historical recipes.
>
> Nope, not really.
>
> I'm wondering why we seem to prefer books with the original source but
> really lousy and misleading redactions to books with good redactions
> the
> original sources are only cited, not reproduced. (I can provide
> examples...)
I personally don't like either of these choices.
Redaction is often (always?) a matter of interpretation, and what seems
like a good redaction to one person may be a terrible redaction to
another (consider the Great Cuskynole Debate), so a book with
redactions but no source does not allow the reader to fully examine and
understand the author's interpretations.
I am extremely reluctant however to recommend books where the
redactions are (in my opinion, of course) way out of line with what the
original source, and when I do recommend one, it's usually with a
strong warning. I feel that such books do a horrible disservice to the
field of historical re-creation/re-enactment. Note though that I would
not recommend such a book if the original source were not included
along with the redaction. The original source is a must for there to
be any kind of historical accuracy - without it you're not re-creating,
you're just cooking.
To me a book consisting of the original source, photographically
reproduced or carefully transcribed with as few modifications as
possible, is the ultimate. The more editing that has been done, the
less useful the book is, and when there are only redactions the book is
pretty much worthless ...
... for recipes, that is. There are a number of secondary sources
that provide a great amount of historical information, which the author
has collected and processed and is presenting in a more comprehensible
form. Examples of this type are "Boke of Keruynge" [Brears], "Fast and
Feast: Food in Medieval Society" [Henisch], and "The Great Household in
Late Medieval England" [Woolgar]. For this sort of book though, it's
value rests on the skills and respectability of the author. But that's
a whole 'nother matter.
I guess it all comes down to personal preference and how the book is
going to be used.
... We now return you to your regularly scheduled program of dance
music ...
- Doc
--
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Edouard Halidai (Daniel Myers)
http://www.medievalcookery.com/
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