[Sca-cooks] originals and redactions, was "All the King's Cooks"

[Ron Carnegie]

Additionally, many either have some vague steps, or leave out steps. 
So when "just following the receipt" you have to interpret the 
recipe, whereas another cook might interpret the directions 
differently.

Therefore, when following one of these recipes, you are forced create 
what we call a "redaction", even if you don't write it down.

Anahita

   Yes an no.  I was trained in a period kitchen (though not SCA period). 
We had almost no measuring equipment available to us (just as our
predecessors didn't).  There is judgement being used yes (just as in
period) but if it calls for butter the size of a walnut, that what I add,
butter the size of a walnut.  This does of course require interpretation,
yes, and if your knowledge of period technique is poor so will your
interpretation be.  This is why I want the original source.  Many modern
books are written by modern cooks and affected by their modern thoughts
more than period technique.  I suppose I could say all, myself included. 
I believe that my finished product is close to what was intended by the
original receipt, but one can never know for sure.

    Apparently your definition of redaction is bigger than mine.  For I
have always understood the word to mean a process of determining modern
measurements for ingredients, and I really do not do this, written or
otherwise.  If the receipt is not specific, I simply add until it
seems right at the time, as I suspect the period cooks did.  

    This is a sore spot for me, which is the only reason I have delurked
here.  I have been marked down in competitions for not including my
redactions.

Ranald de Balinhard

Ron Carnegie <r.carnegie at verizon.net>
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	"The poetry of history lies in the quasi-miraculous fact that
	 once on this earth, on this familiar spot of ground walked
	 other men and women as actual as we are today, thinking
	 their own thoughts, swayed by their own passions but now
	 all gone, vanishing after another, gone as utterly as we 
	 ourselves shall be gone like ghosts at cockcrow."
				G.M. Trevelyan
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