[Sca-cooks] Favorite Norse/Viking camping event recipes

[jenne at fiedlerfamily.net]

On Mon, 10 Nov 2003, UlfR wrote:

> Sharon Gordon <gordonse at one.net> [2003.11.10] wrote:
> > I was wondering what people's favorite recipes were for doing old Norse
> > style recipes while cooking at camping events?
>
> Unfortunately the archaeological and litterary finds are rather silent
> on what they actually ate[1], so it is hard/impossible to cook actual
> viking age food. You can do like me and cook the food we do have
> recipies for[2], or try to invent (or adapt later recipies).

ARGHHHHHH!!!!!!!!
This is the kind of false statement: 'the finds are silent on what they
actually ate' that I HATE about the SCA cooking establishment.

It isn't true, as you admit below, that we don't know much about what they
ATE. What we don't know much about is THEIR RECIPES!!!!!!

> [1] In detail, we have rather extensive and trustworthy lists of
> ingredients. But that allows us to make hamburgers (without the tomato
> slice and ketchup), and is thus of only partial assistance.

If you take some information about the foods and ingredients we know they
ate, and create something that is based on your knowledge of their
foodways, it is not 'invented out of whole cloth'.

Pardon me for bouncing up and down on my hobbyhorse but the idea that the
primary if not only legitimate source of information about foodways in
period is cookbooks is my biggest pet peeve.

-- Pani Jadwiga Zajaczkowa, Knowledge Pika jenne at fiedlerfamily.net
"Our whole American way of life is a great war of ideas, and librarians
are the arms dealers selling weapons to both sides." --James Quinn